Santa Clara Valley Water District Hosts Summit on Homelessness Ahead of Encampment Ban Decision

Leaders from South Bay cities, nonprofits and Santa Clara County gathered Friday for a meeting hosted by the region’s main water provider, aiming to better coordinate efforts to address the homelessness crisis and its impact on local waterways.

The Unhoused People and Environment Summit, hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, comes a little more than a month ahead of a district meeting where the board will consider approving new restrictions banning homeless people from living near most rivers, creeks and streams in the region.

The district board previously weighed approving such a ban in July but ultimately postponed a decision until more outreach could be done and until the summit took place. The board will take it up at its Nov. 26 meeting.

Several people, including advocates for unhoused people, said Friday’s summit — held at the Santa Clara Convention Center — didn’t focus enough on concrete policy ideas or actions that agencies could take and was flawed overall because unhoused people were not invited to be panelists or guest speakers.

“They were excluded from the start. So it’s just a summit about unhoused people, not for or with unhoused people,” said Shaunn Cartwright, an advocate for unhoused people.

“So you just feel that there was all this planning and had nothing to do with homeless people. It was more, ‘How can we take care of that problem,’ but not ‘How can we help unhoused people?’”

The vice chair of the water board, Richard Santos, said unhoused people and advocates have had their thoughts and opinions folded into plenty of previous gatherings, including at district committee meetings focused on the issue of people living along waterways.

“So they’ve been given all kinds of opportunities. And our meetings went on for hours. It didn’t solve one thing. We’re trying to get action steps to help people get out of the creeks, get shelter, get their mental health, get their medical help, and save their lives,” Santos said. He said he understood the challenges for unhoused people and wanted the summit to focus on solutions and funding.

While the water district has long worked to clean up trash, debris and other waste along portions of its roughly 330 miles of waterways where unhoused people set up encampments, over the last year and a half, it has taken a more coordinated and aggressive tack to address the crisis under its Good Neighbor program.

Water district officials say encampments cause environmental harm when trash, food and other items flow into rivers, creeks and streams, and can cause blockages or pinch points in channels meant to help control flood waters.

The district has also raised safety concerns for its workers, who claim to have at times been threatened or accosted by people living near waterways.

“Our board is really engaged in these issues, and we’re a lead environmental agency in our area. So it makes sense for us to kind of take the lead, especially as it regards the impacts of unsheltered homelessness in the waterways,” said Mark Bilski, an assistant officer in charge of the Good Neighbor program.

“So to just have this opportunity to come to a public forum and to bring all these different agencies together to talk out loud in the open about our needs, our limitations and the resources that we have that we can bring to bear on the topic, I think it’s really a good step in the right direction,” Bilski said of the summit.

The list of local leaders who spoke at the summit included San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor, Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, Deputy Santa Clara County Executive Consuelo Hernández, and executive officer of the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, Meghan Marshall.

While board leaders said earlier this year they envisioned also having state and federal elected officials present who could help steer funding toward clean-up efforts, housing and support services, no members of Congress or state legislators were present.

Many of the panelists, board members and speakers mentioned a need for greater regional and state coordination, and the issue of funding was a central theme.

Santos said he personally invited state and federal representatives but that none of them showed up to the meeting.

Summit attendee James Campbell, 32, has been unhoused for about 10 years. He said he currently sleeps in his car about once a week and stays with friends at their homes on other nights. His mother is currently unhoused and living along Valley Water property.

He said he wants to see local agencies do more community engagement with unhoused people to learn about their needs, especially because it’s sometimes hard for unhoused people to attend meetings or summits.

“They’re saying that they’re providing services, but they’re not working, and they’re being duplicated. It’s just wasting money, is what I think,” Campell said. “[I]f we continue to engage in more discussions with the unhoused, I think that that’s going to be a lot more beneficial rather than just talking about what’s working or what’s not working on the executive level.”