On Monday morning, Greg Porter navigated a cart carrying his belongings from his tent, beneath the boughs of an oak and out of a gate behind a government building in Gilroy as volunteers, police officers and workers in yellow vests rushed past him.
He deposited the load on the curb in preparation to shuttle all that he owned to another encampment. After living in the current encampment on and off for a decade, Monday that ended for Porter as Santa Clara Valley Water District began clearing out the two largest encampments in Gilroy.
Despite pleas by local officials to give the city more time to find housing for the residents, Valley Water staff — who announced the closures last month — insisted that the sites had become too unsafe to allow them to remain. While the cleanups address those concerns, advocates say it will make it difficult to house and serve those who lived at the encampments.
“They don’t like us here (in the encampments), they don’t like us on the sidewalk,” said Jose Mendoza, 29, who had lived at the encampment for the last five years after spending time sleeping behind buildings. “Whatever we do, it’s our fault.”
Despite its small size, Gilroy has one of the largest unhoused populations in the Bay Area leading to a history of problems both for those who live on the street and for housed people in the city.
For years, unhoused residents clustered in two encampments on Valley Water land. In recent years, Valley Water began a program similar to a roadside trash service. Residents would put out trash in bags, and the agency would collect it in an effort to limit pollution in the waterways. Early this year, Valley Water began managing the encampments more actively — offering portable toilets at both sites, but also imposing rules and limitations for those who live there, and removing those who violated the rules.
Following a 2023 Gilroy ordinance restricting camping on public lands, the city began encampment cleanups throughout the city. The two encampments managed by Valley Water were the last places in Gilroy where those living in tents could stay without fear of being displaced.
“The problem is there’s no place you’re allowed to go. This was the last resort. How do you move your stuff if you don’t have a place to move it to?” asked Jan Bernstein Chargin, co-founder of PitStop homeless outreach. “It’s not ideal, but it has been possible to live here with some measure of dignity. It’s a lot harder to help people and we get worse outcomes when people don’t have a stable place.”
Even so, since May, staff from Valley Water said they have witnessed incidents of domestic violence, encountered aggressive animals, faced threats of violence, recovered knives and a firearm and been subject to insults.
“The tools we have at our disposal to address violent behaviors are only marginally effective,” said Colin Kortman, associate water resources specialist at Valley Water, at the October Valley Water Board meeting. Kortman argued that although only a “small percentage” caused issues, the encampments presented an “unacceptable risk.”
Both Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas and Gilroy Mayor Greg Bozzo had asked Valley Water to extend the timeline to allow the city and county more time to find housing solutions for those in the encampments.
“We will need more time to do this,” said Gilroy Mayor Greg Bozzo at the October Valley Water Meeting. “We cannot in a collaborative way work to do these encampment clearings in an efficient and humane and productive and effective way with such short notice.”
Still, concerns for staff safety outweighed the requests for more time.
“The violence has escalated … I am not willing to send staff out there after this week,” said Valley Water Interim CEO Melanie Richardson.
Richardson maintained that staff needed to access the nearby creeks during the rainy season to prevent flooding and noted that Valley Water had offered land to allow for a sustainable living arrangement long-term.
“The humane thing is to do it now and to help them find solutions in the process,” said Richardson.
While some of those who needed accommodations were able to get temporary extensions, most residents had to leave, and throughout the morning police officers and staff from Valley Water moved throughout the encampment and began enforcing the clearing, leading to tense exchanges between residents and law enforcement.
While Valley Water officials said that they would collaborate with the county and service providers to get some residents into housing and shelter, both residents and service providers said they had not seen anyone move into housing and shelter since the announcement.
A Valley Water representative said that the county would have information on shelter options. Officials with the county’s Office of Supportive Housing did not immediately respond to inquiries as to how many people had been housed since last month’s notice.
Some leaving the encampment seemed resigned to the situation as they moved out. “It is what it is,” said Porter, 63, who worked through the night to move out. He had been living in the encampment on and off since 2015. “I know it’s their job, but we didn’t do anything wrong, we didn’t cause no trouble”
Others felt they had no real options. “It’s terrible, but we’re doing everything possible,” said Diane Barbosa, 61, who has lived at the encampment for a year and a half. “It’s just hard for us out here.”