Despite pleas from advocates and encampment dwellers to postpone the clearing of Columbus Park, San Jose has begun its ambitious plan to sweep one of the city’s most prominent and longest-running homeless camps that city officials say has become a public safety hazard.
At last count, 309 people were living at the site — 196 males and 113 females — including 11 children and 108 pets.
But while concerns swirl about where displaced unhoused residents will go, including potentially into nearby neighborhoods, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said none of the residents who have accepted shelter will be kicked out immediately and that the city will have enough interim housing available by the time the clearing is completed in 60 to 90 days.
“We are not trying to move 300 people on day one,” Mahan said in an interview with The Mercury News. “This is a slow, methodical transition and our goal is to relocate everyone indoors, decommission the encampment thoughtfully, clean up the area and prepare it so that our (Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services) team can begin to restore the park to public access.”
In the spring, city officials announced plans to fill a large section of the park with soccer fields, horseshoe pits and pickleball, futsal and basketball courts, restoring it to its intended purpose by the third quarter of 2027. That meant the city would once again need to clear the large RV and homeless encampment that had overrun the recreational space on multiple occasions.
Although the city had intended to start abatement proceedings later in the year, public safety concerns at the park prompted the city to take a more aggressive approach to clear out the encampment.
911 data shared with this new organization showed that in the first seven months of 2025, calls for the most serious incidents rose sharply, with priority one calls up 47% and priority two calls up 63% year-over-year.
Between the two types of calls requiring an immediate response, public safety personnel responded 272 times — an average of more than one per day this year — despite the population at the park currently estimated at over 300 people.
“It’s just not a tenable situation for the people who are living there or for our first responders who are regularly, on a daily basis, called out to the site or the public who would like to get back to using the basketball courts and baseball diamonds,” Mahan said. “It’s untenable and it’s frankly inhumane for people to live in these conditions. We can do better and we will do better.”
Mahan said that over the past two months, outreach workers have attempted to build a rapport with those living at Columbus Park in an attempt to connect them with housing and services, but a considerable amount of work is still needed.
Out of the more than 300 people at the site, 51% have said they would accept housing, while 2% have outright rejected outreach efforts. The remaining 47% were categorized as unknown, according to the city.
Mahan said he hoped the number of people accepting housing would increase over the coming weeks.
Mahan also noted that 48% of those living at Columbus Park were categorized as “high needs” using the homelessness assessment tool, meaning that the city may not have an appropriate place to move them.
“When we see service resistance — setting aside the ultimate percentage of 10-20-30% and it varies by encampment — that tends to be the folks with the most serious forms of addiction and mental illness, who are just unwilling or unable to accept help that frankly the city can’t provide,” Mahan said. “Only our county and state can.”
However, there remain several unhoused residents whose past experiences with the city have left their relationship in tatters.
For example, Jerry Drawhorn, 60, said he would not accept the city’s offer of the shelter after struggles with reclaiming his property after the RV encampment sweep along Alviso-Milpitas Road in April.
Among the loudest complaints and concerns among advocates, who marched to Tuesday’s City Council meeting to protest the Columbus Park sweep, is that San Jose does not have enough shelter capacity to accommodate its homeless population — which is currently more than 6,500 people, according to the most recent point-in-time census.
“The city’s solutions are wholly inadequate,” resident and advocate Emma Hartung said. “We know this (and despite) as much public PR has been put forward, we know that ultimately this is going to be a sweep like any other, with folks losing all of their belongings (and) access to their pets. I actually believe that we can have a San Jose that’s for all of us.”
Deviating from the “housing first” strategy, San Jose has invested more in interim housing over the past few years in tiny home communities, hotel and motel conversions and safe sleeping and parking sites. This year, the city had targeted adding around 1,400 new placements.
While Mahan acknowledged that there would not be enough shelter space when the abatement process begins Monday, that will not be the case over the coming weeks.
On Monday, one motel will open to 42 unhoused residents. Within the next few weeks, four more motels will open along with the Taylor Street Navigational Hub. Combined, the motel and safe sleeping sites can accommodate 390 people.
Mahan stressed that none of the people who have accepted housing and are awaiting placement would be displaced.
He also noted that the city has increased its buyback program for RVs to $2,000 for a person’s vehicle, so long as the person accepts the city’s offer of interim housing. At the park, outreach workers have counted 120 vehicles, including 51 RVs and 45 trailers. Eighty of those vehicles were also inoperable.
While the city is hoping to make inroads on residents’ biggest headaches and concerns, the state of Columbus Park has also become a political issue with Steve Hilton, a leading Republican candidate in the governor’s race, trashing the site and Democrats’ homelessness approach in social media posts that have gained more than a hundred thousand views.
Mahan defended the city’s policy approach, citing how the investment in a spectrum of solutions has reduced the number of unsheltered homeless by 23%, with the potential for more progress later this year when more interim housing comes online. He invited Hilton to tour the site once the city finishes the abatement.
“It’s working and Columbus Park is going to be the next example of how this multiprong strategy works … it’s the kind of thing I hope all the gubernatorial candidates will learn from and discuss as they debate how to solve the biggest crisis facing the state of California,” Mahan said.