The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors signed off on a new partnership with the city of San Jose this week that aims to better address the local homelessness crisis — but not without criticism from several county officials who feel the city has abandoned building permanent housing, instead opting to erect more shelters.
The board voted unanimously on Tuesday afternoon to approve a proposal from Supervisor Betty Duong that would expand the Valley Homeless Healthcare Program to provide health services at San Jose-funded shelters, interim housing and safe parking sites. The initiative, which is expected to come back with an update to the board in January, also pledges to integrate the city’s shelter system into the county’s process for getting people into permanent supportive housing and continue the expansion of behavioral health beds.
“Homelessness is one of the most pressing issues in our community, particularly in San Jose, which has over 60% of the unhoused population of the county,” Duong said.
The proposal has received the endorsement of San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who earlier this year called on the county to “step up their efforts” as the South Bay’s provider of health and human services.
The mayor, who has built much of his platform on the principle of going “back to the basics,” has been vocal about the region’s need to move the needle on homelessness, which includes ensuring unhoused people have access to mental health or substance use treatment as part of their road to rehousing.
During a press conference last week at the Guadalupe Interim Housing Community, Mahan called the proposal a “great step in the right direction.”
But at Tuesday’s board meeting, Supervisors Susan Ellenberg and Sylvia Arenas raised concerns about San Jose’s approach to ending homelessness that has fixated on cracking down on encampments and erecting shelters instead of building more housing.
Arenas, who previously represented parts of East San Jose and Evergreen on the San Jose City Council, said she was “somewhat disappointed with the path that the city has taken.”
“This is not necessarily aligned with ‘housing first’ – the strategy that most advocates utilize as an evidence-based model,” Arenas said. “My concern is that we are going to be misaligned in terms of our strategy.”
Ellenberg, whose District 4 encompasses much of West San Jose, said integrating the city’s shelters into the county’s process for housing placement will “allow for greater efficiencies, less duplication of efforts and hopefully more successful stories of people exiting homelessness and achieving long term stability.”
The supervisor, though, said that just focusing on interim solutions is a “temporary stopgap for homelessness.”
“I think is San Jose and all of our cities want to see a real and sustained reduction in people experiencing homelessness, particularly those who are entirely unsheltered,” Ellenberg said. “There’s no path other than housing that will achieve that goal.”
In a statement, Mahan said “there are so many ways someone can fall into homelessness — we need just as many ways to help out of it.”
“That’s why we invest across the spectrum of solutions — from prevention, to interim housing, to permanent affordable housing,” the mayor said. “In fact, we’re proud to have invested in over 1,700 units of affordable housing over the past three years and it’s worth noting that San Jose continues to be the only city in the county that allocates millions of dollars per year to homelessness prevention assistance.”
The new partnership has gotten the attention of other cities in the county that are also grappling with increased rates of homelessness, according to Duong.
“I’ve heard from other cities wanting to have a similar model implemented in their jurisdiction,” she said. “I appreciate that and applaud that initiative. Today, my referral is asking for us to start with where the problem exists at its greatest form.”
In a Tuesday morning email to county officials, Mountain View City Manager Kimbra McCarthy noted that the city has been a “leader in the affordable housing space” and a “leader in implementing programs to support residents experiencing homelessness.” Still, the city saw a 56% increase in homelessness from 2023 to 2025, according to the results of the biannual “point-in-time” count.
“The City of Mountain View respectfully asks that we receive similar treatment and the same level of accelerated service and implementation for the numerous efforts underway in Mountain View regarding housing and homelessness,” McCarthy wrote.
Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga, a former Mountain View mayor who represents the city on the board, echoed the city manager’s concerns.
“The way this was written seems like there was a preference,” she said. “I think that’s the issue.”
But County Executive James Williams said they are planning on expanding some of the initiatives, like the Valley Homeless Healthcare Program, to other cities. Other parts of the proposal, like the expansion of behavioral health care beds, he noted, can be accessed by anyone in the county.
“The approach that we’re trying to take here really is to bring these San Jose facilities into alignment with the partnership that we candidly already have with the non-San Jose cities that have made investments in this space around the county,” Williams said. “Mountain View has been a really good partner with the county in those efforts.”