San José Council Advances Plan to Spread Homeless Shelters Citywide

San José leaders are considering a plan to spread future shelters for people experiencing homelessness across the city, in response to complaints from some residents about the concentration of interim housing in Downtown and South San José.

The proposal, unanimously approved Wednesday by the city council’s Rules and Open Government Committee, directs San José’s city manager to craft a policy to “decrease clustering” of future Emergency Interim Housing developments, typically communities of tiny homes.

The call for geographic equity mirrors a similar push in San Francisco, which enacted a policy last year to limit new shelter construction in certain neighborhoods.

San José recently completed a rapid expansion of temporary shelter, opening nearly 2,200 shelter spots across nearly two dozen tiny home villages, converted motels and RV parking lots. But even after the ambitious buildout, many neighborhoods — including upscale West San José and Evergreen — have no shelter.

According to a staff memo, while previous city councils have approved policies referencing “equitable distribution” of shelters, the idea has never been codified into law.

Issa Ajlouny, who leads a neighborhood advisory committee for an interim housing site in South San José, said he pushed the council to consider a siting policy after reading a KQED story on the topic. Ajlouny and other supporters argue it is unfair that some neighborhoods aren’t part of a solution to a citywide problem.

“It’s just common sense,” Ajlouny said in an interview. “It keeps the integrity of what the city of San José officials have stated they were going to do, and it’s just the fair thing to do.”

It remains to be seen whether the San José policy will require shelter in new neighborhoods — or simply restrict additional temporary housing near existing sites.

While the expansion of shelter into new parts of the city could garner neighborhood opposition, homeless advocates fear geographic equity plans implicitly promote the idea that shelters are a “burden” on local communities. Mayors, including Daniel Lurie in San Francisco and Matt Mahan in San José, have warned that such ordinances slow the process of bringing people indoors.

In an interview last year, Mahan said a restriction on new shelter in South San José would have prevented the city from opening Via del Oro, a tiny home development on land donated by a private developer.

“If you create a straitjacket through policy, you start missing opportunities,” he said.

When Supervisor Bilal Mahmood first introduced San Francisco’s policy, it mandated a new temporary housing or behavioral health care facility in each supervisorial district by mid-2026. But after opposition from Lurie, the bill was amended to only restrict new shelters in neighborhoods where the number of existing beds exceeds the number of unhoused residents — and even that restriction can be paused by a board vote.

In San José, the opening of new shelters could be years away. A construction sprint that added 1,000 beds in 2025 finished last month.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Councilmember Domingo Candelas questioned whether a siting policy is worth staff time now.

“I also want to be realistic given the $56 million deficit that we are facing and the reality that the administration on numerous occasions has come back and said we are not in expansion mode at all whatsoever,” Candelas said at Wednesday’s meeting.

But Vice Mayor Pam Foley, who co-authored the proposal, argued it’s not too early for the city to think about its next phase of shelter construction.

Unsheltered homelessness in San José decreased by 10% between 2023 and 2025, but last year’s point-in-time count found nearly 4,000 people were still without shelter.

“We’ve already said as a council that we’re not moving forward with any more EIH [Emergency Interim Housing] at the time,” Foley said. “The idea is in the future, when we do make that decision, that we look at districts that do not have EIHs.”

Lori Katcher, a resident who spoke at the meeting on behalf of the civil rights group Standing Up for Racial Justice, said the policy could be especially valuable for people who fall into homelessness in neighborhoods without existing shelter.

“We know that homelessness can befall anyone in any part of our city, and to have safe places for folks to go wherever they are living, near to where they are living, is very important,” Katcher said.