Santa Clara County staff is officially taking a role in the search for a replacement facility for cold weather shelter services in the North County.
Supervisors Joe Simitian and Dave Cortese raised the issue at the April 15 county board of supervisors meeting, in light of the recent closure of the Sunnyvale cold weather shelter site. All five supervisors voted in favor of the decision.
The cold weather shelter once located at the National Guard Armory on Maude Avenue in Sunnyvale closed its doors permanently March 31. The site will be the new home of two separate affordable-housing projects proposed by MidPen Housing and Charities Housing.
The operators of the cold weather shelter, HomeFirst–formerly known as EHC LifeBuilders–reported the program provided 275 emergency shelter beds nightly over the winter months in 2014. There were 50 at HomeFirst’s Boccardo Reception Center in San Jose, 125 at the former National Guard Armory in Sunnyvale and 100 at the National Guard Armory in Gilroy.
“We relied on this shelter for emergency cold weather shelter for decades now, and it seemed very clear to me that when it closed we’re still going to need this kind of shelter,” Simitian said of the Sunnyvale site. “Even though we are trying to make progress on a larger basis, I was able to make the case with my colleagues, who were very supportive.”
Simitian praised the county’s “housing first” approach to end homelessness by seeking permanent housing for homeless individuals, but he added it should not be the only approach.
“On the one hand, we have taken a larger, longer view of the ongoing problem of homelessness with our housing first approach,” Simitian said during the April 15 meeting. “But until and unless we can really solve the problem of homelessness, we’re going to have folks every night who need some place to put their heads down, and right now I think that number is something like 7,000 people per night are out there homeless. So that loss of 136 spaces in the North County is no small event.”
It has not yet been determined whether a facility would be purchased outright or leased by the county, or if a facility may be gifted to the county to be used as a shelter for four months out of the year, but Simitian said county staff will return to the board of supervisors with preliminary findings at its April 29 meeting.
Sunnyvale Vice Mayor Jim Davis, who formed his own group of stakeholders called the North County Cold Weather Shelter Task Force, said he is pleased with the county supervisors’ decision and that the task force will continue pursuing a possible site on Commercial Street in Sunnyvale.
“The progress on this is going so much faster and better than I had anticipated, so I am really happy,” Davis said. “We’re going to work in conjunction with Supervisors Simitian and Cortese, who have dedicated at least one staff member to our task force on an ongoing basis.”
The next meeting for the task force will be April 30 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Sunnyvale Community Center, 550 E Remington Drive.
For more information about the task force, contact Jim Davis at 408.992.1863 or jdavis@sunnyvale.ca.gov.
