From NIMBY to YIMBY: San Jose forges difficult path to winning over neighbors in sheltering homeless

"Now, eight years later, the neighborhood is so pleased with an alternative project that just opened last month, on Cherry Avenue across the Guadalupe River, residents here raised money for welcome baskets and wrote kindly notes with each one. Many of them even gave up their weekend to set up bedrooms with sheets, laundry supplies and shower caddies. The modular building has 130 beds with individual rooms, 24-hour security, and job and health services for the residents."

""We've been part of the complaining group for a long time about getting these people out of here - they're polluting the creek, they're building fires," said Kahn, whose home in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood backs up to the river where homeless encampments flourished. "So I don't want to always be the complainer. I want to be part of the solution.""

"In February 2019, a few blocks from Kahn's house, Bambi Larsen was stabbed to death in her home, and a homeless man was arrested at an encampment three miles away, charged with murdering her. His case is in limbo after he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial, but it terrified neighbors whose properties backed up to tent encampments and were already dealing with out-of-control campfires and break-ins. They felt desperate for a solution. It wouldn't come for another six years."

In 2017 San Jose proposed tiny homes for homeless people in a park inside Marsey Kahn's South San Jose neighborhood; neighbors opposed and halted the plan. Eight years later a modular housing project opened on Cherry Avenue across the Guadalupe River with 130 individual rooms, 24-hour security, and job and health services. Neighbors raised money, prepared welcome baskets, and helped set up bedrooms with sheets and supplies. Longstanding problems with tent encampments, campfires, break-ins, and a 2019 murder increased urgency for housing solutions. Government action, neighbor goodwill, and trust enabled the neighborhood to move from opposition to support.

Read at The Mercury News