PHOTO/SANDY PERRY
SAN JOSE, CA—Five homeless people died of hypothermia in Santa Clara County in the recent record low temperatures. Yet Sunnyvale’s armory shelter—in which homeless would not have frozen to death—is set to be destroyed after this winter. The very useful, fine-functioning 150-200-bed armory shelter is slated to be “replaced” by 117 “permanent” housing units.
There is nothing wrong with building permanent housing. However, what is very wrong is the destruction of a viable temporary shelter poor people need to SURVIVE.
I don’t know why this needs to be stated, but apparently it does: There is NO NECESSARY CONFLICT between erecting permanent housing and providing temporary shelter.
When Santa Clara County (SCC) housing honchos or “leaders” say, “We can’t provide temporary shelter because we believe in providing permanent shelter,” you should think of it as your city council saying to you, “We can’t possibly provide police protection AND collect the garbage.”
Is there anyone who seriously believes that internationally-renowned, change-the-world Silicon Valley could NOT manage to provide both temporary AND permanent shelter at the same time? Does anyone think that such shelter won’t be needed next winter? If five houseless folks died WITH the availability of an armory this winter, how many do you think will die WITHOUT that protection next winter?
Is some part of this too complex for Santa Clara County’s current homeless housing planners and officials to grasp? Are they awake? I certainly hope this is NOT part of some dark plan to drive us out of Santa Clara County!
From someone who’s been homeless in Santa Clara County for four years I have a message to anyone who cares about the survival of unhoused people—please do not continue to remove temporary shelter beds until and unless there are no homeless people who need them.
Some of us used to have some pretty swell jobs at high tech firms like some of you do now. None of it is permanent. New programming languages come along. So do younger workers. So do recessions. One car accident and it can all come undone—car, job, home, marriage, confidence, sanity—gone in sixty seconds.
So we’re homeless now. Someday someone you know will be homeless too—maybe even YOU will need the resources that are getting destroyed now!
Don’t we all still need somewhere to sleep? Do you really want to live in a society that throws away it’s infirm, elderly, mentally challenged, sick, and weak? Do the rich really need to save any more money on their taxes? Do the poor need to pay for more war?
Write/call the SCC Board of Supervisors. BoardOperations@cob.sccgov.org 408-299-5001
Tell them to SAVE THE ARMORY and stop using the empty promise of future permanent housing as a justification for removing existing needed temporary shelter.
Chuck Jagoda is a member of Stop the Ban, unsheltered folks, students, and other community residents who are resisting the City of Palo Alto’s draconian Vehicle Habitation Ordinance.
