200,000 pounds of trash removed from 1 San Jose park

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) — Hundreds of homeless people, including children, lived in San Jose’s Columbus Park this summer. The sprawling and unregulated encampment was an unsafe place for anyone to live, city leaders said.

City crews cleared the park over the past two weeks, marking San Jose’s largest encampment clean-up operation in over a decade.

“When work began, about 370 people occupied the park, including 11 children and over 50 seniors living in unsafe, unmanaged conditions. There were also 120 lived-in vehicles, the majority of which were inoperable,” the mayor’s office wrote.

Crews removed 200,000 pounds of trash and 78 vehicles from Columbus Park.

While some homeless people refused any housing services offered by outreach teams, 128 did accept and were moved into shelters, according to the mayor’s office.

Casa Linda Motel, Bristol Hotel, Fontaine Inn, Alura Motel and the Taylor Street “Safe Sleeping Site” are being used as shelter and housing options.

“Every day San Jose gets closer to ending the era of encampments,” said Mayor Matt Mahan. “We’re building safe, dignified shelter and requiring that people use it so that we can restore our public spaces to community use – our hope is that the rest of the state will do the same by building enough shelter and treatment beds for those on our streets and then requiring that everyone come indoors.”

Columbus Park stretches across 9.9 acres, and is bordered by Guadalupe Parkway and Coleman Avenue near downtown. The park offers playgrounds, sand volleyball courts, basketball courts, and picnic areas.

Santa Clara County is home to the Bay Area’s largest homeless population, with more than 10,000 people county-wide and 6,000 in San Jose.

On Tuesday, the city opened its first-ever “Safe Sleeping Site.” The sleeping site, named Taylor Street Navigation Hub, is located on East Taylor Street near Coyote Creek. It offers 50 tents, three meals daily, showers, laundry, trash pickup, and counselors. San Jose spent $2.5 million to build the sleeping site, and will spend another $2 million annually to keep it open.

City leaders said people can stay at Taylor Street Navigation Hub for one month before moving to interim housing. Mayor Mahan said his goal is to get half of San Jose’s homeless population off the streets by the end of 2025.