The Santa Clara County coroner’s office confirmed four people died of hypothermia-related causes Thursday night as temperatures plunged below freezing.
Sources say that three of the people died of exposure in three separate homeless encampments while a fourth person died in a garage during the cold snap.
The coroner’s office declined further comment early Friday afternoon. The Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Services referred questions to a county spokesperson, who did not immediately return phone calls.
“I’m just angry,” said Jenny Niklaus, the CEO of EHC LifeBuilders, a provider of homeless services. “We have to solve this problem. Even with our cold-weather shelters open, there are still people out there. This is what happens when we allow homelessness to happen. People die.”
Temperatures throughout the greater San Jose area reached a low in the mid-20s in the overnight hours, according to the National Weather Service. The low at Mineta San Jose International Airport was 30 degrees, breaking the previous Dec. 6 record of 32 degrees in 1931.
More freezing weather is expected later this weekend.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Mike Wasserman, who has been an advocate of funding programs that help get chronically homeless into permanent housing, said the deaths are just the latest example of the seriousness of the problem.
“People are dying out there, and it’s just wrong,” Wasserman said. “I hope to god this never happens again. You have to understand that every single person in these encampments is somebody’s son or daughter, brother or sister, mother or father. And yet they’ve been just abandoned.”
EHC LifeBuilders opened up its county-funded Cold Weather Shelter Program last Monday night with 275 emergency beds at three sites in advance of the cold snap. After these deaths, an additional 200 to 300 temporary beds were being added. Also, the shelters will remain open for additional two hours in the morning.
Outreach workers from the agency as well as other local nonprofits InnVision Shelter Network, the Bill Wilson Center and Downtown Streets Team spent Friday combing the encampments, parks and streets as they handed out blankets and encouraged people to go to the shelters.
“We’ve got a cold weekend ahead of us and our goal is make sure nobody has to be outdoors,” Niklaus said. “But the fact is there are more people outside than we have beds. We’re doing what we can, and I don’t want to lose any more people. This is a crisis.”
San Jose/Santa Clara County has the fifth-largest homeless population in the country behind only New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego, according to a recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report.
Of the 7,631 homeless, who were counted in January as part of a nationwide census, 74 percent were listed as “unsheltered” — meaning they have no place suitable for human habitation to stay. It has been estimated that on any given night, there are 5,000 people outside in the county.
Evening temperatures in San Jose were expected to warm up Friday night and then drop back to around 30 degrees on Saturday night, according to the National Weather Service.
“The question we have to ask ourselves is how many people have to do die?” said Jennifer Loving, executive director of the nonprofit Destination: Home. “It’s cold outside and people can’t survive when it’s freezing. That’s just a fact. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”
The deaths are a sad reminder of just how dangerous it is to be homeless. On Dec. 19, EHC LifeBuilders will hold its annual memorial ceremony remembering those who have died on the streets over the past year. Niklaus believes the total will be more than 40 this year.
COMMENTS
NOTE FROM NORSE: Chuck Jagoda, whose letter is included below, is a Palo Alto activist struggling–as any of us in Santa Cruz struggled two decade ago to open up the Armory as emergency shelter in the winter–though it served (and serves now) only a fraction (100) of the homeless community here (1500-2000). In Santa Cruz, it’s also a costly psuedo-solution, run by the military which prohibits support animals, doesn’t allow users to come in later in the evening if they have jobs, doesn’t allow conjugal activity, can’t be driven to directly, and is essentially one big room filled with 50-100 people on cots–which can be difficult when some are ill and some are Vets with PTSD.
The Homeless (Lack of) Services Center has recently been misinterpreting MC 6.36.055, which requires dismissal of camping tickets if one is on the waiting list of two always-filled shelters or if the armory is filled. Instead, I was told last week that being on the waiting list does not give you automatic dismissal of the $156 citations–as it has before the Armory opened. Instead the Armory must have been full that night–which is often only the case on rainy or cold nights. Harsher policies being followed by the city attorney in the wake of homeless-ophobia by groups like Take Back Santa Cruz have prompted misdemeanor prosecutions if more than three tickets are left unpaid for–with a fine of up to $1000 and a jail term of up to 1 year. These are terrorist tactics, used to appease bigots, who feel that harsher policies will make Santa Cruz “less welcome” and “less enabling” to homeless people, who, they mistakenly believe, flock to Santa Cruz to use drugs, steal, and harass customers and merchants downtown.
From: cruiserterry@aol.com
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2013 22:42:33 -0500
Sent: Fri, Dec 6, 2013 6:37 pmSubject: Fwd: San Jose: Four people die of exposure overnight