WINNER OF 2023 ASSOCIATED COLLEGIATE PRESS PACEMAKER AWARD, NEWSPAPER/NEWSMAGAZINE NAMED BEST CAMPUS NEWSPAPER IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2022 BY THE CALIFORNIA COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION AND CALIFORNIA NEWS PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Volume 163 No. 31 SERVING SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
Volunteers clean unhoused areas
By Saturn Williams STAFF WRITER
Multiple collaborating grassroots and government organizations teamed up with hundreds of volunteers to pick up trash at Columbus Park and Guadalupe Gardens in San José on Saturday. One of the volunteers was Mayor Matt Mahan, whose policy platform has centered on reducing homelessness in San José and to “end the era of encampments,” according to a statement on the Mayor’s office website. “We’re working together with about 200 members of our homeless community who are out here rolling up their sleeves, working to beautify a city park, connecting with supportive services and having a chance to feel a little bit of community and dignity,” Mahan said. “(It) means a lot to people who have had tough lives and often feel isolated and hopeless.” The mayor visited two adjacent cleanup events, one hosted by Neighborhood Hands at Guadalupe Gardens and one co-hosted by The Trash Punx at Columbus Park. Neighborhood Hands is a local nonprofit public benefit corporation which organizes a community cleanup and resource fair at Guadalupe Gardens every other Saturday, according to the Neighborhood Hands “Current Program” web page. The Trash Punx is a local volunteer environmentalist organization which hosts trash pickups, recycling events and free junk markets throughout San José, according to The Trash Punx website. Unhoused residents were awarded a stipend for volunteering to clean up the trash in the area as
well as manage the booths providing resources such as free food, clothes and transportation to the community at Guadalupe Gardens and Columbus Park. Laurie Stewart is the volunteer coordinator for Neighborhood Hands, which on average mobilizes almost 100 unhoused volunteers per cleanup, according to the corporation’s 2023 annual report. “The point is to connect neighbors with neighbors, housed neighbors with unhoused neighbors and provide people with some meaningful interactions through cleaning the park (and) cleaning our community,” Stewart said. Maria Jaime has been unhoused at Columbus Park for eight months. Being able to volunteer for Neighborhood Hands has been an ideal scenario for her in improving her living situation. “I've seen a lot of people on drugs, people in prostitution and they're abandoned,” Jaime said. “They need help, they need resources, they need a little push for getting out of that world.” After the cleanup at Guadalupe Gardens ended, multiple unhoused community members lined up to speak with Mahan directly about their personal experiences and issues. “I really appreciated the opportunity to just have conversations, one on one, with individual homeless neighbors of ours… and hear their feedback about the effectiveness of current programs that the city, county and state offer,” Mahan said. In previous encampment abatements, makeshift dwellings and vehicles that park residents lived in were towed or destroyed by city officials, according to a Sept. 5 San José Spotlight article.
ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY
Volunteers at Trash Punx help pick up trash near one encampment spot at Columbus Park on Saturday.
Batman of San José, a local unhoused community advocate who does his work under the superhero alias, witnessed many of these sweeps and how it sets community members back to square one in acquiring a safer living environment. “They will tear up tents, belongings, (it) doesn't matter what it is, it will go in a dumpster and then they will move on,” Batman said. When individuals have their only shelter taken away during these sweeps, there often aren't enough alternatives available in the city for them to turn to, according to the previous San José Spotlight article. Stewart said she believes in a housing-first approach when addressing encampments, and believes that the city’s repeated encampment sweeps have been ineffective in curbing homelessness. “I think that if they want to genuinely work with people in these encampments, they need to start by
actually communicating to people without the guarantee of taking all their belongings in a couple of weeks,” Batman said. Volunteers picking up trash at Columbus Park were instructed by organizers to ask unhoused residents what to throw away when picking up near any dwellings. The community cleanup there was co-hosted by multiple organizations, including the mayor’s office. Emily Lansing is the community events director for the Office of Mayor Matt Mahan and organizes beautifying events in the city every Saturday. “If you actually go there, you'll see that we're working hand in hand with the unhoused members who are living here,” Lansing said. “We're working hand in hand with them, and we're not throwing away anything that could be someone's belongings.” Lansing also said the environmental and community health were motivating factors for
hosting the beautification event at Columbus Park. Vanessa Rogier is the conservation manager for The Trash Punx and has been involved with environmental conservation in the Bay Area for 25 years. “We have people coming out from all walks of life, from all different areas that want to be part of this, that want to clean up the environment,” Rogier said. “To help the folks here too, that are living on the waterways as well.” Batman said he is doubtful mayor Mahan will cooperate with the community in a productive way. “There's all of this discussion of, ‘Let's get community members involved, let’s work with people,’ and then (in) the same breath, choosing not to do that and instead just go around and sweep people,” Batman said. Follow Saturn on Instagram @saturn.sjsu
City Hall talks traffic safety, permits By Anfisa Pitchkhadze
The meeting also discussed coordinating efforts between city departments and PG&E to support electrification and San José hosted a meeting electric vehicle infrastructure at City Hall on Monday projects in downtown areas. with city councilmembers Peter Ortiz, a and the committee staff to councilmember and a District discuss transportation and 5 representative, emphasized environmental ideas to help on the Regional Wastewater the city of San José and the Facility clean water act Bay Area. permits and nutrient permits. The members discussed “The new nutrient finalizing the 2025 Vision regulations for the regional Zero Action Plan that ties wastewater facility require a into solutions to improve the $200 million upgrade to meet city of San José such as traffic nitrogen reduction targets, safety improvements. with potential additional David Cohen, San José costs of $11 billion for all District 4 councilmember, treatment plants,” Ortiz went over the objectives of said. “It's the largest tertiary the plan that will help bring wastewater treatment facility the message of safety to the in the West, and there are community. certainly larger facilities in Southern California, but they do not treat their most large in the same high standards for cheese,” Ortiz said. Ortiz said the facility serves approximately 1.5 million people and over 17,000 businesses spread across the cities and undergraduate portions of Santa Clara County. These permits are reissued and updated every five years to reflect changes in ANFISA PITCHKHADZE | SPARTAN DAILY operations and changes in Councilmembers at City Hall discuss the 2025-2029 Vision Zero Action Plan on Monday. regulatory requirements. STAFF WRITER
“The number of traffic fatalities peaked in 2022 at 65,” Cohen said. “Last year in 2023, there was a 25% reduction to 49 – that drop occurred across all modes of road users.” Cohen also included plans about the Walk Safe San José pedestrian safety plan, which focuses on making improvements for vulnerable road visitors. “Our data work includes newer areas like boost project evaluations to understand how newly redesigned streets perform and reducing injuries, improving and updating public facing data dashboards,” Cohen said. Cohen said road users include people experiencing
homelessness and older adults, as well as pedestrians and cyclists who are overrepresented in the traffic fatalities. “There are also new initiatives like daylighting, which was recently passed by the State Assembly, and means removing parking spots near crosswalks in order to increase vehicle visibility of people crossing or waiting to cross the street,” he said. Key projects include quickbuild street redesigns, $100 million in grant funding and the implementation of speed cameras. The plan is set to be finalized and presented to the City Council in February 2025.
Councilmember Dev Davis, a councilmember for District 6, said it is important to maintain stable regulatory targets and proactive engagement. “For perspective, compared to other large urban OS estuaries, the nitrogen levels in the Bay are in the top 98 percentile,” David said. “It's worth noting that many of these other estuaries have nitrogen and energy requirements imposed upon them.” Davis said the San Francisco Bay Area has not had these same requirements until very recently. She also said the Bay has been intensively studied for decades, including tracking nutrient levels and environmental responses to nutrients. Davis said there are environmental benefits of an advanced treatment process that can impact water quality. She also said clean water has an important role in sustaining local ecosystems. “Freshwater inputs certain ecosystem functions in the lower South Bay that's critical to healthy estuaries, and they support environment communities of fish, birds, seals and beneficial algae that
reside there,” Davis said. Councilmembers had discussions on the health and environmental impact of gas leaf blowers. Kayla Boardman, a public information representative from San José Clean Energy, went over steps on how to improve conditions. Boardman said the last criteria to implement a program like a trading voucher is to address upfront cost barriers and guarantee that the electric blowers are used in San José . She said she believes that the education and engagement campaign would be necessary to teach landscapers about the economic and health benefits and to get them comfortable with trading in their gas blowers. “It could enable homeowners to experience the benefits of electricity and potentially expand benefits to their landscapers so it is listed so as to lessen the burden on small businesses to buy the equipment,” Boardman said.
Follow Anfisa on Instagram @anfisap19