San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan will introduce a proposal Thursday making it a crime for people who are homeless to refuse an offer of shelter three times.
Mahan said his intention isn’t to send people to jail, but to force people who have been refusing shelter into drug court where they could be steered into receiving the health or addiction counseling services that they may need.
Not all people who live on the streets suffer from addiction or mental illness. Roughly one-third of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, and around two-thirds of these people have lifetime histories of drug or alcohol use disorders ,” according to the American Addiction Centers …