Santa Clara County is rolling out county-run mental health and medical teams to two San José tiny-home villages in a pilot that puts care directly where people sleep. At the Rue Ferrari and Bernal sites, officials say the effort has already connected or referred about 40 residents to services, with plans to bring the model to other tiny-home locations later this year as the city and county scramble to staff and fund a rapidly growing shelter system.
The pilot stations community health workers and medical staff on site so they can refer residents to behavioral health services and coach shelter staff on how to connect people to care, according to San José Spotlight. Workers at the villages are concentrating on linking residents to ongoing treatment and stabilization services that can support a move into permanent housing instead of a return to the street.
County leaders are pitching the pilot as one piece of a broader homelessness strategy. County Executive James Williams told reporters the county plans to spend nearly $470 million on homeless solutions in the current fiscal year and said the county invests about $45 million annually to operate 20 shelter and safe-parking sites that together provide more than 2,000 beds or parking spaces, as reported by SFGATE. The county is also set to take on the operating costs for two additional shelters that are being transferred from the city this year.
Why the Timing Matters
San José has quickly opened a string of tiny-home villages, converted motels and safe-parking sites over the last year, adding more than 1,300 beds and pushing interim housing capacity close to 2,000 placements. That rapid buildout, illustrated by recent projects such as the Cerone Interim Housing Community, makes it feasible to post treatment teams on site because residents are clustered at permanent interim locations, KQED reports…