Santa Clara County and San Jose leaders are turning a page in their fraught relationship — vowing to bring more county behavioral health workers into city-run shelters and close gaps in placing the city’s homeless residents into housing.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve a new partnership announced Friday by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and District 2 Supervisor Betty Duong. The plan calls for directing workers at the county Valley Homeless Healthcare Program to visit San Jose homeless shelters and provide mental health care services starting later this year.
The plan also merges the county and city’s shelter and treatment referral process under one system. At the moment, the city and the county have separate intake and referral systems, and homeless people in city-run shelters aren’t in the county’s coordinated system of steering people into housing programs. The proposal commits to directing people in San Jose shelters into as many as 15 permanent supportive housing apartments per month…