Bay Area nonprofit wants to create permanent housing for homeless inspired by Texas community

By Max Darrow

In Santa Clara County, there is hope for a new community to help house the homeless, following a unique strategy currently being used in Texas.

For over a decade, Columbus Park in San Jose was taken over by a sprawling homeless encampment, home to hundreds of people who were kicked out earlier this year. Today, the park is getting ready for a major renovation.

For the people who once lived there, leaders are considering a brand new community where they can forge a new future.

Aside from a few remaining traces of life, the once bustling, enormous homeless encampment at Columbus Park is now quiet. 

That reality is admittedly, kind of odd, to Ray Solnik.

“It’s gone,” he said. “It has just disappeared, which feels weird.”

But necessary, he says, for a new reality to take shape.

The homeless advocate and CEO of Seeds of Hope Silicon Valley thinks it was the right move for the city to dismantle the encampment and begin an aggressive push to get unhoused people into temporary housing.

“I feel hopeful because this is a step in the right direction. It’s not safe for people to be living out on the street,” he told CBS News Bay Area. 

Solnik thinks the system in place right now has plenty to offer – interim housing, supportive services, shelters, case management, and more – but those are just steps, he says, and not major solutions.

“Whether parks or street corners – we see people living on the street,” he said. “It’s got to come to an end. We can do better.”

From Solnik’s standpoint, it is time to try an entirely new approach. That’s why he and a delegation of around 60 business, elected, and civic leaders from communities throughout the Bay Area spent a weekend in Texas, touring two unique approaches towards permanently getting people off the streets that appear to be breaking barriers.

The Bay Area Council and Beyond Homeless led the delegation. One of those solutions? A place called, “Community First.”

“It’s unlike anything that we have today,” Solnik said.

It’s a 53-acre, master-planned neighborhood in Austin, with permanent housing for people coming out of chronic homelessness.

The neighborhood is not designed to transition people back into society. It’s designed to create an entirely new community where people can stay and find purpose.

They can work there, access services there, and build new lives there. More than 420 formerly homeless people now call that community home.

“People of like-minded backgrounds who have been living out on the street can get to know each other and live together permanently, as opposed to through transitional housing or being moved around at different encampments,” Solnik said. “It is not re-transitioning people into society. It’s about giving these people a place to live where they feel comfortable, safe, they don’t have to move, where they’re among like-minded people, and facilitating community in a completely different and creative way that nobody has seen before.”

Solnik is working on bringing the model home. 

“We’re making progress,” he said.

State Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) was on the Texas tour.

“What’s happening in our city right now is that despite our efforts to build long-term housing, we have a lot of people on the streets, we have a lot of people in tents, and it’s been very difficult to bring those numbers down. So, we’re out here taking a look at some of the success here in Austin,” Cortese said. “We really don’t have facilities like this in our area. Looking around, there is a lot to be inspired by here. There are a lot of good things going on.”

Cortese likes the idea of a centralized, community-driven approach. He left Texas feeling optimistic the concept could work in the Bay Area.

“People are getting all the help they need right here in one place,” he said. “We can do this. We can do this from a financial standpoint, we can do this from a cost standpoint, and we can do this in terms of the expertise that we have.”

Mary Theroux, the Chairman and CEO of the Independent Institute, was also on the tour.

“The most important factor in developing solutions to homelessness is that you involve all of the members of your community: the non-profit sector, the business sector, emergency, healthcare, philanthropic, and so on,” Theroux said. “There’s a lot of optimism. I think people are really opening their minds to new ways of thinking about how we can help our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness.”

Some people living in, and working with, the Bay Area’s homeless community share that optimism. That includes Charlie, once homeless herself, who now works for The United Effort Organization on case management for unhoused people in Silicon Valley.

“If it’s centralized, then people feel like they belong to a community. They can help each other out. They can celebrate their successes,” she said. “Having a community set up like that – there’s a sense of having a home and some place that’s permanent – a sense of security.”

The sense of belonging and purpose, says Francis Shyanguya, is something many people living on the street are missing.

“You have to have a raison d’etre, a reason to live,” he said. “If you give them a reason for purpose, then most people wouldn’t be doing the stuff that they’re doing.”

Shyanguya became homeless in 2017.

“I had a home. I was in corporate America working well. I have four children,” he said. “I lost my job. I ran out of money. I started sleeping in my car in what is called a safe parking program in Seaside, CA. I got carjacked.”

Over the course of about east years, he has bounced around the Central Coast and Bay Area.

“Monterey; Salinas; Livermore, California; San Jose; East Palo Alto; Gilroy and then Mountain View,” Shyanguya said. 

While there is more he’d need to learn about the “Community First” concept, he thinks it sounds promising.

“Right now, I won’t go to any shelter. I’m not the druggie type – but I won’t go to the shelter, because they don’t treat you right,” Shyanguya said. “The bottom line is that, run it – they’ve got to have love and care.”

Solnik said Seeds of Hope Silicon Valley is making progress with bringing the concept back to the Bay Area. They’ve looked at over 100 parcels of land in the greater Santa Clara County area.

“Within that, we’ve identified about 10 that we believe are viable – whether it’s taking into account NIMBY, people who don’t want it in my backyard, homeless advocates who don’t want to push homeless people out into the corner of the city and create a slum, and environmentalists,” he said. “We have finally found a site that the City of San Jose agrees with us is a good candidate to do this. So, we are working with the City of San Jose to create a Community First replicator.”

Though there are more hoops to jump through, Solink is feeling encouraged. As for his why, his drive to make a difference?

 “I guess like I tell my kids, when we visit some place, let’s leave it in better condition than we found it,” he said. “That applies to life, too.”