‘Students were finding needles on their lunch tables’: California city council approves plan to ban homeless camps within 150 feet of schools 

A California city council is taking action to ban homeless encampments near schools after students and staff reported feeling unsafe.

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously to move forward with measures that would prevent homeless encampments or live-in vehicles being parked within 150 feet of a daycare, preschool or K-12 institution.

Previously drafted solutions included authorizing law enforcement to tow such vehicles and beefing up enforcement of the pre-existing Encampment Management Policy, which prohibits homeless encampments in school zones.

“[The students] spoke out because homeless neighbors were sleeping on school grounds and in school bathrooms,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in August. “They spoke out because they were finding needles on their lunch tables.

“We’ve got to give our students that peace of mind of even having a modest buffer around their learning environment.”

Kim Vo, principal of KIPP San Jose Collegiate High School, added that encampments aren’t just bothering students.

“Incidents of the unhoused making their way onto the campus [occur] during the school day,” Vo said. “And break-ins, captured on the school’s security cameras – these incidents have cost our schools tens of thousands of dollars.”

However, homeless advocates claim they’re being unjustly criminalized.  

“This is just more criminalization of homelessness,” said Shaunn Cartwright, founder of the Unhoused Response Group. “They act as if all unhoused people are criminals. Would you do that to any other minority group? You would not.” 

However, the city council approved the stricter laws, which many nearby municipalities already have out of similar safety concerns. 

“San Jose has taken on far more than our fair share of Santa Clara county’s oversized vehicles,” Mahan said, referencing homeless living in RVs. “If we are alone and not enforcing, we will be the one place in the country that has all the RVs.” 

California is currently home to 27% of the nation’s homeless. San Jose has roughly six unhoused people per thousand – a rate three times higher than the national average.  

Elsewhere, some school districts have been forced to house the homeless or provide shelter to immigrants, often to the detriment of students’ education, critics say.