San Jose’s approach to addressing homelessness is creating a two-tiered system where location determines whether you get help or get arrested. People living in large, visible encampments like the Jungle and Columbus Park are receiving offers of temporary housing and outreach services, while those in smaller camps are being swept away with nowhere to go and no support in sight.

Mario Nogueras knows this disparity firsthand. The homeless resident living near The Plant shopping center in South San Jose was arrested during a police sweep in January without any prior warning. Officers handcuffed him and confiscated his belongings, including his insulin medication, without allowing him to retrieve them. Nogueras is diabetic and spent several days in jail without access to his medication because of this. When he was released, the number he was given to retrieve his belongings went unanswered. His phone was also lost in the sweep, making it impossible for shelter services to contact him when a bed became available.

What makes this worse is that on the official arrest paperwork, police marked that Nogueras had no medical conditions, despite his diabetes. When questioned about the discrepancy, a police spokesperson dismissed the concern, saying they wouldn’t typically document medical history unless relevant to the investigation. The department then ghosted follow-up questions from journalists.

Nogueras isn’t alone. His sister Jackie was also detained during the same sweep and described the experience as deeply traumatizing. Homeless advocate Shaunn Cartwright puts it bluntly: “It has just been a lot of havoc and unnecessary ticketing and alienating people from any possibility of housing. It’s made things much worse for people’s mental health”.

The problem runs deeper than individual encounters with police. A city audit revealed that people in designated “hot spots” regularly receive housing offers first, while those outside these areas are ignored. Meanwhile, the newly formed Neighborhood Quality of Life unit, armed with a budget of over $514,000 and a team of officers, is arresting homeless people without offering them shelter alternatives. This is Mayor Matt Mahan’s hardline approach in action, designed to cite and arrest homeless people who refuse shelter.

But here’s the catch: if people aren’t receiving offers of shelter in the first place, how can they refuse? The city’s Housing Department blames jurisdictional issues for why certain areas get overlooked. Sarah Fields, a spokesperson for San Jose Housing, claimed outreach workers aren’t sent near The Plant because it’s on Union Pacific Railroad property. That’s a convenient excuse that leaves people stranded.

San Jose currently has 6,503 homeless residents, with about 60 percent unsheltered. The city has added over 1,000 new shelter beds recently, yet their approach remains punitive rather than compassionate. Until the city commits to reaching every homeless person with genuine offers of help, not just those in visible encampments, sweeps and arrests will continue traumatizing vulnerable people while solving nothing.