Crews clear encampment, relocate homeless living on Apple land

A homeless encampment on 55 acres of Apple's land is now being cleared, with an estimated 60 people relocated at the company's expense.

The growing homeless community that had been living on a tract of Apple's land is being cleared. Crews are removing debris, closing the site, and relocating people.

It comes after Apple announced it would contribute millions of dollars from its $2.5 billion California housing project. In partnership with non-profit organization HomeFirst, the planned clearing is intended to see homeless people relocated, or rehoused.

According to CBS News, flyers were posted at the site saying that closure would begin at 7 a.m. local time on September 2. People living in the encampment were offered three different options for interim housing, each of which would be paid for by Apple for the next nine months.

Residents could choose from a motel room, a bed in an emergency shelter, or what CBS News describes as a safe parking space. Alongside the costs of each option, Apple is also covering the cost of case management for 12 months.

Not all residents have accepted the offers, however. Robert Carlson, who was living in a collection of large vehicles that included an RV, has reportedly elected to move away on his own.

"It's all part of life, ain't it? Trials and tribulations, man," Carlson told CBS News. "Well, we were all a big family here. We were a big family. I miss everybody already."

One person who has accepted a motel room says that Apple and HomeFirst may mean that her story "might have a happy ending."

"They're gonna help me get teeth. Because I don't have any, you know?" she said. "It's easier to get a job when you have teeth."

HomeFirst's CEO, Andrea Urton, said that Apple had been "generous," and that the intervention of corporations like this is now necessary.

"The city and county are doing everything they feasibly can right now, and have been for the past two years," she said. "They're under-resourced and they're tired, just like we all are."

"So by having large companies step in and provide the resources that nonprofits need to be part of the solution, we can actually effectively end homelessness together," said Urton.

The homeless community on Apple's land on the corner of North First Street and Component Drive in North San Jose, had grown because of other clearing efforts. San Jose had undertaken what it described as an "enhanced cleanup" of neighboring areas.

As the encampment population varied from 35 to 70 people, residents lived in a mixture of mobile homes and wooden structures. A recent fire on the encampment reportedly destroyed an RV, and burnt five acres of vegetation.

A new 7-foot black metal fence is being constructed around part of the property. It is guarded by an unknown number of Apple's private security staff.

Apple says that it intends to build low-cost housing on the land.

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20 Comments

22july2013 3725 comments · 11 Years

About 3 years ago

That land is their home pod.

SoundJudgment 187 comments · 7 Years

Welcome to the new 'Suburbia.'

Kuyangkoh 838 comments · 7 Years

The richest nation with a large homeless citizens. The highest tax State with the highest homeless residents. WHY, HOW COME?

AppleZulu 2176 comments · 8 Years

Kuyangkoh said:

The richest nation with a large homeless citizens. The highest tax State with the highest homeless residents. WHY, HOW COME?

1) Minimum wage laws have not kept up with the minimum costs for people to house themselves. If a person working full time can't afford housing, they will either be homeless or be supported by public and private subsidy. The cheapest way to address that would be to require employers to pay a minimum wage tied to actual cost of living. Yes, that would make your hamburger more expensive, but paying the actual cost to make the hamburger so that the employee can be paid enough to pay their rent is far cheaper than paying an artificially low price for the hamburger plus paying taxes and charities to manage programs to help impoverished people obtain housing, and then pay more taxes and charitable donations to try to deal with people in crisis because they're homeless, can't afford housing and can't get a job because they're homeless. Ironically, a real minimum wage is the most conservative, least government interventionist way to simply put up a guardrail to make capitalism actually work, but conservatives are the ones who will fight it the hardest, thus necessitating less efficient, more government-oriented responses.

2) Insufficient public resourcing for healthcare, particularly behavioral healthcare. Everyone needs access to both physical and behavioral healthcare. Because most people value the lives of their loved ones and themselves at infinity, healthcare is one thing that does not and will not respond to supply-and-demand economics. Our patchwork system of private insurance and healthcare provision that pretends that it will respond to normal economics simply creates a system that is effective at siphoning off huge amounts of money (because the demand side always pushes toward infinity), but terrible at supplying the full panoply of healthcare to those who need it when they need it. Add to that the irrational stigma around needing and seeking mental health care, plus an opiate crisis generated by sociopathic opportunists, and you have a real problem with homelessness.

123Go 21 comments · 4 Years

When in California on holidays (vacation as Americans would say) I was shocked by the number of homeless and frankly grossly mentally unwell people on the streets. Taxes are very low in the US. Maybe a rethink is needed. It broke my heart to see a young man at San Jose train station who was tortured by his obviously untreated psychosis. Where were the outreach and homeless teams? People just accepted this mans suffering without blinking an eye