Cupertino saw the highest jump in its homelessness count in Santa Clara County, more than doubling since 2023, according to the latest homelessness count by Santa Clara County.
Even so, city, county and community leaders are split on whether the jump represents a genuine trend of increasing homelessness, or merely the mark of in an imperfect count.
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Every two years, scores of volunteers go out for a “point-in-time” homeless count in cities across the county. The number is a snapshot of homelessness – by focusing on one night, it avoids double-counting, but misses how homelessness may fluctuate over the year. It offers some of the most consistent data available on homelessness, and in the most recent count, the county shifted how they conduct it to get more accurate results and speak to as many unhoused residents as possible.
Cupertino famously serves as a hub for the tech juggernaut Apple and ranks among the wealthiest cities in the county, with a median household income of $231,139 according to the 2023 data from the US Census. Even so, the city has a high cost of housing – over $3,600 for the median household – and has consistently been home to a small homeless population, which city leaders have attributed both to those who work and study in the city and those who come to the city from elsewhere.
Since 2009, Cupertino’s homelessness count has teetered back and forth, reaching a high of 159 in 2019. While the 2023 count saw a low of 48, the latest count saw that more than double to 101, marking the highest jump by percentage of any city in the county.
Even with the recent change in methods, Armstrong says the count lines up with the roughly 120 Cupertino residents who sought housing assessments – the first step to be placed in many shelters or supportive housing programs – in the last year. Armstrong argues that the jump likely reflects more of a gradual increase over time, due to common economic factors across the region, and notes that residents most often became homeless due to job and income losses.
The jump also comes in the wake of a slate of anti-RV ordinances in nearby cities, which may have pushed some to move to Cupertino, noted Cupertino Mayor Liang Chao. Last year, Fremont passed an RV parking ban that requires oversized vehicles to move 1,000 feet every 72 hours. San Jose has been boosting enforcement on RV encampments, and in 2022, Mountain View designated three miles of streets for oversized vehicles after being sued by the ACLU for their initial ban.
“When we have certain cities taking a harder line on oversize vehicles, but folks don’t have places to go … There’s no doubt that it is challenging,” said Armstrong. “We always come back to the need for a regional approach.”
Last month, Cupertino became the latest Bay Area city to impose strict restrictions on RVs parking on city streets, with both city councilmembers and residents referencing the bans elsewhere in their reasoning.
Chao maintains that the city has overall kept a “service-oriented approach” in collaboration with the county and local service providers and asserts that the county collects more tax dollars and bears more responsibility for homeless services. She held that rise and fall in the homeless count should be considered with caution, noting the unusually low number in 2023 and the change in methodology since the last count. “The (point-in-time) count provides only a single-day snapshot each year,” said Chao in an email. “Like any one-time data point, it’s subject to fluctuation and doesn’t always reflect broader trends.”
Those serving the unhoused in Cupertino, however, say the trends are clear. Sujatha Venkatraman, executive director of West Valley Community Services, which is the main provider of homeless services in Cupertino and nearby communities, said she and her employees have seen more people coming in for help across the board, from food assistance to quarters for laundry and bus passes.
Venkatraman said that the updated count helps highlight “pockets of poverty that are so hidden it almost becomes invisible” amid an otherwise wealthy region, and maintains that the work keeping people housed in Cupertino helps keep them from exacerbating existing issues in San Jose and Gilroy.
“I definitely believe it’s a regional issue, it’s a county issue, it’s a city’s issue,” said Venkatraman, arguing that despite changes from one year to the next, the solution ultimately lies in providing enough housing.
“We’ve done a lot of work around both prevention and rapid rehousing, but I’m not surprised the numbers are up from 2023 because it’s unaffordable. If we don’t build affordable housing, we are going to see more unhoused, unsheltered people in our cities.”
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