San Jose needs more time to complete its federally mandated closure of the region’s largest homeless encampment, officials acknowledged this week, highlighting the immense challenge of eliminating street homelessness while grappling with a limited housing supply.

The city had a June 30 deadline to remove an estimated 200 people camped on a 40-acre area near San Jose International Airport — or face the potential loss of millions of dollars in federal funding. On Tuesday, the City Council voted to push that deadline to Sept. 30, while also approving policies that dictate where unhoused people can and can’t camp all over the city.

The vote promises to extend a challenging chapter in San Jose’s fight against homelessness, as the city continues to pour an outsized amount of resources into housing people at the airport camp — while, some council members complain, neglecting camps in other areas of the city.

The city and nonprofit HomeFirst housed 71 people from the airport camp between September 2021 and February 2022, and have cleared large sections of the property. But 131 people remain in the camp.

“To us, that is great progress, particularly given the fact that there are very little housing options available for people,” said Ragan Henninger, deputy director of the city’s homelessness response. “But to others it’s not so fast. Especially for the people who are living outside and suffering every day. We are not moving fast enough.”

The encampment — bordered by West Hedding Street, Coleman Avenue and the Guadalupe River Park — is on land San Jose bought using federal funds to serve as a buffer between the airport and the community in case of a plane crash. The camp grew dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the city is removing between 15 and 20 tons of trash there each week.

Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered San Jose to close the camp or risk losing federal funding for its airport. After initially promising to clear the camp by June 30, the city on Tuesday voted to inform the FAA it needs more time.

Several activists and community members spoke out Tuesday against clearing the encampment, arguing it would disrupt and endanger the lives of the camp’s vulnerable residents.

“When people are swept, it makes my job harder to find them, and often I don’t find them,” said Jackie Newton, a primary care doctor who treats residents of the camp. “We are not only breaking up people’s homes, but we’re also breaking up their medical care and their health.”

The city and Santa Clara County are working together to place the remaining 131 camp residents in various types of housing. Officials have a plan for all but 27 of them, according to city housing staff. The effort will cost the city $1.5 million — some of which is expected to come from the Measure E property tax passed in 2020.

The city also is working on setting up safe parking sites for people living in RVs.

Council members also debated Tuesday whether to include Columbus Park in the abatement and housing plan. The park is next to the airport camp, but wasn’t included in the FAA mandate. Councilmember Dev Davis said local residents don’t realize the city has no plans to clear encampments from the park, and will be upset when they find out.

“We have a growing outcry from our residents to see something being done,” she said. “And if we are telling them we are going to clear this site and we actually pull the rug out from under them and don’t clear the entire site as expected, it looks bad for all of us. It looks like we’re ineffective.”

But other council members, and city staff, balked at the idea of adding more work to an already challenging mandate. As a compromise, the council agreed to consider tackling the park once the rest of the site is cleared.

Council members also approved an encampment management policy that prohibits encampments that are within 150 feet of a school, or are blocking sidewalks, streets or access to libraries, fire stations, hospitals and other infrastructure. Camps that pose a fire danger or have significant sanitation concerns also would be removed. Unhoused people are asked to keep their tent and belongings within a 12-foot-by-12-foot area, or their camp may be cleared.

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The city already has removed 72 encampments between October 2021 and January 2022 as it tested out this new management policy. Most of that effort focused on camps near schools.

The City Council on Tuesday also voted to designate the area around the Children’s Discovery Museum as a no-camping zone.

The very nature of “encampment management” means the city is acknowledging that because there isn’t enough housing for everyone, encampments will continue to exist. But the city is making strides to improve conditions at those camps, staff said Tuesday. By the end of the month, trash service at the roughly 200 camps the city serves will increase from every other week to every week, said Andrea Flores Shelton, deputy director of San Jose Parks, Recreation & Neighborhood Services.

“By the end of the summer,” she said, “you should see improvements in cleanliness throughout the city.”

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