Congressman Sam Liccardo announced on Feb. 20 that he secured $200,000 for West Valley Community Services to help create a roaming van to provide services for unhoused residents.
Liccardo represents California’s 16th Congressional District, spanning coastal cities like Half Moon Bay and Pacifica down to Mountain View, Los Gatos, and parts of San Jose. He announced that he secured $14 million in federal funding for community projects that address housing in this set of appropriations bills. He also said that two of his bills, the BUILD Housing Act and the Unlocking Housing Supply Through Streamlined and Modernized Reviews Act, passed the House of Representatives. Both bills are part of a larger legislative package to help accelerate the development of affordable housing. Liccardo added that he hoped to announce the passage of more bipartisan bills soon.
“You probably noticed the federal government has not been tremendously helpful in the last few months,” Liccardo told fellow politicians and others assembled in Mountain View for the announcement. “Nonetheless, I’ve been working every day amid the dysfunction of Washington D.C., waking up, thinking about how we can do more to tackle this housing crisis we have at home and throughout metropolitan regions in the country.”
West Valley Community Services is a nonprofit agency that serves low-income and unhoused people in Cupertino, Saratoga, West San Jose, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and the communities in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It received community project funding for housing from the federal government. Executive director Sujatha Venkatraman spearheaded the idea of the West Valley Mobile Navigation Center van.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Venkatraman noticed that there was no drop-in or navigation center for unhoused clients in West Valley cities. She noticed clients trying to take showers in public bathrooms and using the hand dryer to dry their hair.
“I went back to the West Valley cities, had a coalition meeting with all of them,” Venkatraman said, adding that Los Gatos reported only 25 to 30 unhoused residents. “Los Gatos, because (the unhoused population is) small and it’s all transient, they move around,” Venkatraman said. “But what we started finding was, yes, there is a need.”
Although the nonprofit considered setting up a brick-and-mortar location, the process kept getting delayed. Since the agency already offers free food via their Park-It Market, they figured they should make another mobile operation.
They pitched the idea to Liccardo of a custom-designed van that would be ADA compliant and provide showers, laundry machines, phone charging stations, case management services and food. Creating the van would cost $400,000, with an additional $200,000 in operating costs once it’s complete. To raise the rest of the money, Venkatraman said she hopes to get donors from all the West Valley cities the nonprofit serves to match the federal grant and is considering having clients drive the van around.
“My hope is we get the unhoused to use this as an internship or job opportunity leverage,” Venkatraman said.
Venkatraman said she hopes to be able to establish other vans that would provide other services, like medical and dental care, creating something like a car park for unhoused residents to get their basic needs met.
“What heartens me most about our community is that we don’t look away from these challenges,” said Los Gatos Mayor Rob Moore. “When someone is struggling, we show up. Because we know a stable home isn’t just shelter; it’s the foundation for everything that follows.”
Liccardo announced three other projects that also got federal funding. The city of Mountain View received $2 million for an affordable housing project on Evelyn Avenue that would provide 147 units to low-income households. Pacifica School District received $2 million for a workforce housing project that would house educators and reduce long commutes. The city of San Jose received $2 million for its Seismic and Climate Resiliency Rental Unit Preservation Financing Program, which will be used for seismic retrofitting to preserve housing for low-income people.
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