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In the wake of a statewide call to clear homeless encampments, East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio López on Wednesday proposed a plan to form a “regional partnership” with neighboring cities to share resources like shelters and permanent supportive housing.
“This agreement will establish a mutual aid partnership, whereby cities will each put a share of their own money in a collective fund,” he said at a Wednesday press conference in East Palo Alto’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park. “This will be done in order to leverage our resources collectively and minimize the migration of the unhoused from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”
In the plan, cities would pay a membership fee based on various factors like city budget and the size of their unhoused population, then those cities would have equal access to mutual aid funds. So far, López said he has reached out to leaders in Palo Alto, Redwood City, Menlo Park, Mountain View and Burlingame, among other cities, but no official partnerships have been made. Leaders from Menlo Park and Redwood City did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the plan.
“I firmly believe, as someone who grew up in this community, that there’s always resources available,” he said. “It’s simply a matter of tracking them down”
López’s plan comes on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order on July 25 that urged local governments to “address dangerous encampments” and help the people living in them.
Newsom’s action followed an early July U.S. Supreme Court ruling that lifted state restrictions on clearing encampments. On Aug. 8, Newsom said that if California cities don’t reduce homelessness now, he would reduce their state funding later.
Since then, Bay Area cities like San Francisco have taken action on Newsom’s request, which is not legally mandated, and begun clearing encampments.
López plans to begin with two formal warnings as part of an emergency ordinance on Sept. 3 to clear out encampments across East Palo Alto.
The process is similar to an approach taken by San Mateo’s Hopeful Horizon, an initiative passed on Jan. 23 that allows the program to issue someone a misdemeanor after declining shelter twice. But East Palo Alto will not issue citations to people who do not accept shelter, López said. Instead, the city plans to rely on local outreach services to further work with people who are homeless.
López emphasized that the city would not relocate people who are homeless outside of the region, like neighboring San Francisco, which is taking an “aggressive” approach to encampment sweeps, he said.
“To pass an encampment clearing ordinance would amount to effectively legislating the shuffling around of the unhoused,” López said at the press conference.
East Palo Alto aims to tackle the housing crisis in a compassionate and humane manner, he said, later calling San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s actions to clear homeless encampments “temporary.”
This year, the county reported approximately 84 people who are homeless living in East Palo Alto, which is significantly lower than previous years. The data comes from San Mateo County’s 2024 One Day Homeless count, which tallies the number of people experiencing homelessness – both those sheltered in temporary housing and unsheltered – on a single day.
López attributes that figure, which is down from 169 in 2022, to local services like a safe parking program that has allowed people to park their RVs for four years, he said.
While community members say that some families are still on shelter waiting lists, López said that local partnerships could help create larger “safety nets” for people experiencing homelessness, as well as long-term solutions.
Some of those safety measures could look like more comprehensive domestic violence outreach or rental aid programs.
“I also want to be clear that partnerships like these actually aren’t unprecedented,” he said, citing a 2006 partnership between Fairfield, Vacaville, Vallejo and other nearby cities, which formed the Community Action Partnership to distribute resources throughout the county. Lopez said the program has been lauded by the state for its collaborative effort to address homelessness.
In the coming weeks, López said he will continue pushing for the partnership with neighboring cities.
“It’s not for me, it’s not for the cities, it’s for the unhoused individuals who are stuck in circumstances that we have just tolerated as a society, as an inconvenient truth,” he said.
