Fremont City Council Meeting Tonight

Tonight, the Fremont City Council will meet to decide the fate of the Homeless Navigation Center that has sown so much discord in Fremont these past few months. I encourage everyone, regardless of your view on the subject, attend the city council meeting tonight. Stand up and let your voice be heard.

The location for the Navigation Center is now down to two choices, the parking lot at city hall and next to Regan Nursery on Decoto. Neither site is ideal, although based solely on the criteria set forth by the city to select a site, city hall would be the superior selection.

The city hall site offers easy access to government services, transportation, medical providers, affordable food options, job opportunities, and everything else those people this center is meant to help are in need of. At the Decoto site, all of these are available on either an extremely limited basis or not at all. When looked at objectively, the choice is clear.

Since it was first proposed, hundreds of citizens from the Decoto area have turned out to tell the city council, in no uncertain terms, that they want the navigation center at the city hall site. They came out to city council meetings. They came to the three workshops the city held to discuss the issue. They have gathered in groups, large and small, in people’s homes and businesses and wherever they could to organize and figure out how let the city council know why the Decoto site is the wrong choice. The people, those the city council are supposed to represent, have spoken.

In contrast, the city hall site is opposed by residents local to that area, by the Chamber of Commerce, and by the developers who have been working with the city to revitalize the downtown area. Those developers have invested heavily in Fremont and do not want to see that investment threatened by the presence of a navigation center. They have been working with the city to rebuild downtown, and never once were told that placing a homeless center there was a possibility. The downtown residents and developer groups seem to have fractured and are either supporting the Decoto site or are arguing not to build the navigation center at all.

Lost in all this is the voice of the homeless themselves, they very people this center is intended to help. Yet we do not have to guess at what they would want. The City of Fremont participated in a survey of the homeless population of Alameda County. It is published as the Alameda County Homeless Count & Survey Comprehensive Report 2019 and, as of this writing, is available on the city website under the Homelessness in Fremont section.

In this survey, homeless individuals were directly asked what kind of support might have prevented them from becoming homeless. The top response was rental assistance. They were also asked how they thought any new money should be spent to end homelessness. The top responses were to provide affordable rental housing and permanent help with rental/subsidy.

According to the most recent fiscal impact statement from the city, building the Housing Navigation Center will cost $7.7 million over the next three fiscal years. $7.7 million, for a center that citizens don’t want in their neighborhoods, that developers don’t want near city hall, and the homeless don’t seem to want at all.

If the council chooses to move forward with the plan for a Navigation Center, then by their own estimates it will not be ready until summer of next year. Perhaps the money would be better spent on the services that the homeless are asking for, such rental assistance and housing subsidies. That way the money could have an impact today, getting people inside before winter.

But that would require the city council admit that the navigation center was a mistake. That would require that they have the courage and integrity to admit that they were wrong.

I try to teach my children that it is okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn. The important thing is to take a lesson from our mistakes and not make them again. Tonight, let us all come together and see if the City Council has learned anything from their mistake.