Matt Mahan

Even just in a city like San Jose, we were spending $100 million a year.

Our county had passed a billion-dollar bond.

And I try to be a data-driven guy.

It's important to have a governing philosophy and some core values.

But then on top of that, you've got to actually look at data and what works in practice.

And everything was going in the wrong direction.

We had this community plan to end homelessness in San Jose that didn't have any math behind it.

And as I did the back of the envelope math, what I found was what we were doing was never going to solve the problem.

We would have needed...

$6 billion in 20 years just to address the people on our streets at that moment.

And so we moved away from the slowest, most expensive solution, which was using public dollars to build brand new apartments for folks at $1 million a door, which is 30% higher than it costs the private marketplace to build new housing.

And over six years to build, and we pivoted to building basic dignified shelter.

We converted old motels, bought prefabricated modular units.

What they all have in common is we're giving people a safe, dignified place, a room with a door that locks, access to services, case management, onsite security, meals, the basic things people need.

to be stabilized and start to turn their lives around.

And what we have found in the last few years of scaling up safe and dignified shelter with services is that we've been able to move thousands of people in from these unmanaged tent encampments where people are just living in human misery and dying at very high rates.

We've reduced the number of people who are dying.

We've reduced the amount of health issues and we've given people a real shot.

In fact,

28% of the people we've brought indoors over the last few years have already graduated to permanent housing because they were able to take advantage of the services we were offering.