Matt Mahan

What I will say though, is we've largely figured that out, not perfectly.

We have our challenges, but we have moved thousands of people indoors.

The vast majority, over two thirds of those folks remain indoors even years later.

In the neighborhoods where we've built these sites, we've been able to demonstrate that calls for service to 911 and 311, so crime and basically blight issues, have dropped, which makes sense.

We're moving people from unmanaged encampments with no rules into a site with security, case management, meals, some structure, and some privacy, and it changes everything.

their, you know, it changes the game.

It changes their entire possibility of actually escaping this miserable condition.

Sam, I think there is that phenomenon.

I do think that we sometimes have misaligned incentives, but I really blame political leaders, politicians for that more than the nonprofits themselves.

Similar to how I feel about highly effective unions who advocate really well for the interests of their members.

And I blame not the union, but the politicians who sometimes cave and agree to things that

make promises they can't keep, and then the public suffers.

And so when it comes to the so-called nonprofit industrial complex, I've read a lot about the critiques of this.

It's really incumbent upon us as elected officials to create the right incentives.

And I've been a strong advocate in requiring that everything we do in San Jose be outcome-focused.

We've rebid contracts.

We've changed nonprofit providers at different sites.

We are increasingly bringing a performance mindset to everything we do so that we understand the value of a dollar that we spend.

For example, we were paying for an unnecessarily large army of outreach workers when we didn't have much of anything to offer people who were homeless.

We'd have over