Revitalization of Columbus Park will lead to abatement of San Jose’s largest encampment

With Columbus Park partly resembling the third world and scenes from an apocalyptic movie, San Jose leaders have called for the city’s largest homeless encampment to be disbanded as it pushes forward with plans to reclaim the space and build new sports amenities.

Despite intentions to revitalize Columbus Park stretching back several years, homeless encampments and RVs — many of which are inoperable — have overtaken the recreational area, including the fields that once hosted baseball games.

But on Tuesday, the City Council unanimously approved a new plan to fill the park with soccer fields, horseshoe pits, pickleball, futsal and basketball courts up and running by the third quarter of 2027.

“This is supposed to be a public park — a shared space for families, kids and seniors — but you wouldn’t know it by looking at it today,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said. “Years ago, Columbus Park was a hub for youth sports, a rare source of outdoor recreation and a historically underserved area. Restoring it is about equity, ensuring that working families in this part of the city have access to the same quality of public space as anywhere else today.”

The San Jose City Council has targeted the park’s revitalization since 2019 when it approved making it the last project funded by Measure P – the $228 million parks infrastructure measure passed by voters in 2000. To date, the city has completed 89 of the 90 projects planned and will make a $19.5 million investment in Columbus Park.

Before Tuesday’s approval, the city attributed project delays to the site’s complexity, lack of staffing, agency coordination and the homelessness crisis.

A few years ago, the city went through the abatement process as it looked to move forward with park improvements but failed to adequately secure the site, leading to unhoused residents moving back in. Underscoring the rapid deterioration of the site and safety concerns, Mahan said the encampment has generated 400 priority one 911 calls over the past three years, including 30 in the first quarter of 2025, leading him and several unhoused residents living there to believe that Columbus Park was not safe for them or the surrounding community.

“My mother was involved in community development in Africa, and in fact, those were better conditions than here because over there, people cook communally, they work together to try to make things better, collect firewood and housing if you want,” said Richard Lynch, an unhoused resident who has made Columbus Park his home for the past year. “Here, you can’t do anything and the drugs make people insane and violent, and so it’s really a very difficult situation.”

Parks and recreation enthusiasts also championed the decision as more than an investment in a public project, but also a first step to realizing the vision for a grander park.

“Columbus Park was a place where neighbors gathered, kids played sports and school sports teams practiced together,” Guadalupe River Park Conservancy Board President Elizabeth Loretto said. “This project will help us bring back that spirit. We’re not just building a park. We’re bringing back memories and making space for new ones.”

But while the city has targeted construction to start in early 2026, questions remain about what will happen to the hundreds of unhoused residents that the city will force out.

Homeless advocate Gail Osmer lambasted the City Council for allowing the conditions to deteriorate and for what she believed was a lack of a plan for the residents currently living there.

“What human rights do people have now in Columbus?” Osmer said. “It’s a third-world country, and the city has allowed that.”

Mahan said the city intends to offer outreach similar to the way it did when it rolled out its oversized and lived-in vehicle enforcement program, where it will post notifications weeks in advance and offer to connect people living there with services.

In noting that San Jose could add 1,400 interim housing placements over the coming year when factoring in hotel and motel conversions with the tiny homes, safe sleeping and safe parking sites, Mahan acknowledged there could be some spillover into neighborhoods when the city begins the abatement process later his year.

After multiple councilmembers expressed concerns about moving hundreds of people without an adequate plan, Mahan pushed back on the city halting its own progress.

“We do abatements every single day in the city, without a place for people to go, and if we hold ourselves to a standard of saying we have to have a shelter bed much less or even more, a permanent housing placement for folks before we can abate a public park, we are deciding that we will leave encampments in public parks,” he said.

For unhoused residents like Lynch, he still holds out hope that he will be able to find some other form of housing, but given his recent experience, skepticism is starting to mount.

“I’m hoping to figure out some type of affordable housing before they do that, but I’m not really confident,” Lynch said. “I’ve applied to every housing organization and homeless rehabilitation type of thing and gotten nothing.”