A long line of families wrapped around the block at the Willow Creek Learning Center in Concord earlier this week, waiting patiently for their chance at an early Christmas.
They were there for a Mt. Diablo Unified holiday fair, one specifically geared toward the school district’s homeless and foster youth. Inside, volunteers gave out jackets, blankets, toys, and food. A Spanish-speaking Santa Claus took photos with the children. A group of barbers offered free haircuts.
But as heartwarming as the gift-giveaway was, the hundreds of families in line to pick out presents was further evidence of the homeless crisis in the Bay Area — something no one-time event can come close to resolving.
“That is really a crisis situation,” said Rosie Reid, who leads the district’s program for homeless and foster youth. “And at the end of the day, we’re a school district. We can give you a backpack, we can give you school supplies. But how can we help you if you don’t have a place to go tonight?”
School districts across the Bay Area are grappling with that question. From the 2019-20 school year to 2022-23, the number of homeless students across the five-county region jumped by 4,313 children — an increase of 28% throughout Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Mateo combined.
Of all counties, Santa Clara was hit the hardest, with the number of homeless students surging by 85% over the same time period. Of the 10 largest districts across the Bay Area, five saw an increase in their homeless student count, with San Jose’s East Side Union High School District experiencing the most dramatic rise across the region. While 2.7% of the district’s student population experienced homelessness in the 2019-20 academic year, 7.5% did so in 2022-23.
This holiday season, East Side Union said there will be nearly 900 unhoused high school students across the district, up from just 300 in 2020. By mid-December, Mt. Diablo Unified in Contra Costa County had already identified 591 unhoused students across the district — nearly 170 more than it had counted this time last year.
“For many folks, their incomes haven’t recovered since the pandemic — yet the pandemic-era safety net programs have all been spent,” said Mary Kate Johnson, the director of regional homelessness prevention at All Home, a Bay Area non-profit focused on housing. “Even as enrollment has declined, homeless numbers have gone up. That reflects people falling through the cracks.”
Over the past few years, evictions have soared as pandemic protections expired. Eviction moratoriums in Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties ended in 2021; those in Alameda and San Francisco counties expired this past summer. On top of that, California’s rental relief initiative, which disbursed $4.7 billion over 18 months, ended in March of 2022.
Johnson said that for many families, COVID-related support may have been enough to keep them afloat. But when such programs ended, families were once again at-risk of homelessness with any unexpected job loss, medical emergency, or other big expense they were forced to face.
“Now that we’re out of the darkest days of the pandemic, the resources just aren’t there anymore,” said Josh Selo, who heads up the Bill Wilson Center, a Santa Clara-based organization that supports young people ages 11 to 24. “And at the end of the day, it all comes down to access to affordable housing, which only has gotten worse as the years have gone by.”
Lack of affordable housing is a big reason that sets Santa Clara apart. In San Jose, there are just 3.5 vacant homes per person experiencing homelessness — compared to 13.4 homes in San Francisco, and 8.9 homes in New York, the city with the largest homeless population nationwide. That’s according to a 2023 study by United Way, which also found that San Jose is home to the highest population of unhoused youth aged 18 to 24 in the country. San Jose has nearly 50 more people per 100,000 experiencing homelessness in that age range than New York City.
Schools have also improved their practices for identifying homeless students, another reason behind the uptick. Marcus Walton, the director of communications for the Contra Costa County Office of Education, said the passage of new legislation last September expanded the housing questionnaire schools give to families every year, allowing districts to gather more information about their students’ living conditions.
For G. Antonio Larios — Mt. Diablo’s Spanish-speaking Santa — the reality of that data hits home. When Larios was a junior at Mt. Diablo’s Ygnacio Valley High, repeated fights with his mother left him homeless for a year. He slept under bridges and on the street, at his uncle’s house and on friends’ couches.
For a time, he dropped out of school — and he didn’t get back on track until a teacher let him stay at her house.
“It was really lonely,” said Larios, who graduated from Ygnacio Valley High School in 2022, and now works as a campus supervisor at the district. “I try to talk to kids now and tell them: You have options. There’s a lot of help out there. That’s something I didn’t know for a long time.”
Parents described Tuesday’s event, which was organized in just two and a half weeks, as a lifeline during the expensive holiday season. Marcella Urroz, who was there with her 7-year-old son Zachary, said they were able to get school supplies and toys they wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. Urroz, who is currently living in a shelter in Bay Point, said Zachary used the opportunity to pick out gifts for his grandparents.
“A lot of these kids probably have it worse than me — and I feel honored to get to do this,” Vazquez said. “This is going to be something I remember for a long time.”
Bay Area News Group data reporter Harriet Blair Rowan contributed to this report.