Spartan Daily Vol. 160 No. 42

City council talks houselessness

By Alina Ta STAFF WRITER

San Jose’s City councilmembers discussed the city’s annual report on houselessness and their progress in aiding the unhoused community on Tuesday at City Hall.

Jacky Morales-Ferrand, director of San Jose’s Housing Department, said the report covers how the housing department spent $36 million on programs serving unhoused individuals.

“When I started the housing department 15 years ago, the housing department employed five people on the homeless response team and we had a little over a $2 million budget,” Morales-Ferrand said. “Today we have 12 members on the team and last fiscal year we managed over $43 million of funding.”

Kelly Hemphill, division manager for San Jose’s Homeless Response Team said houselessness is a national crisis that exists beyond San Jose because the nation lacks affordable permanent housing.

In San Jose, 77% of people experiencing houselessness were unsheltered, according to the 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Which means nearly 5,000 San Jose residents live outside on our streets in encampments in parks and vehicles,” Hemphill said.

She said when the housing department began working on

a five-year plan to decrease houselessness by 2025, for every one household that moved to permanent housing, two or three became houseless

“Unfortunately, people in San Jose are falling into homelessness faster than we can house them,” Hemphill said.

She said for the first time in 2022, for every household that moves to permanent housing only another 1.7 households become houseless for the first time.

“Housing solutions include temporary and permanent opportunities to serve individuals and families experiencing houselessness,” Hemphill said “This means the people housed either lived in San Jose prior to becoming houseless.”

She said many go to work and have their kids go to school or they spend most of their time in San Jose.

“People from all jurisdictions in the county were served, but

affordable housing for individuals experiencing houselessness.

San Jose currently has 2,193 beds available for the unhoused community, according to a memorandum provided by the city.

However, 10,028 people in Santa Clara County were reported to be unhoused, according to the same annual report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Angela Smith, sociology junior and a houseless advocate for Students Against Sweeps (SAS), said during an interview over the phone that she and other advocates from SAS are not seeing the same success out in the community.

Smith said Students Against Sweeps is a studentled campaign that aims to end houseless encampment sweeps in San Jose.

“I mean, that number looks really great and everything, but that’s just kind of not just not really what we’re seeing,” Smith said.

She said it appears a very small percentage of unhoused people are successfully making the move to permanent housing.

“[The] city run outreach is misleading because people are constantly lying on those surveys,” Smith said.

Hemphill said the city has now managed to decrease houselessness by increasing the number of housing placements yearly.

Solving Houselessness

Santa Clara Country has a five-year community plan to end houselessness from 2020 to 2025, according to its written community plan.

Hemphill said the city’s response aims to ensure houselessness is prevented when possible or to make it rare and brief instead of a reoccurring experience.

the vast majority were connected to San Jose,” Hemphill said.

She said there are many pathways to permanent housing.

“Some moved into housing with the assistance of a rapid rehousing program. Some received assistance in an interim shelter program and then moved to permanent housing, some reunited and moved back in with family,” Hemphill said. “All of them received assistance from supportive housing system.”

She also said the city is using funding from the state to buy underused hotels to eventually repurpose them into

“Positive temporary housing outcomes are strongly linked connections to permanent housing programs,” Hemphill said.

Hemphill said interim housing programs are designed to support people waiting for their housing unit to be built or are searching for a unit that have the highest rates of people moving into permanent housing.

“We must continue to increase the capacity of permanent housing programs if we want to increase positive outcomes for shelter participants,” Hemphill said.

She said some lie during surveys because many in the unhoused community are aware that lying about certain issues they are experiencing may increase their chances to receive housing.

“They know that lying about the amount of trauma they’ve experienced or lying about the lifestyle that they live will make them more likely to qualify for housing,” Smith said.

She said some unhoused individuals who currently have a job and can save money are close to being able to afford their own housing, but are considered less qualified to receive permanent housing because of government

ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY

Mayor Matt Mahan presents a ceremonial proclamation during a council meeting before discussing houselesness in the city of San Jose at City Hall on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, people in San Jose are falling into homelessness faster than we can house them.

Kelly Hemphill

San Jose’s Homeless Response Team division manager

SJSU community talks truck regulations

By Brandon Nicolas STAFF WRITER

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) approved regulations to ban the sale of diesel big-rig trucks statewide by 2036 at the end of April.

This is the latest program in the state’s mission to weed out fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.

CARB, founded in 1967, aims to aggressively address the serious issue of air pollution in the state, according to its webpage.

When the Federal Air Quality Act was enacted the same year, California’s government had the ability to set its own air quality rules because of the state’s weather and increasing number of people and vehicles.

“California is neat because we have CARB, and they are able to set emissions policy by themselves,” said economics assistant professor Paul Lombardi. “Whereas most states have to follow the federal guidelines.”

The proposal also included a unanimous vote that requires companies with more than 50 trucks in California to convert its fleets to zero-emission vehicles by 2042.

Costanza Rampini, an assistant professor of environmental studies, said the enactment of these laws and regulations against mobile sources of air pollution and greenhouse gasses are in line with California’s policies.

“We’ve always been ahead of other states, we’ve always been ahead of the EPA themselves,” Rampini said.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970.

She said many states and countries have often looked at California as a reference when it comes to regulating different industries and sectors.

“This vote is great because it keeps us in line with our climate goals or greenhouse gas emission reduction goals,” Rampini said. “And it’s really important because other states are likely to jump on board.”

Because the trucking industry involves crossing state lines as a part of moving goods and services, she said there is a high chance other states catch on.

Rampini said some examples of states jumping on board with California regulations included the California Cap-and-Trade program, which helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and funnel profit back into pollutant reducing programs, and the Zero-Emission Vehicle program, which requires state car manufacturers to sell zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

“Big-rigs do play a big part in kind of the

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surveys and qualifications.

“So those surveys that the city does during their outreach, it’s like a filter almost,” Smith said. “It filters out a lot of people that would otherwise qualify for housing.”

She also said some unhoused individuals are able to receive temporary housing from the government, but continue to keep their temporary shelters or tents as a backup plan.

What Didn’t Work

Ragan Henninger, deputy director for San Jose’s Housing Department, said funding to support services for the unhoused community and for affordable housing are mainly from federal entitlement funds.

Henninger said this includes $29 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that are given to the state.

She said this funding largely funds specific services, including emergency interim housing operations and construction and the city’s houseless prevention system.

“That’s one-time money and onetime money is very challenging,” she said. “When you’re trying to scale a program and you can’t rely on a funding source beyond one year. It’s very hard for nonprofits to scale a program to meet the need when we’re using one-time funds.”

Henninger said the city does have certain sources of funding that are ongoing. For example, the city saves funding under two policies, Measure E and Measure A.

“Measure E is ongoing but again, it can fluctuate based on the real estate market,” she said.

San Jose’s Vice Mayor Rosemary

trailer transportation network,” Lombardi said. “So having them switched to a different type of fuel will have a pretty significant impact.”

He said while there aren’t many options available for alternative fuel types for big-rigs, this will change in response to the board’s vote.

“Definitely to see big-rigs, not just in California, but across the country, kind of switching to these alternative fuel options,” Lombardi said. “It won’t be necessarily a smooth and easy process – we’re talking about thousands of vehicles.”

He said he expects to see the trucking industry experience a similar transition to that of car manufacturers following other zeroemissions vehicle programs.

“If we look at electrification of personal vehicles, there’s been kind of that slow progression and even if people wanted to buy electric cars until the last couple of decades, there wasn’t a good option available to even buy one of those cars,” Lombardi said. “It’s been kind of a gradual process as well.

Earlier this year, a PepsiCo plant in Sacramento was the first to receive several semi-trucks from Tesla.

“They specifically had infrastructure at their sites set up to charge those vehicles,” he said.

“I think that will be kind of the challenge –making sure you not only prevent the vehicles from being purchased, but have the ability that

people can switch over and then run them.”

Lombardi said there will be less demand for fossil fuels in the coming years, which will in turn result in a decrease in diesel pricing and diesel investments.

“The sale of crude and the production of crude is being reduced,” Lombardi said. “So you’re starting to see changes in that – areas that are heavily invested in crude production in California will be hurt, but that’s already kind of going on.”

Crude is a dark oil consisting mainly of hydrocarbons, according to MerriamWebster’s Dictionary.

While he says employees in the sector are at risk of losing their jobs, new jobs including truck design, manufacturing and infrastructure are being created to support these new zeroemission electric trucks, it’s only a matter of where these industries will reside.

“If it happens in California, it will lead to a lot of new jobs in California, but if it happens in other states, then those other regions will benefit more in terms of jobs,” Lombardi said. “My guess is some of it will be a mix.

Rampini said truck drivers and trucking companies should not be surprised by this vote because California has been heading in this forward-thinking direction for years.

“We are technology adopters in the state and we’re often sort of the first ones,” she said.

“We help bring down the price of certain technology for others and so I think this kind of ruling is basically sending a signal to the market to start investing in zero- emission trucks, heavy duty trucks, big-rigs.”

In conjunction with California’s greenhouse gas reduction and zero-emission programs, she said the implementation of electric big-rigs by 2042 is feasible.

“This isn’t from one day to the next kind of thing, this has been years in the making, to try to get to our eventual goals of emission reductions, so I don’t think this is too soon,” Rampini said.

Mechanical Engineering junior Rahul Shetty is the chassis lead for Spartan Racing, SJSU’s Formula SAE team.

A chassis lead designs the chassis, the framework or underpart of an automobile or other motor vehicle, according to Webster’s Dictionary.

“This year we made the choice to switch to all electric as it’s something that we found was a more feasible task to do,” he said. “It’s kind of the way the industry is leading.”

Kamei said she thinks the community will rise to the challenge of ending houselessness, but she is concerned about funding because all the money from Measure A has already been reallocated or used.

“One of the things that I’m concerned about is, you know, now that the measure A, the county measure A funds,” she said. “I didn’t think they were going to run out so fast, but they have, they’ve all been allocated.”

Morales-Ferrand said she is looking into putting on the ballot an initiative to organize more funding towards affordable housing.

“It could bring up to a billion

dollars for the city of San Jose and a billion dollars to the county. That’s a tremendous opportunity for us to continue this work,” she said.

Morales-Ferrand however said she does not expect the city to reach its goal of ending houselessness by 2025.

She said she thinks it is unlikely the city will reach its goal because the city has used large portions of its funding and is struggling to continue having enough services for the unhoused community.

“The federal government has to do more for affordable housing. The state has to do more for affordable housing, and we have to continue our

commitment to affordable housing,”

Morales-Ferrand said.

BASEBALL

Spartans demolish the Dons in SF

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Jose State baseball team extended its three-game winning streak Tuesday defeating the University of San Francisco at Benedetti Diamond.

The Spartans (23-22, 15-11 MWC) defeated the Dons (16-27, 7-17 WCC) 12-3 out playing USF on both sides of the field.

Junior left-handed pitcher Ethan Ross earned his second win of the season tossing five innings for the Spartans giving up one run on one hit with eight strikeouts.

Ross is 2-0 on the season with a 7.96 ERA in 26 innings pitched, with 29 strike outs and 20 walks.

“Ethan Ross really set the tone on the mound for us, five great innings for us and good job on our offense to score first,” Head Coach Brad Sanfilippo said Tuesday in an SJSU Athletics Twitter video.

The Spartans pitching staff held the Dons’ batters to four hits with 12 strikeouts and eight runners left on base.

SJSU’s bats continued to stay hot, putting up an early 3-0 lead in the first inning.

The Spartans are out hitting and outscoring their opponents with 32-14 hits and 23-5 runs.

“Getting three [runs] in the first was big and I think that set the tone and then we just added on. So [I’m] really happy with our offense today,” Sanfilippo said in

the same video.

SJSU scored two runs in both the seventh and eighth inning to extend their lead to 9-3.

This included an RBI double to center field by senior center fielder Jack Colete, who’s second in the team with 16 doubles.

Colette batted 3-for-5 in Tuesday’s game and is batting .302 with 54 hits and 33 RBIs on the season.

SJSU led off the ninth inning with back-to-back home runs by junior first baseman Hunter Dorraugh and sophomore designated hitter Nathan Cadena putting the nail in the coffin.

Dorraugh batted 1-for-2 in Tuesday’s match up and leads the team in batting average, hitting .345 on the season.

Cadena led the Spartans with four RBIs and batted 4-for-4 with three singles and a home run. SJSU is scheduled to face the University of Texas for the first time in school history in a threegame series at 6:30 p.m. Friday at UFCU Disch-Falk Field in Austin.

IN BRIEF

Spartans have won their last three games.

SJSU is outhitting its opponents 32-14 in its last three games.

SJSU sits in third place in the Mountain West Conference with six games left in the regular season.

DYLAN NEWMAN | SPARTAN DAILY

The San Jose State baseball team celebrates after beating the University of San Francisco 12-3 Tuesday at the Benedetti Diamond

‘One Wayne G’ is a monumental time-waster

By Christine Tran STAFF WRITER

Canadian singer-songwriter Mac DeMarco dropped “One Wayne G’’ on April 21, an enormous compilation album of 199 songs with mostly unfinished tracks, many dating back to 2018.

Though I didn’t listen to his previous album “Five Easy Hot Dogs” before “One Wayne G,” I find myself listening to his song “My Kind of Woman’’ every time I think I’ve found the love of my life. This song is one of my favorites on DeMarco’s 2012 album “2.”

“One Wayne G” is nearly nine hours long and it only took 34 minutes listening to strictly instrumental music for it to bore me to death.

“20180913” was one of the last songs I listened to before I stopped listening.

I’m not sure if the track stood out to me because of the up-tempo rhythm, or the fact that DeMarco hummed the entire song, but I was desperate to hear just a chord of his voice.

I wished he could have saved the song for a later album instead of throwing “20180913” in a sea of background music.

It’s a shame the album is mostly instrumental, because DeMarco’s voice and songwriting makes him one of my favorite alternative/indie artists.

I had to scroll through many untitled tracks, only marked by the

date it was recorded, to finally hear him sing. Even then, those few titled songs were nothing special compared to his more popular tracks.

“20221102 The Truth” sounds like the same three guitar chords playing throughout the song, but it is accompanied by semi-decent lyrics.

“So I’d better go, leave her alone / And keep my heart from the truth / The truth.”

Although the lyrics are super vague, I’m biased to liking any of DeMarco’s songs that fall in the love song category.

“20221102” reminded me of his song “For the First Time” from “This Old Dog,” which is what I listened to right after for a reminder of what DeMarco sounds like at his full potential.

I can’t say listening to “One Wayne G’’ was a complete waste of my time. There were songs that made me both crack a smile and cringe which is better than the utter indifference I had to the rest of the songs.

“20200816 She Want The Sandwich’’ is the perfect example of why alternative/indie artists are ridiculed for making random lyrics sound deep. DeMarco describes a sandwich while also destroying his image as a respected musician at the same time.

“She want the sandwich, baby / She want the sandwich, baby / Lettuce and tomato, baby / With Mayo on a roll, I’ll go anywhere she goes.”

I know die-hard DeMarco fans could argue this song exemplifies

album review

“ONE WAYNE G”

Rating:

Artist: Mac DeMarco

Genre:

the simplicity of love, doing normal things for and with a significant other, but it seemed like straight-up delusion to me.

“20200823 Inside the Beaver’s Dam” also has no deeper meaning outside of describing a beaver’s family dynamics, but it made me burst out laughing when I heard the lyrics.

“Inside the beaver’s dam / The beaver’s wife is grumpy / Because the beaver’s lazy / But still loves him like crazy / Baby.”

Viewing the song from a satirical point of view was the only way I could finish the 70 second track.

Another track on the album that humors me is “20210215 Ball For The Coach,” because I genuinely

have no idea what DeMarco is rambling about.

It sounds like a diss track aimed at a jock that used to bully him in high school.

“Are you happy now? / Playing ball for the coach / You filthy f*cking cockroach.”

The song ends with an abrupt laugh, so I hope for DeMarco’s sake these songs were not meant to be taken seriously.

“20210218 Round Here” is one of the tracks on the album that strays away from the alternative/ indie genre that I normally associate DeMarco with, as he dips into a folksy and twangy sound instead.

I have nothing against that, but I also couldn’t take it seriously

because DeMarco opens the song with the line “Let that hippie hair down.” I understand these tracks are unfinished demos, but he really should’ve kept them in the drafts. I won’t be playing a single track on “One Wayne G” again anytime soon, but I know it will be playing at a local hipster plant shop somewhere. For readers planning to check out DeMarco’s newest album, I implore you to time yourself on how long you can listen before you delete your music app for allowing him to crowd it with nearly 200 shitty songs.

Follow the Spartan Daily on Twitter @Spartandaily

ILLUSTRATION BY JANANI JAGANNATHAN

Music festivals are worth the penny

Bay Area again this August to perform at the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco.

Outside Lands is a threeday festival held annually at Golden Gate park.

As festival season rolls out, the choice between going to a concert or a music festival shouldn’t even be a question.

I understand how seeing your favorite musical artist in concert can be a life changing event, but as ticket prices keep increasing, you get way better value in buying a music festival ticket than a concert ticket.

Last year when Kendrick Lamar announced he was going on tour for the first time in six years, I knew I had to be there.

I woke up early and hopped on the worst website of all time, Ticketmaster, and knew that I was going to be on the floor for the show.

Unfortunately for me, I was floored by how expensive ticket prices were, $210 out the door on Ticketmaster to see my favorite rapper of all time.

While the concert was great, I was surprised to see Lamar come back to the

Tickets for the entire three-day weekend stand at $507.95 with single day passes currently available at $224.95.

For nearly the same price, I could see Lamar and a plethora of other musical artists for only $15 more than I spent to see him last August.

tickets for our favorite musical artists. Tickets for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” famously caused the Ticketmaster website to crash as 3.5 million fans attempted to buy tickets, according to a Nov. 17, 2022 Variety article.

It’s going to be a cruel summer for Bay Area Swifties, who now are going to fork out $800 or more on secondary marketing companies such as Stubhub just to sit in the fourth deck of Levi’s Stadium to see her.

that you would have never known about without going there.

When I went to rap artist Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival in Los Angeles, I was looking solely to see Tyler as well as rap group BROCKHAMPTON, but while waiting at the main stage, I fell in love with the very first band that took the stage, Elephant Gym.

The Taiwanese mathrock group graced the stage and played a very impressive set that made

The same thing happened when I attended Lollapalooza in 2019. I was excited to see rappers such as Childish Gambino and 21 Savage, but ultimately really enjoyed the opening act, punk-rock band IDLES, on the main stage.

While these opening acts don’t receive the same stage productions as their headlining counterparts, when seeing smaller bands such as IDLES, they were welcoming enough to bring audience members on stage to perform with them.

When I went to Lollapalooza in Chicago, event organizers had booked multiple tents with food from the entire city, which gave me a ton of different options to choose from.

The food options that a festival will offer will always beat out those nasty hot dogs and fries sold at sports arenas.

Some downsides of going to a music festival is you’ll be faced with a larger crowd compared to an arena or theater concert.

Last year, Outside Lands was expected to have 75,000 attendees per day, according to an August 3, 2022 SF Chronicle article, and in 2017, Coachella averaged 125,00 daily attendees, according to an April 14 San Diego UnionTribune article.

Seeing Lamar and his two opening acts shouldn’t cost as much as a singleday music festival pass.

The price of concert tickets have increased 17.8% in 2022 with the average ticket price being $108, according to a Dec. 1, 2022 CNBC article.

We all know how difficult it can be to secure

On the other hand, fullweekend passes and oneday passes are all available for music festivals such as Governors Ball Music Festival in New York, Lollapalooza in Chicago and of course Outside Lands in San Francisco.

Another thing that makes festivals superior is discovering new artists

me fall in love with the band, a band I would have never listened to if I hadn’t attended this festival.

Math rock is a sub genre of indie rock music that focuses on progressive rock-inspired guitar riffs and unconventional time signatures, according to a Sept. 27, 2021 Master Class article.

Seeing IDLES embrace the fans in the audience who weren’t necessarily there to see them made me really appreciate their performance more.

Another interesting aspect about music festivals is that they often have a variety of different food options from outside the venue.

When you are that far back from the stage and can hardly see the performer, at that point are you even really at the concert?

If you are debating about going to a festival this summer, I highly recommend it and enjoy all of the scenery and listen to new acts that a traditional concert doesn’t have.

ILLUSTRATION BY JANANI JAGANNATHAN

Another thing that makes festivals superior is discovering new artists that you would have never known about