Here’s a look at unhoused challenges of Fremont, Bay Area’s 4th largest city, as need for housing exceeds supply

FREMONT, Calif. (KGO) — The city of Fremont is often synonymous with tech manufacturing as well as Tesla’s headquarters. The average household income is $175,000. But despite its strong economy, Fremont continues to deal with a homeless problem.

“I was tired of living in Oakland for a lot of reasons, born and raised. I wanted to do something new,” said Preston Walker.

And just like that, in 2020, the city of Fremont offered Walker free shelter during the pandemic. So he moved.

When the funds were eventually suspended, Walker became part of the city’s homeless population.

In 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, Fremont had 608 people who were unhoused. In 2022, that number grew to 1,026.

The majority were from Fremont before they became homeless.

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Joey Colaci was born in Fremont. He couldn’t work after suffering a work-related injury. He’s lived in a trailer for more than two years. He hasn’t applied for housing.

“Yeah, it’s alright, yeah. I just move around, try not to get tickets and stuff. That’s the hard part,” said Colaci.

Here, the vast majority of the unhoused are white and African Americans, even though 64% of Fremont’s general population is Asian. That includes Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Pakistanis and Afghans. Only 2% of all Asians here are unhoused.

MORE: At least 40 people removed from Fremont homeless encampment at local park, citing maintenance

Many here say, it’s a result of a changing job market.

“Tech and engineering. What used to be sort of a working class community, car manufacturing plants and really working class, it has become unaffordable,” said Vivian Wan, CEO of Abode Services which operates an emergency shelter in Fremont.

This week, Fremont cleared a homeless encampment at Isherwood Park.

“We all prefer to stay,” insisted one of the people asked to move out of the park.

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Fremont city officials said the 40 or so people living there have been offered shelter at the navigation center located behind City Hall and through its Winter Relief Program which provides emergency shelter at two undisclosed motels.

Six local churches are part of the Safe Parking program that allows a small number of homeless people, living in vehicles, to park overnight.

Fremont says through these programs, they’ve been able to reach out to people and offer housing options.

“It’s a space to really stabilize and get connected to services,” confirmed Laurie Flores, Homeless Services Manager for the city of Fremont.

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As a result, in 2024, the point-in-time count showed that Fremont was able to reduce the number of unhoused to 807 from 1,026 in 2022.

Still, the city council didn’t stop there.

Early in the year, they proposed an ordinance that would not allow for “aiding and abetting” encampments.

Many nonprofits protested.

“Unhoused residents of Fremont are still residents of Fremont,” said Anthony Prince, an attorney with California Homeless Union.

It quickly backfired and the council dropped the ordinance.

“We’ve repeated so many times that this whole aiding and abetting that was never meant to refer to people giving out food, water, medical supplies, any of that to people, explained Raymond Liu, City Council member last February.

Last February, the city council also banned camping on public property, like other cities have.

“They think they are going to erase the problem by erasing the homeless, it hasn’t worked, it’s not going to work,” added Prince.

Today, the city could potentially clear another encampment near the railroad tracks under Washington Boulevard, but they admit they don’t have the capacity to offer them shelter.

“Just the pipeline of housing is not being developed and stood up at the rate that people need that service, so what we end up seeing is people are staying in these programs for longer,” said Flores.

Fremont, like other cities, has plans to build more affordable and low income housing. Providing housing subsidies is another policy idea. But will the federal funding or state grants be there? How about construction costs, which are rising? These are some of the things that Fremont has to contend with.

“All the complaints, everybody else on the homeless issue, not knowing they can be homeless at any time and won’t know how to survive,” said Walker.

Even though it has been named the happiest city in the U.S. by Travel and Leisure Magazine, Fremont still struggles to find a place for everyone to feel that way.