Authored by Rebekah Davis Matthews. Most recent update September 13, 2025
You can find a shareable Facebook post of this here.
Sustain Our Shelters started in 2022 as a group of people on Next Door and Facebook who were seeing many posts about the shelter turning people away who were bringing in strays. People were being told that they should just let the strays loose on the street. I'm not kidding. Not just community cats, which some may argue (I'm not going to get into managed intake of community cats here) should stay where they are, but also stray dogs. The shelter's parent department, Public Works, gives an annual presentation about the shelter's status every December to a City Council committee, and in 2022 they were directed to start keeping track of everyone that they turned away. They have failed to do this and they are still telling people to put animals on the street, even small (but weaned) kittens.
We started out doing fundraisers for them and meeting with shelter management, Public Works management, and City management, trying to bring back the kitten foster program (which finally came back in 2023, though it is still problematic), TNR services (back but only one day a week, which is not enough given there were no services for four years), and public spay neuter clinic (still not back) post-Covid. All of the services fell by the wayside during the thick of the Covid-19 shutdown and the mismanagement over there, despite a yearly-increasing budget, has caused things to get worse, not better. We heard a lot of talk and saw very little action, and after a while it became obvious that we needed to be doing more, so we started in 2023 doing heavy political activism by attending more meetings and making comment, sending emails, and having protests/rallies.
As you might imagine, the shelter's damaging policy of turning away so many strays and not bringing back low cost spay neuter has resulted in an explosion of unwanted dogs and cats which they are still trying to dig their way out f... Ineffectively, since they aren't doing much to change things.
Our pressure caused the (at the time, new) Mayor and some council members to call for an audit of the shelter:
They had already had a Maddie's Million Pet Challenge audit the year before and had been slow to implement the recommendations that came from that one:
https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/88891/637970477926600000
This included the shelter "over-pivoting" away from working with rescues (in the words of the Public Works manager at the Council committee meeting at the end of 2023) from working with rescues for some reason; a change in administration at the shelter that occurred after Lorance Gomez, the shelter manager, left in 2022, resulted in deterioration of the shelter's previously very good relationship with rescues who pulled animals from the shelter. (Incidentally, the manager before Gomez was Staycee Dains, of whom I'm sure many of you have heard due to her recent troubles at the Los Angeles shelters.) One of the new shelter coordinators was the former animal control officer who was involved in an incident where confiscated dogs perished in her truck due to lack of air conditioning (a problem with the truck that she was aware of but did not check prior to putting the dogs in the truck); this incident is mentioned in this article (gift link so there's no paywall) and I have attached a screenshot:
The shelter's most recent director, Jay Terrado, was reportedly close with this officer, and reappointed her to be part of the shelter coordinator team to save her from losing her job. She is objectively terrible at the job. Terrado has been fighting thyroid cancer and has been off and on out on medical leave (and has most recently taken an early, medical retirement), leaving the beleaguered Kiska Icard (who left both San Francisco SPCA and the Sonoma Humane Society under mysterious circumstances -- though they were not publicly touted as mysterious) in charge of shelter operations for a while now, despite having no past operations experience. She is not well-suited to this job and employees and volunteers frequently describe her as usually hiding in her office. As of summer 2025, the shelter now has an interim director. The City is in the process of hiring a permanent one after having a nationwide recruitment.
In any case, the audit was released in 2024 and is described as "scathing" most places you read about it. Here is the audit:
https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/116106/638797945507170000
Some press about the audit results:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sawkB1F3hA
The shelter was given 39 (some multi-point) recommendations to begin working on. The day the audit was discussed at Council committee, a dog named Rufus died after neuter surgery when left in his kennel unmonitored and still anesthetized. (The chances of this happening, from my research, appear to be about 1 in 10,000.)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/508027308807876
The medical director, Dr. Elizabeth Kather, has received a lot of criticism already due to various issues, including the number of animals dying at the shelter (not due to euthanasia, just dying in their kennels or before, after or during surgery) increasing each year. There are numerous stories of both cats and dogs that she has misdiagnosed or were not diagnosed at all, leading to their death or to rescues having to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to get them treated after they are pulled. Examples include cats with broken legs and pelvises that are put onto the adoption floor without the injuries being found, a dog with pneumonia who was not diagnosed and ended up passing after a rescue tried to save her, and a kitten who was adopted only to be diagnosed with a broken pelvis by the adopter's vet.
Kitten horror stories:
Linguine (who at least survived, thanks to an amazing rescue): https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.k.flick/posts/pfbid02roX1N1TEVdp9Lv6iSciJoSxEyhJSgujDz18bVHtKgbNrtsT9KqvTGoenuUxWYoAJl
This municipal shelter's most recent strategy appears to be only accepting intake of cats that are pregnant, injured, or sick. They also sometimes take neonates (if they cannot convince the finder to bottle feed) but start euthanizing if they aren't picked up by fosters, which might be excusable if they actually reliably did outreach to fosters and rescues, but unfortunately they do not. They have night staff that is supposed to be taking care of neonates overnight but often times this does not happen due to low staffing or other factors, and kittens in the back rooms are often left cold and unfed and pass away. (This is not because of staff incompetence but because of inadequate staffing, there being NO written protocols or SOPs, and mismanagement.) They tell people to put friendly moms and kittens back on the street. TNR cats that came in and are friendly used to be evaluated to go onto the adoption floor. Nowadays, almost every cat that comes in is put back out on the street. This includes many, many friendly cats and even older kittens. This leads to the only cats being on the adoption floor being the sick ones that came in that are spayed/neutered while still sick and end up on the adoption floors with URIs and other conditions. Incidentally, the shelter returned 1330 cats to the field in all of calendar year 2024, and this year from January to the current date have already returned 880 to field. This outcome has outpaced adoption of cats this year so far by 20%. As previously stated, these RTF cats are not all feral or community cats. These include many, many friendly cats and kittens.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1709349540463538
On the dog side, they used to be evaluated and then put on "needs rescue" for a period of time if needed, for medical or behavioral issues, to give volunteers and rescues time to network them. However, since Dr. Kather arrived, they are frequently given very little time or no time at all. For example, this dog is going to be euthanized tonight if not pulled, and this information was just released yesterday.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1720672189331412&ref=sharing
There have been dogs that were euthanized even though they had rescue commitment or promises from the shelter, which is potentially a violation of California's Hayden Act:
Lola: https://fb.watch/zMyUCxKmbT/
Goofy: Euthanized despite promises from the shelter to rescue organizations to give him more time.
Last year, a local rescuer and animal advocate named Dawn Piazza was hired into a temporary position at the shelter as a rescue coordinator, and in her brief time was able to make a significant difference in rescue outcomes. However, her position was eliminated in the 24-25 budget. When the shelter eventually decided to again hire someone into that role, Dawn was passed over for someone else.
Sustain Our Shelters held two rallies for changes prior to City Council meetings in September and December of last year (combined with members giving public comment at the meetings).
The shelter gave its report on audit progress earlier this month. Ridiculous multimedia smoke screen presentation is here:
https://sanjose.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=14151545&GUID=3615EE2D-3AE5-41CD-A0BB-5090A9744D24
The most recent nail in the coffin happened in May 2025, when an animal care attendant found a little dog named Lola (a different Lola) in the medical ward strangling to death on a slip lead that had been left on her. She was actually on an IV drip and still attached to her lead with NO medical staff there at all, since they all went home for the night. The ACA tried to save her despite very little medical training but it ended up being too late. Here is the press about that:
- https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/05/11/advocates-city-butt-heads-san-jose-animal-shelter-management/?share=wcstt10scoactr2hhnsh
- https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/05/15/san-jose-mayor-calls-for-reforms-after-latest-animal-shelter-death/?share=tsrstearhnsaa2rar2fo
- https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/05/16/union-raises-concerns-about-scapegoating-retaliation-after-death-at-san-jose-animal-shelter/?share=rorjbiastl0n0istahen
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDqxrR0kn-I
- https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/animal-advocates-concerns-adog-dies-san-jose-animal-shelter/3869034/
To make matters worse, this dog had a microchip (which had been implanted when Lola turned up at the shelter in February and subsequently was reclaimed) but the shelter, upon not being able to reach the owner after one phone call (they did not leave a message), had sent a LETTER to the owners that she was there, and failed to update the owner after she died. They found out that she died after posting on Next Door looking for her; someone commented with a link to the NBC Bay Area story about her.
After this, the Mayor FINALLY called for some changes, despite years of pressure not up until that point causing this to happen. Also, the person in our form of city government ("strong city manager") with the hiring/firing powers is the City Manager, Jennifer Maguire, and she had taken NO action for years. She never responds to any of our contact and punts our questions and concerns to her deputy, who is ineffective and takes no action.
Our group has now called for the immediate resignation or firing of the management team and medical director at the shelter and the Mayor finally saw fit for there to be an investigation. The City Manager probably needs to go too if things don't change. We had a protest and candlelight vigil.
- https://abc7news.com/post/animal-advocates-demand-change-latest-dog-death-san-jose-care-center/16489953/
- https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/advocates-hold-candlelight-memorial-following-recent-dog-death-at-san-jose-animal-shelter/3873829/
- https://www.ktvu.com/news/vigil-held-animals-who-died-san-jose-animal-care-center
We have also been talking to the District Attorney's Office, making reports to the California Veterinary Medical Board and Cal-OSHA, and submitting requests to the Civil Grand Jury.
The problems include almost no protocols for staff to follow, inconsistent and inadequate training, inconsistent management which also forces people out who complain in some manner, and a medical director makes questionable decisions on a daily basis. (These are obviously not ALL of the problems.)
Another issue that has, incidentally, been ongoing, is the increasing number of deaths of feral cats either before spay/neuter (when already anesthetized) or during surgery -- something that should not be happening so often. We are in the process of looking into that.
In summer of 2025, the shelter has been putting unprecedented numbers of dogs on final without following their own protocol, which specifies that dogs should be on urgent for a certain amount of time before going to final. This has left rescues scrambling to find fosters with very narrow windows. Other dogs, such as Barry Allen, have been euthanized suddenly and without warning despite making progress toward being adoptable.
Another recent trend is neonate kittens dying shortly after being brought in; we have been unable to obtain complete medical records to try to figure out why but we suspect that they are left in the back and not fed or rewarmed, therefore starving/freezing to death.
I should not close this out without mentioning that the shelter's current budget is over $17 million. We made an appearance at the final budget meeting in June (protesting beforehand in the City Hall plaza) to make our views heard.
Something needs to change.