Author: Ray Bramson (Ray Bramson)

Findings from a recent study conducted by the city of San Jose revealed a troubling but not so surprising trend: It’s costing more than ever to develop housing in Silicon Valley. Burdened by rising land value, increasing interest rates, and a scarcity of the workers we need to build new homes, housing development has never...

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the southeastern United States. All told, the costliest disaster in U.S. history ultimately claimed the lives of more than 1,800 people. But it was not until the storm passed and the waters finally receded that the true extent of the destruction was fully revealed for the people who called the...

The question of who puts what where in a given community is an interesting one. For decades, the authority of land use — the power to decide whether or not commercial, residential, industrial and a host of other possibilities are allowed on a given parcel — has fallen to the municipal government where the plot...

Sometimes, when things get bleak, we need to look back to move forward. In 1939, John Steinbeck published “The Grapes of Wrath.” Set during the Great Depression, the story follows the Joad family, Oklahoma farmers who were forced to leave their land due to economic hardships. A few years earlier and across the pond in...

“The city of San Jose offers a career capstone opportunity for leaders in housing and human services. With compelling financial resources, political, and organizational support, the selected candidate will have the opportunity to make generational impacts on the lives of many.” So reads the opening lines of the recruitment brochure for the new housing director...

E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. Though most widely recognized from our currency and as the motto of the United States, this Latin expression has its roots in the writings of Virgil, a Roman poet best known for classics such as the Aeneid. This particular phrase, however, carries no such epic ties. It was...

When San Jose voters approved the Measure E real estate transfer tax increase in 2020, the mandate was clear. The revenue generated by the new ballot measure from the sale or purchase of property worth more than $2 million would go directly to addressing the lack of affordable housing in our community. It was a...

There was a time in the not so distant past when the topic of homelessness was not the soup du jour of so many council chambers, community meetings, and letters to the editor. The issue has always been around, of course, but the intense focus on what we are or aren’t doing to meet the...

With the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank, I find myself reflecting this morning on the fragile web that makes affordable housing possible. SVB was a leader in lending to deeply affordable developments across our region and its exit means one less reliable anchor point in the complicated web of resources that makes a project...

Last month, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared a homelessness emergency in her city. The move was meant to dramatically speed up services for the thousands of people living on the streets, while also cutting through the local red tape that slows the delivery of new services to a crawl. Backing the new mayor’s play, the...