Guevara: San Jose’s ‘Housing Day’ is really Housing Rollback Day

On Jan. 27, the San Jose City Council will consider a slate of housing proposals branded as “Housing Day.” If the goal is to make San Jose more affordable, the name is deeply ironic — nearly every major policy on the agenda moves the city away from affordability.

This matters because San Jose residents have been crystal clear. Housing affordability has been identified as the No. 1 challenge facing people who live here. Not traffic. Not cleanliness. Housing. Yet the proposals being packaged together as progress ignore the city’s own anti-displacement and housing affordability goals and instead tilt policy toward those who are already doing well.

Start with San Jose’s more than 50 mobile home parks, one of the last remaining paths to entry-level homeownership in Silicon Valley. The city is considering changes to its mobile home rent policy that would, for the first time, allow a significant rent increase on the space when a home is sold — a move that makes homes harder to sell and strips value from the equity owners have spent decades building.

Then there are proposed changes to San Jose’s inclusionary housing program, one of the city’s most important tools for ensuring that market-rate developments contribute to affordability. The direction under consideration would shift affordability targets so high that, at the upper end, a family of four earning roughly $214,000 a year could still qualify. At a time when tens of thousands of renters are barely hanging on, redefining “affordable” upward is not bold leadership — it is denial of reality.

The city is also considering updates to its downtown residential and multifamily incentive programs, which offer substantial fee reductions and concessions to spur development. Incentives can be legitimate — if and when they are necessary, time-limited and clearly tied to public benefit. But too often, “incentive” becomes a one-way ratchet: The public gives up a needed resource while developers reap the benefit.

And layered on top of the mayor’s historic shift of Measure E dollars away from affordable housing, these incentives and exemptions don’t operate in isolation — they compound to gut San Jose’s affordable housing strategy by shrinking both funding and requirements at the same time.

This mayor has campaigned on a “back to basics” focus. Of course, we all want safe, clean streets and sidewalks. But San Jose residents are not single-issue voters. Parents want their children to be able to afford to stay in the city they grew up in. Seniors want to age in place without fearing rent hikes. Working families want housing costs that leave room for education, health care and a life that isn’t defined by constant financial stress. And community members want to support lower-income neighbors with affordable housing — and historically have been willing to tax themselves to pay for it.

Other cities are treating affordability as an all-hands emergency. New York, for example, is prioritizing affordability and family stability by investing in universal early childhood education, reducing one of the biggest cost pressures families face. That is what it looks like to treat affordability as an urgent challenge.

San Jose can choose a different path. The city council can reject policies that erode affordability, weaken anti-displacement goals and benefit only wealthy property owners. Or it can allow “Housing Day” to become something else entirely: a reminder that without vigilance, housing policy can quietly drift away from the people it is supposed to serve.

Poncho Guevara has served for 20 years as executive director of Sacred Heart Community Service, leading the organization’s growth as a trusted anchor institution in Silicon Valley.