San Jose State University might turn into an unexpected savior in the ongoing exodus of teachers from Santa Clara County. The university envisions creating public-private partnerships with K-12 school districts and community colleges to help build affordable teacher housing. SJSU leaders want schools to consider using some of their excess land for homes so teachers...

Numerous housing ideas have been bandied about on state and local levels over the last nine months in an effort to accelerate home construction. This aggressive push follows decades of insufficient supply and the state’s belated effort to make sure people can afford to live where they work. If the state succeeds, more homes will bring...

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan began his first term with an optimistic lens on resolving homelessness in the city. Eight months later his position has hardened. The mayor has confronted reality in a city where 89% of the population wants the homeless problem to disappear. Solutions are not happening fast enough for Mahan. After homeless people...

California scrapped affirmative action from its public university landscape, decades ago, making last week’s Supreme Court ruling a moot point. The state’s private colleges, however, were able to keep the program in place. Now that’s changed. The state’s private institutions may be looking to their public counterpoints for solutions, as they struggle to level the diversity playing...

Over the last couple months, children in the San Jose Unified School District have been subjected to lockdowns and Code Red alarms triggered by potential danger. The source of this heightened fear is students bringing firearms to campus and making social media threats to kill classmates. Parents are terrified, and the lack of succinct and swift information from the...

For decades, mayors, developers and business owners have claimed to know the secret for helping downtown San Jose come of age. Builders erected high-rise apartments, condominiums and office towers, and as the skyline changed city officials proclaimed the people would follow. The tech sector went on a tear, conferences sold out at the convention center and hotels...

Downtown San Jose is in the middle of a transformation. Cranes are changing the skyline from its once low-rise persona to towers of steel and glass. CityView Plaza will reshape the landscape across from Cesar Chavez Plaza and the Icon and Echo Towers will rise kitty-corner from San Jose City Hall, as the downtown core marches ahead...

When a child has a medical emergency and is rushed to a hospital, doctors and nurses are ready. But if that same child has a mental health emergency, there is no hospital in Santa Clara County available to treat a minor. For decades the problem remained under the radar, until one day a friend of...

When the San Jose City Council appointed two new members last week, it felt like a snub of democracy for some. It was the culmination of a heated and lengthy debate over how to fill two open seats on the 11-member council. District 10 became vacant after former Councilmember Matt Mahan became mayor and District 8 opened...

For decades San Jose has tried to find its identity through an iconic landmark. The latest quest is an art installation called Breeze of Innovation, culled from nearly 1,000 international submissions. The 500 flexible, 200-foot rods are designed to sway in the wind and light up the sky at night. In renderings the idea looks like...