The Silicon Valley Ethics Roundtable (SVER) issued an op-ed a year ago urging strong public and private leadership to direct resources to the unique needs of the severely mentally ill homeless. A two-year-old county survey estimates 42% of the homeless population of over 9,000 to have a significant degree of mental illness, with 25% of...

May is Affordable Housing Month, which means there are many events taking place to help you learn about everything happening in affordable housing—and I encourage you to visit Silicon Valley at Home’s calendar page and attend some. If you’ve lived in the Bay Area longer than an hour, you know the lack of affordable housing...

A new phrase has entered the public vernacular: Opportunity Housing. This innocuous-sounding phrase refers to allowing, by right, the construction of multi-unit residences on properties zoned as single-family residential. It would allow property owners to skip what is today a rather lengthy process, requiring public hearings and input from concerned neighbors, when desiring to raze...

Libraries, community centers, beautiful parks, traffic lights, safe and clean drinking water… These are some of the public services that make the foundation of a community. It’s many of these essential services that have helped us get through the COVID-19 pandemic, but now they’re at risk. We need a new approach to San Jose’s budget...

The “gift” of a 20-stories tall light pollution generator offered to San Jose by the Light Tower Corporation reeks of saviorism. Light Tower Corporation’s mission is to “provide a major enhancement,” be a “catalyst for Silicon Valley culture,” and bring “prestigious allure” to downtown San Jose. At this post-pandemic time, this mission and the selected...

“America puts the best of all of the world’s people through a smelter called democracy and the resulting amalgam is stronger than the sum of those individual populations working separately.” That paraphrase of a mid-1800s quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson was simplified to “melting pot,” a prideworthy term that applies to most Americans. The quote...

San Jose has appointed a new head of the police department, Chief Anthony Mata, at a time our city and communities are having a long needed reimagining of what public safety means. This dialogue is about the safety and wellbeing of Black and brown communities who throughout our history have endured the injustice of systemic...

As a supposed win-win for the community, the San Jose City Council approved a multimillion-dollar training facility for the San Jose Police Department and a law enforcement reform plan that creates a community process entitled “Reimagining Community Safety.” This process establishes the Reimagining Community Safety Advisory Group, which should serve as a forum to engage...

Education is critical to acknowledging and addressing the historic and current inequities and systemic racism that exists in our country. The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum recently approved by the California State Board of Education opens the door for a new generation of Black, Native American, Asian and Latinx students to finally see themselves and their...

This year, I have the privilege of serving as chairperson of the Valley Water Board of Directors. Our agency and community are facing many challenges, and I look forward to addressing those issues head-on.  In this leadership position, my goal is to make sure our Board is action-oriented and forward-thinking. I also want to make...