More than 1.5 million residents fled the Bay Area between 2010 and 2016 due in part to the rising cost-of-living, including San Joseans who are increasingly forced out. A coalition of local housing advocates, nonprofits and lawmakers recently released a report that they hope will shine a light on how displacement is a driving factor in the...
San Jose: New home for homeless women and children opens
With rising housing costs exacerbating California’s severe homeless crisis, the Kinkade Family Foundation and CityTeam on Thursday teamed up to open a new home for homeless women and children in San Jose. After the 2012 death of Thomas Kinkade, an American artist known as “the Painter of Light,” his family started the Kinkade Family Foundation to honor...
San Jose: Fears grow over mobile home park closure, lawmakers offer solutions
Westwinds Mobile Home Park resident Rob Leeper was astonished when he found a letter taped to his home Friday, informing him his family could be out of a place to live by the fall of 2022. “We were like ‘what the heck?’ You know how much it costs to move one of these things?” Leeper...
Sand Hill invokes controversial state law to build 91 townhomes in Saratoga
Sand Hill Property Co. is planning a new 91-townhome development in Saratoga, but the project comes with a twist: the prominent developer is using a controversial state law to streamline city approvals. Since Senate Bill 35 took effect in 2018, the law, which speeds up the development of certain housing projects, has been used only...
Jim Beall reintroduces affordable housing bill vetoed by Newsom
California’s housing crisis dominated headlines in 2019, but one San Jose legislator’s effort to alleviate its impact left Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk without a signature. Last year’s Senate Bill 5, authored by state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, aimed to support Newsom’s goal of building 3.5 million housing units by 2025 by establishing an Affordable...
Supreme Court action on homelessness case unlikely to affect San Jose
It seems San Jose will be largely unaffected by a recent federal court ruling prohibiting cities from criminalizing homelessness when the municipality doesn’t have adequate shelter space available to meet the needs of its homeless population. At the end of its term in December, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to Martin...
Tombstones at San Jose City Hall remember homeless deaths
Tombstones stood in row after row at San Jose City Hall on a chilly Saturday afternoon. Each tombstone, cut out of foam, had a name painted on its surface. The years under the names all ended in 2019. The 161 tombstones represent the number of homeless deaths that occurred in Santa Clara County within the...
Santa Clara: First supportive housing project breaks ground
The first supportive housing complex in the city of Santa Clara broke ground Monday morning, the latest in a line of projects funded by a massive county tax for affordable housing. Calabazas Community Apartments – a 5-story, 145-unit building at 2904 Corvin Dr. – will reserve 80 of its studio apartments for homeless individuals, offering on-site...
2019 was the year of housing in San Jose
If the San Jose City Council’s policy work this past year could be summarized in one word it would be housing. In 2019, San Jose passed a slew of housing initiatives meant to increase the city’s housing supply, while also tweaking crucial rent control and tenant protections, which housing officials enforce and implement through the city’s Rent...
UPDATE: Lawmakers approve San Jose mayor’s spending plan for proposed tax
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo’s support for a real property transfer tax has been gaining more traction, as several community leaders, housing advocates and formerly homeless people lined up to speak next to the mayor at a news conference Tuesday to support using the funds generated from the tax toward affordable housing projects and homeless...