When Gavin Newsom became California’s governor, he announced a bold goal of solving the state’s 3.5 million-home shortage by 2025, but there’s one major problem: cities across the state are only planning for about 2.8 million new housing units. What’s more, many of the areas where those 2.8 million new homes are allowed to rise,...

Housing has dominated every big policy decision in San Jose this past year, as the city faces a growing housing and homelessness crisis. Slowly, the city is inching its way closer to meeting Mayor Sam Liccardo’s goal of producing at least 25,000 new housing units — 10,000 of them affordable — by 2022. While city...

More than a hundred volunteers and people in need packed the African American Community Service Agency (AACSA) in downtown San Jose Wednesday to enjoy an early Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie. The residents were warmly greeted by an army of nonprofit service providers and volunteers, including Mayor Sam Liccardo, as they...

A ruling this week by a state appeals court on how California cities must sell their surplus land to prioritize affordable housing may have been tailored to San Jose, but the decision will likely affect other cities more, according to the city’s mayor. “San Jose has very little city-owned land that is developable, and for...

At a Habitat for Humanity worksite in East San Jose Wednesday morning Mayor Sam Liccardo joined volunteers gathered in the driving rain to put the finishing touches on 40 tiny homes that will be placed on a nearby lot and used as transitional housing for homeless residents next year. The typical tiny home is only...

San Jose’s Housing and Community Development Commission on Thursday asked probing questions about two proposals the City Council is expected to consider in the coming months — a down-payment assistance program for first-time home buyers and a subsidy for homeowners who build secondary units or so-called granny units to rent to low-income residents. Five commissioners...

Jimmy Hendrix, who’s been homeless on-and-off for the last 40 years, was recently diagnosed with emphysema and COPD and had nearly given up on finding a safe place to lay his head. But on Friday, Hendrix became the first resident to move into Villas on the Park, one of San Jose’s first permanent supportive housing...

In an effort to make a dent in housing Silicon Valley’s rapidly growing student homeless population, the Bill Wilson Center on Wednesday announced a new program in partnership with Airbnb to connect homeless San Jose State University students with temporary housing using the home sharing website’s technology. Ron Ricci, board president at the Bill Wilson...

While leaders across California continue to pump millions of dollars into increasing the state’s housing supply, scrambling to address a shortage of affordable housing that’s pushing residents into the streets, some local leaders are calling on their fellow colleagues to implement new ways to make it easier to build. Increasingly, San Jose has explored new strategies to get...