On the Record: San Jose District 3 Special Election candidate Anthony Tordillos

If elected, what actions and policies will you prioritize in your first 100 days in office?

District 3’s next councilmember must hit the ground running to address our housing, homelessness, and public safety crises. While more intangible, they also must work to restore trust in city government—a central reason why I’m running. Here’s my 100-day plan.

1. Restoring Trust: I’ll hold weekly office hours with any resident who wants to meet, making myself personally accessible to them when issues arise.
2. Homelessness: I’ll meet with the community to identify priority cleanup areas where relocation to shelter is a critical community need.
3. Public Safety: I’ll champion officer recruitment and work with the department to boost local recruitment initiatives and build a police force that showcases the diversity of our community and allows for true community policing.
4. Housing: I’ll work with city staff to streamline entitlements, provide CEQA exemptions, and work to zone additional land for multifamily residential development, so it’s faster and cheaper to build housing in San Jose.

How should San Jose close its budget shortfall and generate new revenue for city services?

During our budget shortfall, core city services must not be sacrificed. In the short-term, City Hall should focus on funding our top priorities, like public safety, homelessness solutions, and public goods like parks and libraries. Longer-term, in order to put San Jose on more stable, fiscal footing, we must:

Continue to streamline housing development downtown and near transit, which will help combat our affordability crisis while generating significant new property tax revenue to fund the services our residents depend on.

Examine San Jose’s rather regressive business tax, which unfairly punishes small businesses and lets big corporations pay significantly less than they do in cities like San Francisco. Doing so will help our small businesses thrive and ensure big corporations finally pay their fair share.

Make strategic cuts where there are redundancies between city and county services, to ensure our local government is operating as effectively as possible for our residents.

Name three specific things you’ll do to address the lack of affordable housing in San Jose.

I’m proud of my track record as chair of San Jose’s Planning Commission, where I’ve worked to improve affordability, prevent displacement, and help build over 500 affordable homes. That track record is why every pro-housing organization that’s endorsed in this race has endorsed my campaign. My housing plan focuses on increasing housing production, investing in affordable housing, and protecting at-risk residents.

San Jose has the tools to bring down costs by streamlining entitlements, providing CEQA exemptions, zoning additional land for multifamily residential development, and simplifying design and development standards. I’ll push the city to use our leverage to bring down costs for our residents.

I’ll work with nonprofits and regional partners to secure new funding for the construction of permanently affordable housing.

And I’ll fight to preserve our existing affordable housing stock and support tenant protections and emergency rental assistance programs in order to keep working families in their homes.

What is your plan to make downtown San Jose more economically vibrant?

A thriving downtown is crucial to the health of our city. While evening and weekend visits to downtown have returned to pre-pandemic levels, foot traffic remains sluggish during the work day, and concerns over blight, cleanliness, and public safety have hampered downtown’s recovery. I’ll take a “yes and” approach to improving our downtown. On City Council, I will:

Work to strengthen our code enforcement process and hold property owners accountable for blighted and unmaintained buildings.

Support incentive programs to encourage new businesses to set up shop downtown and cut red tape so it’s easier for small businesses to succeed.

Ensure that arts and cultural organizations have the resources necessary to thrive and maintain downtown’s position as the premier cultural destination of Silicon Valley.

Support new housing growth downtown, which will boost foot traffic, improve public safety, and provide the customer base to support local retailers, like a downtown grocery store.

How would you tackle the homelessness and mental health crises the city faces?

On the Planning Commission, I helped streamline shelter development and approved nearly 100 new in-patient mental healthcare beds. On Council, I’ll work to expand our shelter capacity and open safe sleeping sites so we can clear encampments near schools and parks. I’ll also support new safe parking sites so we can get RVs off residential streets. And I’ll fight to ensure every council district does their fair share, not just D3.

But temporary shelters are not a long-term solution to this crisis. I’ve talked with unhoused residents who took the city up on shelter, only to be kicked onto the streets before they could secure permanent housing. That’s why I’ll continue my track record of building permanent, affordable housing.

Finally, the most cost-effective way to solve homelessness is to prevent it from happening. That’s why I support proven programs like emergency rental assistance that keep families in their homes.

What steps would you take to improve public safety in San Jose?