San Jose breaks ground on seventh tiny home facility
Valley Water Director Jim Beall speaks at the Cherry Avenue tiny home groundbreaking site in San Jose on Jan. 21. The facility will sit on Valley Water land. Photo by Joyce Chu.

San Jose will add a seventh tiny home site to its temporary housing stock, giving dozens of people a roof over their head come fall.

After more than two years, the Cherry Avenue tiny homes project  is about to begin construction, with a planned opening in September. The $18.3-million project will provide temporary housing for 136 homeless residents.  This facility, which sits on Valley Water property, is funded by $9 million from the state, $7 million from Measure E — funds diverted from permanent housing– and $2.4 million in philanthropic donations, including $1 million from real estate developer John Sobrato.

“These projects don’t happen in a vacuum, and they don’t happen by luck or chance,” Deputy City Manager Omar Passons said Tuesday at the ground breaking. “They require political will.”

Two years ago, Valley Water Director Jim Beall proposed a change in the water district laws that would enable Valley Water land to be used to support housing for homeless residents camping along its property. The board of directors approved the change.

“This just the first one,” Beall said at the press conference. “We’re going to look at other surplus properties and other opportunities to collaborate.”

DignityMoves is the developer and will receive up to $15 million to design and construct the site. The nonprofit helped raise the philanthropic funding.

“We raise philanthropy for lots of our projects,” DignityMoves CEO Elizabeth Funk told San José Spotlight. “It takes, quite frankly, somebody like us to go around, pass the hat and try to pull some of that (funding) together.”

Community support was also essential for this project to move forward.

“I’m ecstatic that we got the support of the community… with no pushback,” District 9 Councilmember Pam Foley, whose district sits within the project, told San José Spotlight. “They were completely embracing what we were trying to do here from the very beginning.”

Homeless encampment San Jose
A homeless encampment sits along the Guadalupe River near where the Cherry Avenue tiny home site will be built. Photo by Joyce Chu.

The temporary emergency housing facility is being built across from the Hampton Inn where people are camped along the Guadalupe River. Homeless people within the vicinity will be given priority for residency when it is up and running.

City workers are compiling a list of people who are interested in living at Cherry Avenue.

“We’re doing outreach and have our case managers basically identifying who’s living in the area and making sure that we’re able to offer them a unit when it becomes available,” Mayor Matt Mahan told San José Spotlight.

The housing will have central laundry, private bathrooms and an outdoor picnic area. It will include case management, security and other services to help people transition into permanent housing. The city has not chosen its the homeless service provider yet. Once operational, it will cost about $5 million annually to operate, or $37,500 per bed.
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The Cherry Avenue site is part of the mayor’s plan to add 1,000 tiny home beds over the next year to reduce the amount of people living on the streets and along waterways. The city has approximately 500 beds across six tiny home sites. 

San Jose has 6,340 unhoused residents, with more than 4,400 of whom are unsheltered, according to Santa Clara County’s 2023 biennial count of homeless people. More than 9,900 people are homeless countywide and nearly 4,300 households experienced homelessness for the first time last year — a 24% increase from 2022 — according to county data.

After the Cherry Avenue location is up and running, a no encampment zone will be enforced from Blossom Hill Road to Branham Lane.

“Two years ago, I stepped into this office and pledged that the city of San Jose is going to end the era of encampments,” Mahan said at the presser. “We in government have a responsibility for building basic dignified shelter, interim housing and treatment centers… when they’re available, people have a responsibility for coming indoors and taking advantage of those services.”

Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected], or @joyce_speaks on X.

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