An emergency housing site for homeless residents
The Guadalupe Emergency Housing site houses 96 homeless residents. It features a communal kitchen, laundry room and case management office. File photo.

Over the next 18 months, San Jose may see four tiny home sites built, offering hundreds of beds to help people living on the streets transition to permanent housing. But getting there remains a challenge.

Mayor Matt Mahan wants to add 784 beds between the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026 to tackle the homelessness crisis — though delays may threaten those efforts. The beds will be spread across five locations: Via Del Oro, Cerone Yard, Cherry Avenue, Branham and Monterey Road and an expanded Rue Ferrari.

“Those sites have been approved and funding has been allocated by the council through the budget,” Mahan told San José Spotlight.

The timeline for various tiny home projects has been pushed back, but two sites are slated to open this year. Branham Lane and Monterey Road will be able to accommodate 204 people. It was originally scheduled to open in April, but is now set to open by November, a worker from Councilmember Sergio Jimenez’s office told San José Spotlight. Via Del Oro, which will accommodate 150 people, was originally planned for completion this summer but has been pushed to December or January.

The addition of 134 beds at Rue Ferrari, which was supposed to happen by next summer, has not started construction. The completion date for that expansion has been pushed back to next fall, a Jimenez spokesperson said.

There are also two site agreements that have not been finalized. Valley Water has yet to reach an agreement with the city regarding homeless camps around the Cherry Avenue site, which sits on water district land. Valley Water spokesperson Matt Keller said the delay comes from agency officials wanting to develop an agreement that would prevent homeless people from re-encamping next to the tiny homes, once built. The Cherry Avenue site would help keep 96 people off the streets.

San Jose and VTA plan to add 200 new homes at the Cerone Yard site, but the details of the agreement are still being worked out. Councilmember David Cohen, who represents North San Jose where Cerone is located, said the site could be ready in as soon as eight months once underway. This will be the first homeless housing project in North San Jose.

If San Jose doesn’t hit Mahan’s goal, it wouldn’t be the first time. In the past the city has over promised and under-delivered. Mahan’s previous goal was to have 1,000 tiny homes online by the end of 2023 to complete what former Mayor Sam Liccardo promised, which was 1,000 tiny homes by 2021.

Only half of that previous goal has been met, with the city building six tiny home sites between 2020 and 2023 — offering nearly 500 beds. Only one site has been built since Mahan took office in 2022: the Guadalupe Emergency Housing site opened in 2023 and is located in a San Jose police parking lot.

Development of these sites often takes more time than originally anticipated, due to factors that include financing, picking and priming a site and addressing resident pushback.

Councilmember Jimenez, whose South San Jose district is home to Rue Ferrari and the future Branham site, said Mahan’s goal is a stretch, but time will tell.

“I believe that the ultimate solution of this is we need more housing, which is super important,” Jimenez told San José Spotlight.
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Mahan has been pushing for temporary solutions that include sanctioned encampments and tiny homes in order to move the 4,400 homeless people living along the waterways and the streets. Some advocates see temporary housing as a necessary solution, but one that won’t be effective without more permanent affordable housing. Tiny home sites are only built to last about 10 years, Sandy Perry, board vice president at South Bay Community Land Trust, said.

“It’s meant to be a bridge to permanent housing,” Perry told San Jose Spotlight. “Without that, these interim sites are going to be dead ends for people, which is not what they are intended to be.”

Contact Joyce at [email protected] or follow @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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