San Jose State University sophomore Bahati Burgess calls an old classroom at Grace Baptist Church his home. After being priced out of the dorms last year, the 19-year-old Oakland native became one of thousands of San Jose students experiencing homelessness while trying to earn their degrees. The downtown university has an alarmingly high number of...
Liccardo’s focus in 2019: Housing, housing, housing
Sam Liccardo easily won four more years as San Jose mayor in November, but the high-profile former attorney faces a Gordian Knot of intersecting issues entering his second term — especially the intractable housing crisis. Upon his swearing in four years ago, Liccardo contended with a bitter pension battle that ended in a mass exodus...
Santa Clara County to overhaul its foster care system after critical report
After being shuffled from one foster home to another, Dontae Lartigue found himself homeless and without a job at 19 years old. Nearly a decade later Lartigue is at the center of a massive effort to overhaul the county’s foster care system — just weeks after a new report found Santa Clara County is failing...
Activists plan a San Jose community land trust for affordable housing
Fed up with astronomical rents that are squeezing out families, San Jose housing advocates are taking matters into their own hands. A trio of community groups have teamed up to form the first-ever community land trust in San Jose — an innovative strategy that would allow them to buy scarce land as a community and...
San Jose approved Google. What’s next?
It will be years before Google breaks ground near Diridon Station but San Jose residents will soon have a better idea about what the project will look like. The San Jose City Council in December unanimously approved a $110 million sale of roughly 11 acres of public land to the tech behemoth in a plan...
Bramson: Where do we go from here?
When I was a boy, my mom took me to a homeless shelter to serve a meal during the holidays. The first time we went I was probably 10 and I remember being pretty scared when we arrived. Everyone was nice, there were decorations and lights up, even some Christmas music playing. But I could...
Staedler: We need action — not plans — to solve Silicon Valley’s housing crisis
The Bay Area has been in the midst of a housing crisis for the last ten years. Regional leaders have spent the last 18 months on a ten-point plan. Basically, it’s a plan to have a plan and it’s being sold as an emergency policy package that could create another government agency along with employer/property...
Roberts: When your rent increases so does homelessness
When I sat in my high school economics class, years ago, I struggled with conflicting numbers, lofty principles, and difficult equations. How would macro or micro economics impact a teenager who was more worried about sports and weekend activities? But one high school economics principle stuck with me to this day — the law of...
Who is behind the anti-Google protests?
The chaos inside a recent San Jose City Council meeting was like nothing seen before: Eight people chained themselves to chairs to protest the city selling public land to Google for a massive tech campus. SWAT officers paced the room. Authorities blanketed the hallways all night, tense and ready for an uprising after monitoring social...
Johnny Khamis jumps into state Senate race
Several prominent politicians are lining up to replace termed-out state Sen. Jim Beall in an election that’s more than a year away. San Jose Councilman Johnny Khamis, a former Republican who fled the party in June over Donald Trump’s immigration policies, confirmed that he’ll run for the seat. Khamis discussed the idea with political consultant...