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Housing is a complicated, nuanced and deeply personal issue for so many of us. Whether you can’t afford it or you can’t imagine how your neighborhood might change if we had more of it.
In recent weeks housing has been the main topic of conversation at City Hall, and many of you have reached out to share how you feel about the General Plan updates city staff brought forward for Council review.
Here’s the bottom line: we are building in San José and we will continue to build in San José because cities evolve, change and make room for more people over time. But you should hold City Hall accountable for building in a way that works for our community.
On Tuesday, we reviewed staff’s recommendations to update our General Plan by aligning the city’s zoning (which determines how many homes can be built per acre in different parts of the city) with state laws and requirements.
It’s important to note that in recent years the State has taken significant local control away from housing policy in an attempt to increase homebuilding and reduce costs. SB 9, for example, effectively allows a property owner to build up to four units on virtually any residential lot in the city, equaling a potential total of roughly 32 units per acre even though the city’s historical zoning allowed just 8 units per acre. Moreover, the City’s Housing Element, which must be certified by the State in order to retain any local control over residential zoning and permitting, requires the City to increase residential density in the city to be closer in line with new state laws like SB 9.
That said, a number of us on the Council asked staff to a) study a wide range of possible densities which might vary by location and distance from transit, and b) continue conversations with the State’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to better understand how we can stay in compliance with state requirements while also managing the concerns many of us share regarding transportation, parking, noise, infrastructure readiness, and so forth.
Importantly, we directed staff to explore additional guardrails for neighborhoods in parts of our city whose residents have the longest commutes and are poorly served by public transit. Specifically, we’ll look into:
- Traffic access and neighborhood ingress and egress
- Police and fire response times and other public safety considerations
- Public transit and mobility options
- Parking requirements, where legally allowed by the State
- Development and design standards
There is still significant analysis ahead of us before any final policy comes back to the Council, and I will continue pushing for an approach that meets our housing obligations while accounting for the concerns we have about our neighborhoods.
I want to be clear: it may feel good to vote “no” on staff’s recommendations, but ultimately, we will have to come to an agreement here. We will have to shape this policy to make it work for us. If we refuse, the state has the ability to de-certify our Housing Element and allow developers to build wherever they want. And I promise you, that’s not what anyone wants. If you have questions for our state about the requirements they institute at the city-level, you can reach out to California’s Department of Housing and Community Development right here.
And one final point: at this time, I believe the biggest barrier to building housing in San José isn’t our zoning. It’s our high cost of construction.
Over the coming years, every level of government has to take a hard look at the cost of construction, find ways of reducing it, and then build up where it makes sense — downtown, urban villages, and near transit.
We’ve already pulled many of the levers of affordability that exist at the city-level — reducing or cutting local fees, streamlining permitting, and funding affordable housing. Now, we need the state to do more.
That means addressing CEQA, which adds months of delay and litigation risk, and therefore, tens of thousands in extra costs per unit, and streamlining the building code — which seems to only grow and never shrink.
We have a lot of work to do to ensure the people who call California home, the people who want to call California home, and the people who have yet to be born in California can afford to stay here. That requires change at all levels of government. And I will continue to do my part here at the city-level on behalf of all of you.
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