Group hopes to keep S.J. residents here

13 policy initiatives noted, including lowering rent control increase cap

As thousands of residents struggle to keep up with the region’s skyrocketing housing costs and developers look to drastically reshape the city, San Jose leaders and community advocates are closer to forging ahead with a plan to stop residents from being priced out of the area.

More than 1.5 million Bay Area residents — nearly 1 in 5 — fled the region between 2010 and 2016. Nearly 71% of San Jose residents know someone who has been displaced, and 54% fear that they themselves also will be forced to leave in the future, according to a recent survey.

Hoping to curb that trend, a coalition of San Jose leaders and stakeholders have released a report with 13 recommended policy initiatives for the city to enact aimed at protecting residents and their ability to remain in their communities.

Some of the immediate recommendations include providing tenants facing eviction with legal assistance, creating a housing hotline for residents who need assistance while facing a housing emergency and lowering the city’s annual rent control increase cap from 5% to the consumer price index, which has hovered

around 3.5% over the past decade.

“We’re hearing more and more stories of people who have been a part of this community for years who are now being pushed out to Tracy, Los Banos, Modesto and beyond,” Jeffery Buchanan, public policy director for Working Partnerships USA, said in an interview Thursday. “Everyone has a story about someone impacted, and it’s time for us as a city to look at how we can stabilize our communities.”

The report — dubbed “Community Strategy Report on Ending Displacement in San Jose” — was the product of a yearlong, public-private partnership between city officials from the housing and planning departments, Councilmember Magdalena Carrasco and leaders at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley and Working Partnerships USA.

Over the past year, the group worked with nearly a dozen local community organizations — including SOMOS Mayfair, Destination: Home and Vecinos Activos — to hear the stories of residents across the city who have been displaced or fear being displaced due to redevelopment and rising rents.

The report — and a larger effort by city officials to deliver the city’s first comprehensive report on antidisplacement initiatives — comes at a time when the effects of redevelopment within the city are more present than ever.

“In reality, we probably should have done this earlier because we’re seeing these investments and we know residents are already getting displaced,” Jacky Morales-Ferrand, the city’s director of housing, said in an interview Thursday.

Developers and tech companies, such as Mountain View- based Google, are pouring more money into San Jose than ever before. Over the next 10 years, the city is preparing to see some of the largest public works projects in its history — the BART extension through downtown, the expansion of the Mineta San Jose International Airport and the construction of one of the largest transit hubs in the region at Diridon station.

Google earlier this month purchased a home within its proposed transit-village footprint near the Diridon station and SAP Center for nearly triple what the seller had paid just a year earlier.

Yet at the same time, more than 6,000 people are sleeping in cars, shelters or on the streets every night in San Jose — a 42% increase from two years prior, according to the county’s annual count of its homeless population. Nearly a third of the county’s homeless population said they became homeless because they lost a job.

Nearly 10,000 residents living in an apartment complex of three or more units received eviction notices during the 2018-19 fiscal year, according to data obtained by the city through its apartment rent ordinance.

And while the city set an ambitious goal of building 10,000 affordable units by 2022, only 1,640 have been constructed. With less than two years left until the deadline, even the city’s housing director admitted in an interview Thursday that the goal won’t be attained given the city’s current resources.

Exacerbating the circumstances that have contributed to more residents being displaced are historical discriminatory practices such as redlining and racially restrictive covenants previously used in neighborhoods of Willow Glen, Rose Garden and Naglee Park, the report found. The city’s neighborhoods facing the most displacement align closely with those that had historically been redlined, according to the report.

“Displacement and homelessness are an indicator of the health of our community, and our community is sick,” said Jennifer Loving, the CEO of Destination: Home, an organization that has partnered with the city and county to house homeless people. “We need to do more to lift up the health of our community, which is truly about creating affordability for the people who are part of the current and historic fabric of our communities.”

Although 41% of San Jose households are considered extremely low-, very low- or low-income, less than 6% of the city’s housing stock is deed-restricted as affordable, according to the report.

San Jose is home to about 21,000 deed-restricted affordable housing units and 50,000 housing units that are market-rate but still affordable for median-income wage earners, the report found. Yet all of those housing units are in jeopardy of being demolished and redeveloped for market-rate units if the city does not increase protection.

Nadia Aziz, directing attorney for housing at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, said the city needs to look at preserving the affordable housing that the city already has as a major piece of its anti- displacement puzzle.

“We need to produce more housing, but we can’t put all of our eggs in one basket,” Aziz said. “By the time we build it, people are going to be displaced.”

In addition to short-term solutions, the community report released this month outlined a range of longterm recommendations and initiatives that focused on the production of affordable housing, the protection of low-income residents and the preservation of affordable housing.

The long- term recommendations outlined called for developing a fund for the city to acquire and rehabilitate affordable housing units, exploring the feasibility of using community land trusts to preserve the longterm availability of affordable housing and pursuing more avenues to gather funding to build affordable housing.

Over the next month, San Jose city staff will be conducting community meetings to gather feedback from more stakeholders, such as developers, property managers, real estate agents and health organizations. Based on the additional feedback received, the staff will then present a final anti- displacement strategy proposal to the City Council by the end of March.