San Jose has built just 64 of 10,000 housing units planned for 2022

A year after Mayor Sam Liccardo outlined a new housing plan, San Jose has made slow progress in reaching its ambitious goal of adding 10,000 affordable homes by 2022.

How slow? Just 64 units had been completed by the end of the 2017-18 fiscal year this June, according to a new report from the city’s housing department. Another 594 units are under construction and 270 are in predevelopment.

“I’m disappointed,” said Councilman Johnny Khamis. “These are not numbers that I like.”

Jacky Morales-Ferrand, the head of the city’s housing department, said the goal of reaching 10,000 units includes not only units built, but also units under construction or planned for development.

“Therefore, there are 928 units that can be applied to the goal, leaving an additional 9,072 to reach the goal,” Morales-Ferrand wrote in an email.

“We’re getting off to a good start and we’ve been able to do that without having a large funding stream,” she said, noting that the city lost millions of dollars in affordable housing

funds when the state eliminated redevelopment agencies.

Still, Khamis is frustrated by what he sees as the council and city constantly asking the housing department to pivot directions, from a focus on tiny homes to rent ordinances to other issues, which he thinks is slowing down progress. And he’s upset by what he thinks are bad criminal justice policies that have made it more difficult for cities to thrive.

“I feel that the state just dumped a whole mess of people out of our prison system,” he said, “and now we’re just having to deal with them.”

But Jennifer Loving, the chief executive officer of the organization Destination: Home, which was formed in 2008 with the goal of ending homelessness in Santa Clara County, isn’t convinced that reducing the prison population is exacerbating homeless encampments. And she’s more optimistic about the city’s plan to address homelessness. (Morales-Ferrand, the head of the city’s housing department, sits on the Destination: Home board.)

For years, Loving said, San Jose added new homes, but they weren’t necessarily affordable. In the last eight or so years, she said, the city has begun to make adding deeply affordable housing,

and particularly permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless people, a deliberate priority and started working with the county and other groups to increase the supply.

So far, two projects — The Plaza and Vermont House — have provided the first 64 units for formerly homeless people.

“We have such an opportunity right now,” Loving said. “For the first time, we have a shared roadmap for success and the city has

shown that they’re doing their part.”

In addition to the 928 affordable housing units in some phase of the development or entitlement process, the report says there are an estimated 1,682 prospective developments in the city.

Approximately 426 of the 594 units currently in development will be for formerly homeless individuals, with the rest going to people earning up to 50 percent of the area’s medium income,

which is just over $53,000 for two people. According to the report, the city has committed just shy of $31 million to these projects.

The 2nd Street Studios project is expected to finalize construction in October, and Villas on the Park broke ground earlier this year. Both are expected to house formerly homeless people.

The city already manages a portfolio of around 20,000 affordable apartments and is in the process of rehabilitating a number of properties.

Occasionally, the report acknowledges, the city loses affordable housing units. Recently, restrictions that required 29 units at a property known as Foxchase Drive Apartments to be reserved for very low income residents expired. In March, the property owner gave residents a one-year notice, meaning rents can go up to market rates in March 2019.

This November, San Jose residents will vote on Measure V, a $450 million affordable housing bond measure. While Loving and many other housing advocates are pleased the City Council has added the measure to the ballot, Khamis doesn’t think spending more money is going to fix the city’s housing crisis.

“Even with more money, it doesn’t mean we’re going to have homes quickly,” he said.