Supporters kick off campaign for new affordable housing tax
Measure E, headed for March ballot, is new real estate tax
SAN JOSE >> Supporters of a proposed new tax that could raise tens of millions of dollars to fund affordable housing projects in San Jose launched their campaign Saturday morning outside the kind of development they want to become a lot more common.
For Raymond Ramsey, his apartment in the 134-unit Second Street Studios is his foundation.
Instead of spending all of his time in “survival mode,” worrying about where he might sleep or how to protect his belongings, Ramsey, who cycled in and out of homelessness for 10 years before moving into the affordable housing development in May, said he can focus on advocating for the thousands of people living on the streets in San Jose.
“We are living proof that the homeless population is neither helpless nor hopeless, and that permanent supportive housing is the key,” Ramsey told a crowd of city officials, affordable housing advocates and other formerly homeless people at the campaign kickoff rally in front of the building he calls home.
“We want more affordable housing like this,” he said.
The strategy that Mayor Sam Liccardo and other supporters say will make that a reality is a new tax on real estate sales worth $2 million or more, which will appear on the ballot as Measure E in the March primary.
“Too many of our neighbors are being pushed out of our city, and too many of our brothers and sisters are being pushed out into the street,” Liccardo said. “We are going to bring them all in.”
But opponents of the measure, and even some of its supporters, have raised the concern that the money the tax would