SAN JOSE HOUSING

The housing market and upcoming revisions of the city’s general plan are cited in the Mercury News story about the recent pullout of Coyote Valley, announced on Tuesday, March 19. It is unclear how long developer designs on the area south of Almaden and Evergreen will remain dormant. The Merc’s report suggests that 25,000 homes were planned.

In other news, keep your eyes peeled around the Bay Area and California for previews of San Jose’s upcoming debates about its inclusionary zoning policies. Oakland has been vigorously debating Inclusionary Zoning in city council, and San Francisco will start it own inclusionary zoning brouhaha soon starting in a month or two. Inclusionary zoning policies generally mandate a certain percentage of new housing development be “affordable.”

The policies use state housing laws as a guideline, but can be tweaked in terms of what income brackets they target based on the area’s median income and who the city wants to address. The mandates are for the percentage of the new development that will be “affordable” and the amount of subsidy that will be given to offset the market rate for the unit. (A designation could be, for example, 15% affordable units for a given development at 85% of the area median income.)  San Jose currently mandates affordable housing in areas that fall under the city’s redevelopment plans.

The plans fall within a range of housing development tools to prevent workers from leaving the city, and to maintain a sustainable workforce. While some housing will be provided for very low income individuals and families, the study sessions at city council have revealed that very low income housing is not a priority for the city: they would likely run into political, bureaucratic, and economic snafus if an extensive low income program were launched. The study sessions and inclusionary zoning policy plan are being run and designed by David Rosen and Associates, an Oakland consulting firm.

News flash!

The City of San Jose has just posted the draft inclusionary Housing Economic study on their website at http://www.sjhousing.org/ (click on the “Inclusionary Housing Study” link on the right-hand side of the page).

 This study measures the economic effect of potential city-wide inclusionary housing.

There will be a public meeting to discuss this study on March 26th from 6pm to 8pm at City Hall (Wing rooms 118-120).

At the March 13th Housing and Community Development Commission (HCDC) meeting, the issue of language being a potential barrier to CDBG funding was brought forth by Commissioner Bock.  Being a son of immigrants and seeing first hand how difficult living in the United States can be for my parents due to English being their second language, I appreciated Commissioner Bock’s sensitivity to the issue. 

However, specifically to the CDBG application process, how would we be able to address this in a cost effective manner?  Should the CDBG application be produced in multiple languages?  Should applicants be allowed to submit their application in multiple languages? 

The challenges of reviewing dozens of application in different languages would create a logistical nightmare requiring multilingual evaluators, not to mention the overhead to address this one issue.  HUD, the source of CDBG funding, allows for up to 20% administrative overhead.  The Housing Department of San Jose is currently running at 13% allowing for the remaining 7% going directly to client services.  Even 1% additional overhead could potential mean close to $100,000 of service being taken away from our communities.

In addition, when the city of San Jose contracts their services to nonprofit organizations, should it not be the responsibility of the nonprofit organization to have the resource capacity to be able to engage a city staff in English?  I am a strong proponent of language translation and cultural sensitivity/proficiency when the city engages the public directly.  I am also a strong proponent for supporting nonprofit organizations who work on the front line and truly understand the needs of the community and be able to provide the services in the client’s primary language with cultural sensitivity.  If nonprofit organizations are going to be providing these critically necessary services to our communities, shouldn’t their role be to bridge the gap between tax payer dollars and their communities, and a responsibility of being that bridge is English proficiency? 

Every time I see my parents, a part of the day is spent reviewing their mail with them, looking at different insurance plans, helping them navigate this world.  If I wasn’t here to do that for them, I would hope that there was a service provided in the community for them so that they wouldn’t feel and be so lost.  If that service had the same language issues that my parents have, what help would that be? 

On February 13^th, Aaron, Tamon, and I were among the 40+ attendees, including many developers, at the City of San Jose’s inclusionary housing meeting at the Northside Community Center.

David Rosen and Associates (DRA), the consulting team hired by the City of San Jose, presented the pro forma budgets for each of the housing prototypes modeled in the economic analysis of inclusionary housing impacts. Most of the meeting was spent getting feedback from developers on whether or not the budget line items were reasonable assumptions. Some of the key points discussed were:

• The pro forma budgets should accurately reflect the actual current cost of developing housing
• The City and the consultants want to make the process and the numbers as transparent as possible.

The developers are encouraged to review the pro forma budgets at: http://www.sjhousing.org/link/whatsnew.html and submit comments to Leah Rothstein at leah@draconsultants.com by February 20^th.