San Jose officials and homeless advocates celebrated Wednesday as the city broke ground on a new temporary housing project in a San Jose Police Department parking lot.
The City Council unanimously approved the prefabricated housing project last October. Officials hope residents will be able to move in by the fall.
“It’s not a secret to anyone that we suffer from a shameful scourge of homelessness in this valley,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said Wednesday. “Our path forward will be some combination of innovation and aspiration.”
The 76-unit project, located in a parking lot at the San Jose Police Department headquarters along Guadalupe Parkway, will include 16 prefabricated structures. It will serve as a temporary housing site with a shared kitchen and laundry rooms, a community room, bathrooms, outdoor common areas, space for dogs, security offices, fencing and a smoking area. The site will be managed by LifeMoves.
“We know we need to build a lot more housing,” Liccardo said. “We certainly need permanent supportive housing, but we also need housing that can be built more quickly and more cost effectively.”
Officials say the project will take six months to build at a quarter of the cost of traditional housing. It’s part of San Jose’s ongoing efforts to address the city’s homelessness crisis. The city has seen its unhoused population skyrocket in the last few years. A 2019 survey showed there were 6,100 homeless residents in San Jose—a number local advocates suspect has grown since the pandemic.
As COVID-19 engulfed the area, homeless encampments grew in size and visibility. San Jose attempted to control the sprawling issue through sweeps, while advocates logged a record number of 250 people who died on the streets last year.
San Jose built and opened three emergency housing sites in 2020, lifting more than 300 people off the streets. Last September, Liccardo also announced an ambitious goal of reducing homelessness by 20% by the end of this year through prefab housing construction and converting motels and hotels into housing. Earlier this week, Santa Clara County committed funding to build four new housing projects in San Jose.
“We need to create solutions like this to get those individuals out of the streets and into housing,” Councilmember Raul Peralez said. “This is the solution that is going to help our entire community and we really need to continue to get our community involved in those solutions.”
The housing project in the police parking lot comes as the city is under a tight deadline to clear out one of the Bay Area’s largest encampments located in Columbus Park. The encampment sits under the flight path of the Mineta San Jose International Airport, which violates Federal Aviation Administration mandates. If the encampment is not removed, the city risks losing FAA funding.
The parking lot project is estimated to cost roughly $7.7 million, officials said. San Jose will pool approximately $2.5 million from the American Rescue Plan, $3 million from a 2017 housing discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of 180 disabled individuals against the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, $500,000 from the state and a $1 million grant from nonprofit Destination: Home to pay for the project.
“We are very excited to see the much faster and cheaper build for sites like this,” said Chad Bojorquez, chief program officer of Destination: Home. “The city is really raising the bar and a new threshold for how we incorporate lived experience into our work around solving homelessness.”
The site will also feature San Jose Bridge, a city-run program that hires unhoused people to pick up trash in neighborhoods, to help people get back on their feet, officials said.
Contact Tran Nguyen at [email protected] or follow @nguyenntrann on Twitter.
Our journalism is made possible by reader donations. If you value what we do, please contribute and help keep this vital resource accessible to all.
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.
We’re changing the face of journalism by providing an innovative model for delivering independent news to the nation’s 10th largest city.
It seems they tend to use the housing for the nicer homeless and don’t address or help those with “crazy eyes”.
Well at least they are moving in the direction of reality as $100,000. per unit is better than the last decades plan of $800,000. per unit. We only need an additional 2 BILLION plus (and growing) to house the current homeless population…..??
Yes, we still haven’t started to address the root of the problem which is drug use and mental illness. Not really sure why when the cause of the problem is so obvious.
Regarding the cost of housing, that’s all true but it doesn’t scale, and they know that. You can’t move a few temporary trailers in anywhere in San Jose and solve this problem because they take up too much space on the ground. They’re basically just flushing money down the toilet on this project to get time on TV. I used to think we could just build up with old fashioned high-rise complexes, but it could very well be too late. With say 25,000 homeless on the streets in San Jose today we’ll never be able to build our way out of this problem.
Ahhhh, great initiative , but folks “Gold Shovels” for a ground breaking – really??? Could that money have been put towards another block of houses perchance.
you know those aren’t really made of gold, right? It’s spray paint.
The same Police Parking lot that lots of bay are police basically park their RVs and live in so they avoid commuting weekdays amongst horrible congestion? Is there any chance this housing is going to be used by anyone other than the police?
SaN Jose lost control 6. years ago they continue to come to sj from other cities all over that do not allow what’s going on here …. have know idea who they are…Yep San Jose pd parking lots in the fall??…fall??? Ok fine so is Sunnyvale Los Gatos Cupertino pds going to house homeless in their lots too?? The sheriff’s lot good size They have a lot of space can handle campers in their pd lots too …talk to their council gov get them on board …and remember 2 most ago this ===== gov statement. Send this nation’s homeless to calif we will house and care for them now ya have ..no end in site San Jose can’t do it alone!! that was mentioned in meetings we attended 2017 5 years ago same .issue.. quit blaming covid …. As we see posts now a lot of safety concerns…. sad. …. just be aware Be carefull
maybe all homeless housing should be placed on police parking lots. that way police can keep an eye on them since most of the homeless by definition are committing crime.
$7.7 million. Remember when a group built a tent city for homeless on Ruff Drive about 2 blocks from this location a couple of years ago, with showers, bathrooms, security and fencing, and the city made them close within a couple of weeks? That was a much better model, and would cost in the thousands, not millions. But of course that would not put money into the pockets of the “non profits” gouging the city for the $8M, some of which finds its way into political donations for their re-election. Follow the money, it isn’t going to the homeless.
WOW, no more comments? Was it because I pointed out a real problem regarding market manipulation. I will just address the needs now regarding MODERATE and ABOVE MODERATE shortages.
In a recent report (https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiMDA2YjBmNTItYzYwNS00ZDdiLThmMGMtYmFhMzc1YTAzMDM4IiwidCI6IjJiODI4NjQ2LWIwMzctNGZlNy04NDE1LWU5MzVjZDM0Y2Y5NiJ9&pageName=ReportSection3da4504e0949a7b7a0b0) the progress regarding older numbers were in the county we provided only 16.9% of the MODERATE housing need, which meant that we had a 83.1% SHORTAGE, thus that likely if you take the shortage and allocate 2% cost fro every 1 % lack of supply, you can see an inflation of housing costs reaching 166% of the REAL value because of SUPPLY SIDE DESIGNED SHORTAGES.
Regarding ABOVE MODERATE hosing need the county achieves 43.8% of the need leaving a shortage of 56.2% which likely causing inflated costs at 112%.
And just to add the other parts to complete it. The VERY LOW INCOME housing was achieving 24.9% meaning that the shortage is 75.1% thus likely causing those costs inflation at 150%
And for LOW INCOME housing it was achieving 14.4% with a shortage of 85.6% likely resulting in cost inflation of 170% for housing costs.
COSTA HAWKINS was supposed to solve this problem, it was a FALSE NARRATIVE that resulted in NO PRODUCTIVITY. SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS IS A RIP OFF!!!
Your email address will not be published.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
We’re changing the face of journalism by providing an innovative model for delivering independent news to the nation’s 10th largest city.
Now in the App Store and Google Play
San José residents deserve a trusted source for unbiased, independent political news. And we’re here to provide it.
San José Spotlight is the city’s first nonprofit, community-supported digital news organization. We’re changing the face of journalism by providing an innovative model for delivering reliable, truthful news to the nation’s 10th largest city. We’re partnering with you – the readers – to make it happen. This is your newsroom.
San José Spotlight is a project of the San José News Bureau, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization | Tax ID: 82-5355128. | All donations are tax-deductible
Your gift to San José Spotlight today will be TRIPLED!
Your support allows us to staff amazing reporters like Tran Nguyen, who works tirelessly to bring you in-depth stories that directly affect your life.
No thanks, I’m not interested!
Thanks, I’m not interested or already a subscriber