City Council Committee Members
Community and Economic Development Committee
City of San José
200 East Santa Clara St.
San José, CA 95113
Re: Proposed Changes to City of San Jos é Housing Siting Policy
Dear members of the City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee:
We write to ask you to recommend to the full City Council that it adopt the Housing Department staff’s proposed revisions to the Affordable Housing Siting Policy, as written in the Housing Department staff memorandum, dated November 18, 2022.
This cover letter was prepared by the Housing Justice Workgroup of the nonprofit Race Equity Action Leadership (REAL) Coalition. We are submitting our original letter dated October 3, 2022, with this cover letter because we continue to maintain our position, thoroughly documented in that letter, that affordable housing should be equitably located and funded in San Jos é. We are also attaching the housing siting vision statement adopted by the broader REAL Coalition.
Since our October letter was submitted, Housing Department staff (Staff) has updated the Affordable Housing Siting Policy (Siting Policy); we acknowledge and support Staff’s updated proposed policy. We commend Staff for being responsive to our comments and other comments from the community about previous versions of this policy. These changes recognize that the need for affordable housing is great throughout the City, especially in communities experiencing displacement pressures.
We also specifically support the following recommended changes to the siting policy:
A. Eliminating earlier language that stereotyped lower -income neighborhoods and communities of color.
B. Focusing on both funding and incentivizing development in historically segregated areas that have excluded affordable housing development, now called Affordable Housing Expansion Areas, rather than closing off other areas that also need additional affordable housing.
C. Committing to identifying funding and other resources that would be directed into neighborhoods that have been historically redlined and disinvested, now called Continued Investment Areas.
We appreciate the Staff for its commitment to the ethnic ally, racially, socioeconomically, and otherwise diverse communities that call this City home.
We ask you, as our leaders, to support these policy recommendations because they center belonging and justice.
Regards, the following members of the REAL Housing Justice Workgroup
Jaime Alvarado
Alum Rock Urban Village Advocates (ARUVA)
Matt King
Sacred Heart Community Service
Kenneth Rosales
Regina Williams
SV@Home
Claire Kennedy
Kyra Kazantzis
Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits (SVCN)
Gabriel Hernandez
Sí Se Puede Collective
Kylie Clark
Josh Selo
West Valley Community Services
cc: City Council, Mayor, Staff
October 3, 2022
City of San José
Housing Department
200 East Santa Clara Street
San José, CA 95113
Dear Rachel and Jacky:
Re: Draft City of San Jose Housing Siting Policy
This letter was prepared by the Housing Justice Workgroup of the nonprofit Race Equity Action Leadership (REAL) Coalition. We write to provide comments on the City of San Josė’s (the City) Draft Affordable Housing Siting Policy (Siting Policy).
The REAL community of nonprofit leaders and allies has been meeting since June 2020 to use our positional power to advocate for a more racially-just and equitable society; to establish a peer network of leaders committed to fighting white supremacy and systemic racism in ourselves and our institutions; and to hold each other accountable to the promises we made in the Nonprofit Racial Equity Pledge. The REAL coalition is broadly representative of the nonprofit community including human and community services, behavioral health and health, arts and culture, domestic violence, older adults, food distribution, education, environmental, farming, legal, disability rights, LGTBQ rights, ethnic, immigrant rights, housing and homelessness, criminal justice reform, urban planning, and intermediary organizations, and others. Over 125 organizations have participated in the REAL Coalition.
The REAL Coalition stands with the comments provided by the Alum Rock Urban Village Advocates (ARUVA) during the previous City Council discussion on the Siting Policy. The REAL Coalition has also consulted with the Sí Se Puede Collective in formulating our position.
REAL Coalition’s Position and Recommendations on the City of San José’s Current Rendition of the Affordable Housing Siting Policy The City's Siting Policy should truly commit to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing by actively reversing the legacy of the racially-biased policies of redlining, segregation, and discrimination that have shaped San José and have negatively impacted the well-being of its residents of color. Starting last year, the City’s discussion about locating affordable housing was dominated by maps that divided the City into under-resourced or high opportunity, impoverished or wealthy, and crime-ridden or safe areas. The City needs to stop classifying our neighborhoods into simplistic and harmful categories based on data that is undergirded by the criminalization of poverty; similarly, the City should stop reinforcing the inherently discriminatory idea that neighborhoods are “burdened” by the presence of lower-income individuals and families. We believe that the City must focus both on expanding access to areas with resources and investing resources in communities that have been harmed by past and present disinvestments from local, state, and federal governments, as well as the private sector.
Therefore, we reject the current Siting Policy as currently proposed. We disagree with the City Council’s direction to use crime and lower-income levels as measures in the Siting Policy that would exclude affordable housing development in historically-disenfranchised communities of color. We further request that the City cease the exclusionary use of “categories” and instead call for a Siting Policy that recognizes the need for affordable housing in both historically-exclusive neighborhoods and historically-disinvested communities. In short, we want diverse choices so everyone can access affordable housing throughout the City.
Disinvesting in affordable housing in historically-disadvantaged neighborhoods causes displacement and destabilizes families, neighborhoods, and the City as a whole. It also moves residents of those neighborhoods away from resources they may very well value and have built over several generations, such as employment, public transportation, religious and spiritual institutions and sites, cultural institutions, affordable retailers, their extended family networks, and caregivers for community members with disabilities. The City’s focus on relocating people with lower incomes (forced or otherwise) must end.
Yes, the City should remove barriers to building affordable housing in neighborhoods that have been exclusive, and provide incentives for developers to build in areas that have not been accessible to lower-income families and people in other marginalized groups. But the City should not at the same time give up on historically-disadvantaged neighborhoods by encoding the idea that no one would want to or should live there. In order to create just and equitable communities, the City of San José should be working towards neighborhood parity, where historically-redlined communities–and all communities–have upward mobility, educational attainment, physical and mental health, and other positive outcomes, especially for children.
Thank you for considering the comments submitted by the following 38 nonprofit and ally members of the REAL coalition.
Sincerely,
Walter Wilson
African American Cultural Center
Maritza Maldonado
Amigos de Guadalupe Center
for Justice and Empowerment
MyLinh Pham
Asian American Center of Santa Clara
County
Richard Konda
Asian Law Alliance
Sparky Harlan
Bill Wilson Center
Jahmal Williams
Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet
Gregory Kepferle
Catholic Charities of Santa Clara
County
Frederick Ferrer
Child Advocates of Silicon Valley
Pete Settelmayer
Downtown College Prep
Shawn Gerth
Educare Silicon Valley
Beth Leary
Family Supportive Housing, Inc.
Jason Su
Guadalupe River Park Conservancy
Andrea Urton
HomeFirst
Susan Frazer
Jewish Family Services of Silicon
Valley
Quency Phillips
Lighthouse Silicon Valley
Gisela Bushey
Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen
Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez
MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y
Cultura Latino Americana
David Mineta
Momentum for Health
Reza Odabaee
Pars Equality Center
Heather Cleary
Peninsula Family Service
Nathan Svoboda
Project MORE
Dontae Lartigue
Razing the Bar
Kathy Cordova
Recovery Café San Jose
Poncho Guevara
Sacred Heart Community Service
Carlos Rosario
Santa Clara County Black Lawyers
Association
Jessica Paz-Cedillos & Vanessa Shieh
School of Arts and Culture at MHP
Gabriel Hernandez
Sí Se Puede Collective
Shiloh Ballard
Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition
Mary Gloner
Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits
Kyra Kazantzis
Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits
Elizabeth Gonzalez
Silicon Valley De-Bug
Bob Nuñez
SJSV NAACP
Saul Ramos & Victor Vasquez
SOMOS Mayfair
Regina Celestin Williams
SV@Home
Yvonne Maxwell
Ujima Adult and Family Services
Kevin Zwick & Kevin Jenkins
United Way Bay Area
Josh Selo
West Valley Community Services