TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND FROM: Councilmember Campos
CITY COUNCIL
SUBJECT: SEE BELOW DATE: September 29, 2025
Approved Date: 9/29/2025
SUBJECT: City Council Focus Area Semi-Annual Status Report
RECOMMENDATION
1. Approve the staff recommendations.
2. Direct the City Manager to include McKinney-Vento data among the “relevant metrics” in the Reducing Unsheltered Homelessness Focus Area.
3. Direct the City Manager to return to the Neighborhood Services & Education Committee (NSE) with recommendations and tactics for supporting childcare infrastructure as part of the next focus area report.
BACKGROUND
The revised Focus Area framework (“Model 2.0”) represents an important shift in the City’s approach to addressing the systemic challenges prioritized by the City Council. The Administration’s work to define problem statements, long-term goals, and relevant metrics will improve transparency to the community in our progress and enhance accountability if we do not achieve our interim goals. I am grateful to staff for their work and encourage my colleagues to support the underlying framework.
I am recommending two minor additions. Each addition aligns with the Focus Areas, leverages existing workstreams, and elevates the needs of families and youth as we make progress on our long-term goals.
First, recognizing that homelessness and housing instability early in life are indicators of risk of chronic homelessness, we should monitor McKinney-Vento data to track and understand youth and family homelessness in our community. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act is a federal law that requires, among other things, the collection of data regarding homeless children served by local educational agencies. Efforts to support unhoused and unstably housed youth will reduce the likelihood that these students will become chronically unhoused.
Second, the Growing Our Economy Focus Area business development and workforce preparedness “problem area” omits a major impediment to the attraction and retention of talent.
Young professionals starting families and women with young children seeking to reenter the COUNCIL AGENDA: 9/30/2025
FILE: 25-1033
ITEM: 3.4
HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL
September 29, 2025
Subject: City Council Focus Area Semi-Annual Status Report
workforce disproportionally struggle with the high cost of living. After housing, childcare is the second-highest cost with which families contend.
The City’s Children and Youth Services Master Plan (CYS) “serves as a strategic roadmap, guiding policy, practices, investments, and an intentional approach to creating and expanding opportunity pathways, from birth to adulthood, cradle to career” (page 1, CYS Master Plan). The CYS Master Plan “Early Learning and Child Care” Strategic Priority Area includes actionable and quantifiable long-term strategies that, over time, build essential childcare infrastructure, helping relieve this burden. Explicitly and clearly, the “vision and strategic direction of the CYS Master Plan… align with and will be instrumental in fulfilling the outcomes of the City Council Focus Areas” (page 17, CYS Master Plan).
Fortunately, there are several “near-term” goals, achievable within this fiscal year, that support the Growing Our Economy Focus Area efforts. As an example, in addition to the strategies listed in CYS Master Plan Early Learning and Child Care Strategic Priority Area, the City can take actions to implement and comply with Senate Bill (SB) 234 (Skinner), which became law on January 1, 2020. Among other requirements, SB 234 prohibits cities from requiring a business license or payment of a business fee or business tax to run a family childcare home. I have learned that, perhaps unintentionally, San José has collected business taxes from childcare providers. Compliance with state law improves the financial feasibility of operating a childcare business and helps ensure that families can continue to access local childcare. The City may also need to implement AB 752, allowing childcare centers to be co-located with multifamily housing by right, if it is signed into law by the Governor.
The Administration has been reporting to the NSE Committee regarding implementation progress on the CYS Master Plan. The December report to the NSE Committee should include recommendations and tactics that align with the City Council Focus Areas, continue to implement the CYS Master Plan, enhance the competitiveness of our business community, and allow families with children to contribute to our ambitious economic development goals.