Item (d)2: City Council Focus Area Status
Report: Building More Housing
Executing Work While Building the
Infrastructure for Long-Term Impact
Community and Economic Development Committee
December 15, 2025
City of San José
City Manager’s Office
Rosalynn Hughey, Deputy City Manager, Building More Housing Chris Burton, Director, Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department Erik Soliván, Director, Housing Department
Focus Areas 2.0 – City Council Approved Evolution
Agenda
1 2
3 Execution as Learning – Focus Area Portfolio Update
What’s Next? Focus Areas and the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget Process 2 We are cultivating an organizational mindset
of learning and continuous improvement that
will drive results for our community
▪ While data support storytelling, numbers alone do not show progress and require context setting
▪ Learning in public builds trust and accountability
▪ Retrospection contributes to learning and understanding ▪ Progress requires humility, iteration, and commitment (and a work environment that ensures our staff feel
supported to test new approaches, identify challenges
early, and learn openly)
3 Focus Area 2.0 – City Council Approved Evolution
Philosophy Behind 2.0
We are cultivating an organizational mindset of
learning and continuous improvement…with
different types of questions
▪ What are we seeing in our metrics to date? How are we making sense of what we’re seeing?
▪ What are we learning?
▪ What are we observing? What are we missing? What’s
getting in the way?
▪ What kind of support would be helpful?
▪ What will we adjust in the next cycle to have the most impact? 4 Focus Area 2.0 – City Council Approved Evolution
Philosophy Behind 2.0
Focus Area 2.0 – City Council Approved Evolution
Building the Infrastructure for Long-Term Impact (June – December 2025) Month (2025)
July -
September
Activities focused on people, processes, and technology to sustain new learning infrastructure September 30
Milestone Purpose
Council adoption of Model 2.0 Formalized governance and accountability structure
October -
November
Completion of retrospective trainings and dashboard buildouts • Provided retrospective trainings for execution leaders in each Focus Area; training on performance leadership
• Held first monthly retrospectives in each Focus Area
• Conducted user experience interviews for published dashboards • Finalized data structure and collected data sets for dashboards Capacity building and operational
rollout
December Committee briefings and launch of first iteration of dynamic published dashboards
Community learning
Completion of FY 2025-2026 logic models and retrospective training series • Conducted staff workshops and deep-dive consultations • Articulated Long-Term Goals, Problem Areas, Change Initiatives, and Near-Term Goals
• Established indicators and metrics to serve as feedback loops • Initiated implementation of select change initiatives Established foundations for shared
understanding and learning
5 Logic models are the backbone
of Focus Areas 2.0
They help us clarify how our work is
intended to create impact by clearly aligning
strategies with problems and articulating
testable assumptions that we can learn from
and adapt to.
6 Each near-term goal has
success measures that
help tell the story of
whether the change
initiatives within the goal
are making an impact;
they serve as feedback
loops. In addition to a
goal’s success
measure(s), individual
change initiatives have
operational measures to
track progress.
Indicators measure progress
towards long-term goals. Indicators
NearTerm
Goals
Near-term goals are things the City aims to get done over the next fiscal year to help reach bigger, long-term goals. They are clear, measurable, and realistic, and help guide the day-to-day work of City departments.
These goals include early signs of progress that show what’s working, what’s not, and where changes might be needed.
Change initiatives are chosen for each near-term goal based on a hypothesis for how they can help the City achieve the goal. Some may involve work the team has done successfully before but needs to be assessed, while others may be new ideas worth testing.
Metrics
Long-term goals focus on big-picture results that matter to residents (outcomes). These goals look at past outcomes to show how the city is doing over time. The progress is measured with clear indicators.
Long-Term
Goal
Problem
These are common, well-understood challenges that help explain what’s needed to reach long-term goals. Each problem connects clearly to a near-term goal and a project that you think can help fix it. 7 Focus Area 2.0 – City Council Approved Evolution
Logic Model Structure
Goal Status
Green-On track
Yellow-At risk/Pivot
Red-Off track
Not Started
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
Entitlements, Building Permits Issued, and Certificates of Occupancy Priority Areas
Near-Term
Goals
(FY 2025-
2026)
Indicators
Long-Term Goal. Meet residents' housing needs across income levels by making San José a great place to build housing.
1. Land Use, Policy, and Regulation 2. Development Services Process 3. Linking Land and Capital
1.1 Complete task force process for General Plan
4-Year Review by June 2026.
1.2 Develop Downtown Ministerial permit process
and include analysis in October CED Citywide
Planning Activities Status Report.
2.1 Analyze options to report on development
services timeliness across the pipeline and report
findings to the CED Committee in December
2025.
2.2 Bring standard conditions of approval and
CEQA process guidelines to City Council by Q3
FY 2025-2026.
2.3 Conduct initial analysis of projects affected by
state CEQA streamlining statutes by June 2026.
2.4 Complete development fee estimator work
by adding multi-family new construction by
December 2025.
3.1 Cost of Development City Council
Study Session on affordable and
market rate development data analysis in
December 2025.
3.2 Review a portfolio of entitled housing projects
with various requirements that present financial
feasibility challenges in today’s market. Present
analysis to CED Committee in February 2026.
3.3 Provide data analysis on the effectiveness of
the market-rate incentive and affordable financing
housing programs and bring resulting program
adjustments to City Council in Q3 FY 2025-2026.
3.4 Provide alternative financing programs
to preserve housing at all income levels.
8 Change
Initiatives
• General Plan Four-Year review
• Downtown Ministerial
• Housing Catalyst Work Plan
• CEQA permit standards
• Development fee estimator
• AI Streamlining tool
• Multi-family Housing Incentive and Downtown
Incentive market rate housing programs
• Affordable unit financing
• Cost of Development Study Session
• Public-Private Partnerships
Performance Dashboard
Building enough housing to meet demand in San José is complex.
There are numerous state and local regulations related to housing development, and projects are reviewed across several different departments. It's also expensive to build housing here. We are thinking strategically about how to pull all levers possible to get housing built.
This is how we're meeting the moment.
The City will foster a system where policy facilitates housing production, developments are processed efficiently, and building housing is financially feasible.
Building Permit Issued Certificate of Occupancy Introduction and
Indicators
Building More Housing Focus Area
Long-Term Goal.
Housing Units Entitled
9 Meet residents’ housing needs across income levels by making San José a great place to build housing. 0 400
800
1200
1600
2000
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1
Market Rate Affordable
FY 2023-2024 FY 2024-2025 FY 2025-2026 FY 2025-2026
0 400
800
1200
1600
2000
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1
Market Rate Affordable ADU
FY 2023-2024 FY 2024-2025
0 400
800
1200
1600
2000
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1
Market Rate Affordable ADU
Quarterly RHNA Target: 1944
FY 2023-2024 FY 2024-2025 FY 2025-2026
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
Long-Term Goal. Meet residents’ housing needs across income levels by making San José a great place to build housing.
Problem Area 1. Land Use, Policy, and Regulation. Land use and housing policies are complex with many stakeholders and quality of life goals.
The City has been a regional leader in
adopting pro-housing policies and this is
reflected in land uses.
There is still not enough housing being
built to meet demand across income
levels.
We need to get creative in how we
facilitate more housing production.
10 Dry Creek Crossing 2388 South Bascom Ave
CRP Affordable Housing and Community Development
1. Land Use, Policy, and Regulation. Housing policy is complex with many stakeholders and quality of life goals.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
• New Opportunity Sites
for all types of housing
• # estimated future
market rate or
affordable housing units
enabled by policy
changes
11 Second Street Studios 1144 South 2nd Street
First Community Housing, photo by Bernard Andre
Goal 1.1 Complete task force
process for General Plan 4-Year
Review by June 2026.
Wins
• Completed study session inform the taskforce,
Council, and the public on the background and
goals of the 4-Year Review.
• Completed 2nd Task Force Meeting – Urban
Village implementation
• December 15th community outreach meeting
Learnings/Adjustments
• Use of the Planning Commission as the task
force for the four-year review process is
effective and enables staff to drive a timely
process.
• To facilitate additional community input, staff
have developed an online form that residents
can access during the task force meeting to
provide input.
Goal 1.2 Develop
Downtown Ministerial permit process
and include analysis in October CED
Citywide Planning Activities Status
Report.
Wins
• October Community and Economic
Development Committee Citywide Planning
Activities memo included update on
Downtown Ministerial work.
• Staff needed to reevaluate the project given
the CEQA streamlining contained in AB 130
that became law in July.
Learnings/Adjustments
• Staff concluded that there remains value in
continuing the Downtown Ministerial work.
• Staff is initiating the environmental review
process necessary to complete the work and
will complete the permit process by the end of
the fiscal year.
How will we know if
this is working?
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
Long-Term Goal. Meet residents’ housing needs across income levels by making San José a great place to build housing.
2. Development Services Process: There is an opportunity to streamline and improve analysis and communication of our development services process.
We exceeded our timeliness goal for multi-family
residential building permit reviews the last two
quarters of FY 2024-2025.
Although the City works across teams and departments
to coordinate project reviews, building housing in San
José is still seen as overly complex. Most projects are delivered successfully, but many developers are
unaware of tools to track project status, leading to
growing concerns.
We need to better communicate our progress in
delivering timely and efficient services to customers.
12 1860 Alum Rock Apartments
Charities Housing
2. Development Services Process. Improve analysis and communication of development services process.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
How will we drive results this fiscal year?
Development Services Departments report numerous performance measures related to the timeliness of the City's services throughout the development process. While collecting and reporting this information is important at the operational level for departments to track, they don't clearly address concerns from developers that their projects take too long to get through the entire process.
What do we hope to learn?
We hope to provide a comprehensive evaluation of what information we currently provide that can benefit customers and what information we would like to provide moving forward to enhance the customer experience. Our goal is to create performance measures that track and holistically communicate how the City performs across the entire development services pipeline.
The right metric will be replicable and manageable for staff to pull quarterly. Most importantly, it will communicate our overall performance clearly to the public.
How will we know if this is working?
Success Measures:
• Recommended performance measure(s)
• Feedback from key customers on the utility of the performance measure(s) How can we better
communicate project
timelines and
timeliness?
13 Goal 2.1 Analyze options to report on development services timeliness across the pipeline and report findings to the CED Committee in December 2025.
2. Development Services Process. Improve analysis and communication of development services process.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
How did we evaluate our timeliness?
• Staff manually pulled building permit timelines for three affordable and two market-rate housing developments.
What did we learn?
• Affordable housing with 20+ units moves through the building permit process quickly, surpassing time targets. Prioritizing this work, extends timelines for (market rate) other types of housing and non-housing development. • Pulling this data is very manual and time-consuming. This round was limited to just building permits; expanding out to planning and/more projects would increase staff workload.
• Collaborating on project schedule with affordable developers helps with coordination. Incentives are different for developers for affordable projects; they need to meet deadlines for funding. 14
Goal 2.1 Analyze options to report on development services timeliness across the pipeline and report findings to the CED Committee in December 2025.
Affordable
• City removes days from
the process
• Developers on funding
timelines
Market Rate
• City adds days to the
process
• Projects don’t have fixed
timelines
Pre-Application
Planning Entitlement /
Environmental
Review
PW Grading,
Off-Site,
Transportation
Building Permit
Review and Issuance
Construction &
Inspection
2. Development Services Process. Improve analysis and communication of development services process.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
15 Goal 2.1 Analyze options to report on development services timeliness across the pipeline and report findings to the CED Committee in December 2025.
Affordable Market Rate
Address 525 N.
Capitol
Ave.
797 S.
Almaden
Lupina
802 S 1st St.
Martha
Gardens
100 Fuyu Dr.
Seely Bldg A
498 West San
Carlos St.
Aquino
Days subtracted/added by the City
compared with time targets -34 -24 -48 +14 +35
Days added/subtracted by the applicant
compared with agreed upon timeline +37 +37 0 N/A N/A
Business Days with the City 75 84 40 152 117
Business Days with the Applicant 135 203 39 120 82
Total Business Days 210 287 79 272 199
Time with the City vs. time with the applicant during the Building Permit process.
2. Development Services Process. Improve analysis and communication of development services process.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
The Fielden 525 N Capitol
Community Development Partners
Goal 2.2 Bring standard conditions
of approval and CEQA process
guidelines to City Council by Q3 FY
2025-2026.
Wins
• Consultants and staff will begin outreach
in January at the Developers Roundtable.
Learnings/Adjustments
• Staff identified the opportunity to further
standardize permit conditions and CEQA
procedures via technical guidelines to create a
more predictable experience for developers.
• Moving forward, we hope to learn more about
maximizing time and cost savings for both the
City and developers.
Goal 2.3 Conduct initial analysis of
projects affected by state CEQA
streamlining statutes by June 2026.
Wins
• We've gotten noticing out to projects
that qualify and began
coordinating with applicants.
• The first project utilizing this state law was
approved in early December.
Learnings/Adjustments
• Implementation of the CEQA streamlining
provisions under Assembly Bill 130 has
been nuanced with some applicants
choosing not to use the state process
because their projects were already well
underway.
• CEQA review timelines
• # rounds of review
for environmental
document products with
new guidelines
• # of projects and units
utilizing new state
CEQA streamlining
16 How will we know if
this is working?
2. Development Services Process. Improve analysis and communication of development services process.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
Wins
• Draft of fee estimator tool created for testing.
• The multi-family fee estimator shows more detailed permit fee information than ever before. Currently, permit fees for projects are only available through a handful of documents, City webpages, and ordinances. This tool models the opportunity to improve permit fee transparency more widely.
Learnings/Adjustments
• The systems and data are complex, and there are a lot of variables.
• Need more time to refine beta version.
• Requires a lot of staff time and capacity from IT.
17 • Accuracy evaluation of
residential projects
available through the
fee estimator
• Feedback from key
customers on the utility of
the tool
• # of weekly page visits to
the fee estimator tool
The Arcade 1371 Kooser Road
Affirmed Housing
Goal 2.4 Complete development fee estimator work
by adding multi-family new construction by December
2025.
How will we know if
this is working?
2. Development Services Process. Improve analysis and communication of development services process.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
18 Goal 2.4 Complete development fee estimator work by adding multi-family new construction by December 2025. • Permit Application Fee: This is the initial fee paid to submit a permit application for review by various city departments. • Permit Issuance Fee: This fee covers the City's costs to issue the actual permit, conduct inspections, and any additional plan reviews needed.
• Other Fees: These are separate fees charged by other city departments for additional permits required beyond the building permit.
• City Taxes: These are taxes calculated based on a project's construction value, as required by city ordinance.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
Long-Term Goal. Meet residents’ housing needs across income levels by making San José a great place to build housing.
3. Linking Land and Capital. There is an opportunity to align land use and housing policies with market feasibility.
Last fiscal year, the City passed incentive
programs to help move projects out of the
entitlement phase.
San José remains a very expensive place to
build housing, and developers struggle to
design projects that pencil.
We need to continue to evaluate strategies to
make projects feasible that are sustainable
long-term and make building housing here
more cost-effective.
2620 Seely Ave 19
KTGY Architecture + Planning
3. Linking Land and Capital. Align land use and housing policies with market feasibility.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
20 Goal 3.1 Cost of Development City Council Study Session on affordable and market rate development data analysis in December 2025.
Wins
• December 8, 2025, Study Session
Learnings/Adjustments
• Market-Rate Housing
• Townhomes and stacked flats are feasible under current market conditions. • Multi-family (podium, wrap, tower) is infeasible under current market conditions • But fee waivers may make some projects feasible.
• Overall, San José remains cost-competitive relative to neighboring jurisdictions. • Affordable Housing
• San José’s affordable housing costs are consistent with Bay Area norms. • Smaller average units drive higher costs per net square foot, not higher underlying construction costs. • Per-unit cost reflects scale efficiencies and City fee policies. • San José represents a significant share of affordable housing proposed throughout the Bay Area. • Office Conversions
• Difficult to make a broad conclusion about the feasibility of office-to-residential conversions due to the wide variation in circumstances. • Targeted policy interventions can make some building conversions feasible. • Identifying and quantifying specific opportunities in San José will require additional analysis.
3. Linking Land and Capital. Align land use and housing policies with market feasibility.
Building More Housing Focus Area
Performance Dashboard
21 Goal 3.2 Review entitled housing projects with requirements that present financial feasibility challenges in today’s market. Present analysis to CED Committee in February 2026.
Goal 3.3 Provide data analysis on the effectiveness of the market-rate incentive and affordable financing housing
programs and bring resulting program adjustments to City Council in Q3 FY 2025-2026.
Goal 3.4 Provide alternative financing programs to
preserve housing at all income levels.
Wins
• Since approval by City Council on December 10, 2024,
the Multi-family Housing Incentive Program has
incentivized the production of 1,444 total housing units from entitlement to construction. This includes 1,216
market rate units and 228 affordable units.
Learning/Adjustments
• Ongoing evaluation for flexibility and adjustments to program administration and project circumstances to
ensure optimization towards unit production.
Wins
• Crafted innovative tools to preserve market rate
and affordable developments and create
opportunities to stabilize Extremely LowIncome and Middle-Income households.
Learnings/Adjustments
• Existing City preservation tools are limited.
• Staff is assessing neighborhood impacts
and preserving public investment.
What’s Next?
Focus Areas and the
FY 2026-2027 Budget
Process
22 What’s Next?
Focus Areas and the FY 2026-2027 Budget Process
January
Embedding Focus Area discussion into the Budget Process to ensure co-creation of strategies aimed to meet our Long-Term Goals Mayor’s March Message.
Direction given through the Message will
inform exploration/scoping of future focus area
work, that may include problem areas or
specific change initiatives for FY 2026-2027.
Any contemplated changes for the following
fiscal year should be explored in this context.
City Manager’s Proposed Budget.
The Administration may propose change
initiatives for FY 2026-2027, stemming from
learnings derived from current year’s
execution.
February March
April May June
June Budget Message.
Through the adoption of the June Budget
Message, the City Council will formally adopt
the Focus Area workplans for FY 2026-2027.
Priority Setting.
Staff will embed Focus Areas into the 2026-
2027 Preliminary General Fund Forecast and
Budget Priorities Study Session to cultivate a
discussion that supports the City Council
articulating its priorities (given budget
constraints and required reductions) in
advance of the Mayor’s March Message.
Budget Study Session.
The Administration will embed Focus Area
learnings into a Budget Study Session; this
will include recommended changes to the
following year’s Focus Area work.
Manager’s Budget Addendum (MBA).
The Administration will publish an MBA that
summarizes all feedback/ideas contemplated
through the budget process and establishes a
recommended path for FY 2026-2027.
23 Item (d)2: City Council Focus Area Status
Report: Building More Housing
Executing Work While Building the
Infrastructure for Long-Term Impact
Community and Economic Development Committee
December 15, 2025
City of San José
City Manager’s Office
Rosalynn Hughey, Deputy City Manager, Building More Housing Chris Burton, Director, Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department Erik Soliván, Director, Housing Department