January 23, 2026
The Honorable Matt Mahan
Mayor, City of San José
200 E. Santa Clara Street
San José, CA 95113
Re: Downtown Residential High-Rise Incentive Program
Dear Mayor Mahan,
For more than nine years, our unions have engaged with the City on the Downtown Residential High-Rise Incentive Program and its role in supporting housing production and advancing workforce and equity objectives.
We recognize the financial constraints facing residential development and the City’s need to strategically use incentives to advance policy goals. Union-built housing projects in San José show that housing development can be financially viable while delivering community benefits, including living-wage jobs, employer-paid health care, and workforce access for residents from disadvantaged communities.
Based on this experience, we have proposed modest, incentive-based refinements to the Downtown High-Rise Program. Rather than mandates, these recommendations would establish a tiered incentive structure that rewards projects meeting high-road employment standards. This is consistent with recent federal infrastructure programs, which have shown that offering enhanced benefits for meeting higher employment standards is both legally sound and effective.
We believe this framework would strengthen the program by aligning public incentives with the City’s housing, workforce, and equity goals, while preserving flexibility for project applicants.
Respectfully yours,
Eric Mussynski Pete Seaberg Rick Werner Jeff Dixon UA Local 393 IBEW 332 SMW Local 104 Sprinkler Fitters Local 483
Yes to People. Yes to Housing.
sanjoseyimby.org
Mayor Mahan and City Council
City of San Jose
200 E. Santa Clara St.
San José, CA 95113
January 27, 2026
Support: Items 8.2 and 8.3 + planning growth areas
Dear Dear Mayor and Members of the San José City Council, On behalf of San José YIMBY, we write in strong support of some of the proposed updates to the City’s housing policies, speci
fically Item 8.2, the Downtown Residential Incentive
Program Expansion, and Item 8.3, the Multifamily Housing Incentive Program Extension.
We appreciate the Housing Department’s continued efforts to identify new tools and strategies to increase housing production in our city. Many of the ideas under discussion are potentially promising, and we would welcome the opportunity to support them as part of a comprehensive, citywide approach to addressing San José’s housing shortage.
As the Council knows, San José is expected under state law to facilitate the production of roughly 7,750 homes per year. Meeting this obligation — and, more importantly, meeting the needs of current and future residents — will require a full set of coordinated actions 1 that remove structural barriers to homebuilding and enable housing to be delivered at scale.
We support staff’s recommended updates to Item 8.2, the Downtown Residential Incentive Program Expansion. We support Item 8.2’s aim to expand and rename the Downtown Residential Incentive Program to include commercial-to-residential conversion projects in the Downtown Planned Growth Area — an important, near-term strategy to turn obsolete o
ffice space into housing.
We also support staff’s recommended updates to Item 8.3, the Multifamily Housing Incentive Program Extension. We support extending the Multifamily Housing Incentive Program through February 28, 2027, expanding eligibility to additional projects, and increasing the 50% construction tax reduction capacity from 1,800 to 3,600 units, paired with a tiered prioritization system that allocates limited capacity based on permit readiness and
financing commitments. We are encouraged by the staff report indicating that MHIP is already helping restart housing production after zero new market-rate housing starts in 2024, with
five projects totaling 1,444 units currently under construction and a large pipeline seeking to use the program — momentum the City risks losing without an extension.
At the same time, we believe it is critical that these policy updates be paired with rapid completion of planning for the 48 growth areas that remain unplanned today.
The lack of adopted plans in these areas, in addition to unrealistic minimum densities, functions as an e
ffective ban on new homebuilding, limiting where housing can be proposed and constraining the city’s ability to meet its housing goals. Advancing planning work in these growth areas would unlock additional opportunities for housing production and provide greater certainty to communities, builders, and the City alike.
Yes to People. Yes to Housing.
sanjoseyimby.org
2 San José YIMBY stands ready to support policies and investments that meaningfully increase housing supply, ensure compliance with state housing laws, and move the city toward a more a
ffordable, inclusive future. We look forward to continuing to work with the Council and City staff to advance a comprehensive strategy that delivers the homes San José needs.
Sincerely,
Theresa Do
Volunteer Lead, San José YIMBY
Matt Savage
Volunteer Lead, San José YIMBY
David Naczycz
Volunteer Lead, San José YIMBY
Yes to People. Yes to Housing.
sanjoseyimby.org
3