Tensions mount as San Jose chooses new site for homeless housing amid coronavirus

The city's current emergency declaration for COVID-19 allows city officials to bypass many key regulatory steps.

Residents of San Jose’s Los Paseos and Basking Ridge neighborhoods tuned in to Tuesday night’s virtual city council meeting ready for a fight.

They had been in this same position just three years ago when the city proposed turning a plot of land in the area into a tiny home community for the homeless. They had fended off the proposal then and hoped they could change the will of their city lawmakers once again.

But despite their vehement opposition, the council chose the site — a 2.5-acre plot at Monterey and Bernal roads — as the first location to build dozens of housing units to serve as temporary shelters for some of the city’s homeless residents who need a safe place to stay during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The reality is we’re going to need to build a lot more affordable housing for homeless residents in a lot more neighborhoods, and most of those neighborhoods are not going to embrace it,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said during the meeting. “But if we fail to do that, it will simply perpetuate the crisis and that is unacceptable.”

Innovative concepts for housing the city’s homeless population, including in tiny home communities, have been part of conversations around city hall for years. But attempts to choose a suitable location for the developments have repeatedly been met with pushback from neighbors worried about traffic, crime and property values.

Unlike those past decisions, however, the city and state’s COVID-19 emergency declarations allow city officials to bypass many key regulatory steps for the development, such as seeking public input at planning and housing commission meetings, conducting environmental studies and holding community meetings.

Because of the significantly expedited process, residents who live near the Bernal site say they’re concerned city officials are using the current pandemic as a means to push an agenda that they have struggled to get approved under normal circumstances.

“In Third World countries where there’s communism and dictatorship, you don’t see as much stuff shoved downed throats as you see here,” said San Jose resident Mo AbuShahba. “I’m appalled. I’m distraught. This does not feel like democracy.”

A change.org petition that was started in 2017 when the site was first proposed as an optimal location for a housing development for homeless residents was re-launched and has gained more than 3,600 signatures of residents against the proposal for the site.

“We want to help rehabilitate the homeless. We support using part of our taxpayer dollars to achieve that and laud the efforts of our elected officials towards that goal. But we cannot accept increased crime, drug use, disturbance and disorder near our homes and children’s schools,” the petition states.

City officials are also exploring proposals for homeless communities on a city-owned site on Evans Lane at Almaden Expressway and a Caltrans site on Rue Ferrari — a half-mile away from the Bernal site.

Councilmember Sergio Jimenez, who represents the district that includes the Bernal site, and Johnny Khamis voted against the proposal.

Since one of the other two proposed sites — a much larger plot of land owned by Caltrans — was also in his district and farther away from residential neighborhoods, Jiminez asked his colleagues to support solely moving forward with that site and dropping the Bernal site. But due to concerns over how long it could take to negotiate a lease with Caltrans, they declined.

Earlier this month, city officials dropped their originally top-rated site — a 1.67-acre overflow parking lot at Emma Prusch Farm Park in East San Jose — from consideration after realizing that the land was deed-restricted as parkland and required an election to permanently change the land use from parkland to housing.

The site at Bernal and Monterey is expected to house up to 80 people in 16-20 modular buildings that each accommodate three to five individuals. The units will either have their own bathroom or a bathroom will be shared between two units,  according to a city document. The site will include a community kitchen, laundry room and a meeting space for residents.

The city’s first two tiny home communities for homeless residents, approved more than two years ago, were both significantly delayed due to lengthy environmental reviews and site and lease negotiation issues. The city opened its first community of 40 tiny homes in February on a Valley Transportation Authority site it leases on Mabury Road near Coyote Creek, but the second one — on Felipe Avenue. near the intersection of Highway 101 and U.S. 280 — is still under construction.

Habitat for Humanity, which was chosen to develop the city’s first two tiny home communities for homeless residents, will also build the units for the Bernal site.

The city plans to use approximately $17.2 million in Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) funding — a $650 million one-time block grant from the state to help local jurisdictions address the homeless crisis. San Jose, which received confirmation last month that it would receive $23.6 million from the fund, had previously planned to use the money for a homeless navigation center but that effort was delayed because a site for it hadn’t been found.