When the city first proposed turning a plot of land into a tiny home community for the homeless in their neighborhood three years ago, residents who live in San Jose’s Metcalf, Los Paseos and Basking Ridge area pushed back — and won.
On Tuesday, they came back prepared for another fight.
But despite their vehement opposition, the San Jose City council chose the controversial site — a 2.5-acre plot at Monterey and Bernal roads — as the first location in the city to build dozens of housing units to serve as temporary shelters for homeless residents who need a safe place to stay during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly 6,200 people in San Jose lack a place to call home — a number that has jumped 42 percent in the past two years. And although the city has added hundreds of temporary shelter beds for its homeless residents in recent weeks, the city only has the capacity to serve about a sixth of its homeless population in permanent shelters once the city’s emergency COVID-19 declaration is lifted.
“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 virtual city council 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 attempts, 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 are concerned city officials are using the current pandemic to push an agenda that local leaders have struggled to get approved under normal circumstances.
“In Third World countries where there is communism and dictatorship, you don’t see as much stuff shoved down 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 Bernal site was first proposed as a prime spot to put a development for homeless residents was re-launched and has gained more than 3,600 signatures with residents expressing their opposition.
Those against the project not only are concerned about blight and crime that they believe it will bring into their neighborhoods but also about the site’s location on a busy intersection, away from public transit and supportive services.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re putting homeless people there or the best members of our society in there, it’s a cloverleaf (interchange) where there are cars buzzing by at 50 miles per hour,” said resident Elvera Faria.
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 — just 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 plot of land owned by Caltrans that is triple the size of the Bernal site — is also in his district and farther away from residential neighborhoods, Jimenez 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, the rest of the council declined.
“So many people needed to be housed before COVID and now it becomes even more important to make sure people have a place to shelter in place,” said Councilmember Dev Davis, who added that she has not seen any increase in crime caused by the overnight warming shelter in her district.
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 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, which will include a community kitchen, laundry room and meeting space, will be operated by an organization that will provide supportive services to the residents.
Deputy City Manager Jim Ortball said that the city is designing the housing development to “meet a variety of needs in the short term during this crisis” and for its expected 10 to 15-year lifetime, including potentially to isolate homeless individuals or low-income residents with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 who do not require hospitalization but are unable to self-quarantine.
The city’s first two tiny home communities for homeless residents, which was approved more than two years ago, both faced significant delays due to lengthy environmental review processes and site and lease negotiation issues. The city opened its first community of 40 tiny homes in February on a Valley Transportation Authority site on Mabury Road near Coyote Creek. The second one — on Felipe Avenue. near the intersection of Highway 101 and Interstate 280 — is still under construction.
Habitat for Humanity, which was chosen to develop the city’s first two tiny home communities for homeless residents, also will build the units for the Bernal site.
The city plans to build the new housing structures, using 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 $23.8 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.
