SJ CMs Doan and Batra take staff to task on “unsustainable” housing plan

 
 

After being shown SJ's latest Community Plan to End Homelessness report on 1.9, Councilmembers Bien Doan and Arjun Batra pulled no punches in critiquing its ever-mounting costs, lack of a stable funding source (read: unless we pass a $10–20 bn bond), and ridiculously unfeasible goals for housing. Their comments—earnest, frank, and thoughtful—excerpted below.

Doan did quick math in response to the staff presentation and ended up with some shocking numbers re: projected costs.

Bien Doan: It seems like we're putting a lot of money into permanent housing. Right? Supportive housing. Now, according to your chart here, I believe that—on Attachment A—we were able to regionally house 8,856. And your goal is to regionally house 20,000. So let's round it off. So there's 11,000 unhoused residents that we're trying to permanently create some type of housing [for]. So at the price of $1.2–1.4 million [per door], let's do the quick math. I think it's probably we'll need somewhere [around] $15 billion. That's … just building it. That's not including any supportive services on top of it.

Where do we get that money? And how do we sustain that model? (2:02:16–2:03:16)

To answer Doan's funding question, Deputy City Manager and Acting Housing Director Hughey pointed straight to taxpayers' wallets (via property tax hikes for an upcoming MTC bond measure).

Rosalynn Hughey: The only thing I would add to that, Councilmember, you're absolutely right: it's going to take a lot of money to permanently house our residents and from various funding sources. And to that point, I will say the proposed regional affordable housing measure is going to be critical, not for just our region but specifically for the City of San Jose, where we could get $1 billion for affordable housing. So to the extent that that measure is supported and passed by the voters is really going to help us move the mark in actually adding many more new, needed affordable housing units for our residents. (2:04:13–2:04:54)

[Editor's note: Read more Opp Now articles on the MTC bond here from Mimi Willard, Tom Rubin, Chris Robell, and Marc Joffe.]

CM Doan then emphasized that temporary, interim shelters—getting unhoused residents off the street and into safe sleeping options—should be our #1 priority.

Bien Doan: And per Omar's [CM Torres] statement, for every 1 [homeless person] that we help—let's say 11,000—there's 2 more coming. Right? It's [times] 2. That's 22,000 more coming in. It's mind-boggling the amount of money we spend, and it will never [get] solve[d].

So according to your model of supply, right, safe sleeping should be #1, emergency shelter, and then interim housing, and then from there you work towards supporting housing, and then somewhere affordable rental housing and then homeownership. But the [priority] number one, I believe, has got to be to get those unhoused residents off the street. And again, maybe I'm doing too much fuzzy math in my head here, but it just seems like it's unsustainable. (2:05:17–2:06:12)

I see there's a balance. If we put too much funding effort into permanent supportive housing, then we're not able to get unhoused residents off the street. The opposite, same.

But I think there's got to be a balance. In order to get the unhoused residents off the street, applying existing code and laws that we have, and then we help the unhoused residents on to getting training and job placement and permanent housing.

I just want to make it clear: to me, when I do the math, it's unsustainable. (2:07:48–2:08:28)

Chiming in, CM Batra agreed that focusing on interim housing (and encouraging self-sufficiency) lowers homelessness numbers.

Arjun Batra: The one comment I want to make about what my colleague here talked about [with] this cost: I also agree that we will never have enough money, even with the regional bond, to be able to build those $1.2 million apartments for all the ones who need it. So our path has to be a path to self-sufficiency. So I agree with the resources we are spending on making these people productive, work to [the] future, and other things, so that they will have income to sustain themselves and would be not needing $1.2 million apartments built for them. So I think our emphasis on trying to get them to the path of self-sufficiency, we need to devote and develop policies towards that one.

I agree with doing the prevention a lot because we cannot afford to keep on bringing 2 more people there because taking them from unsheltered to a shelter is a very expensive proposition. Preventing it right at the source is a much better ROI. And I recently read a report on the effectiveness of that one, so in all your proposals you are bringing in, please emphasize the prevention and make this thing happen.

I believe if you do the right things, San Jose can be homeless-less, [the] problem could be gone in less than 3 years. With the 4,000 we have today, we should be able to shelter them. We should prevent any more coming into the system, whether from San Jose or from outside. And 3 years down the road, with all the EIH [emergency interim housing] we build, and our plans, we should be able to house all of them and not have to worry about this homelessness problem. (2:28:31–2:30:35)

Also, Vice Mayor Kamei noted that SJ must get the best “bang for our buck” on homeless solutions—that is, if we want to avoid depleting General Fund money.

Rosemary Kamei: I think that the creativity of the staff to try to address the biowaste and other things has been really good, but I do think that there are some things that perhaps have done really well, and other things, hmm, maybe not so much. So I'm kind of looking forward to hearing, as we move into budget, what are some of the things that give most bang for our buck? Because I think that Councilmember Doan does have a point in terms of sustainability. If we keep taking it out of the General Fund, we're just going to run out of money. [laughs] And then we'll have to make choices, right? (2:11:27–2:12:08)

Watch the whole thing here.

Related:

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity

Opp Now enthusiastically welcomes smart, thoughtful, fair-minded, well-written comments from our readers. But be advised: we have zero interest in posting rants, ad hominems, poorly-argued screeds, transparently partisan yack, or the hateful name-calling often seen on other local websites. So if you've got a great idea that will add to the conversation, please send it in. If you're trolling or shilling for a candidate or initiative, forget it.

Jax Oliver