This past Tuesday, San José City Council passed a budget that included deep cuts to affordable housing funding. While the City Council did restore some funding for affordable housing, the final FY 23-24 budget will include an overall $25 million cut to affordable housing in the upcoming fiscal year.
Read more about the reallocation of Measure E funds:
- KQED, San José Council Approves Budget, with ‘Historic’ Shift in Unhoused Spending
- The Mercury News, San Jose approves $5.3 billion budget, diverts more than $23 million from affordable housing to homelessness solutions
- San Jose Spotlight, San Jose shifts affordable housing funds to tackle waterway encampments
We acknowledge that the City was faced with a tough budget landscape and that some tough choices would be needed, but it is disappointing to see such disproportionally large cuts to affordable housing relative to the rest of the budget – especially when there are more than a dozen projects in the development pipeline ready to go in San José.
“I want to be clear, the current strategy of prioritizing EIHs (emergency interim housing) over affordable housing isn’t ending the crisis of homelessness — it’s hiding it. Let’s call it what it is: it is a bridge to nowhere.”
San Jose City Councilmember Peter Ortiz
Taking a step back, this shift is part of a troubling pattern of diverting affordable housing funding for shelter and other uses, and we’re particularly concerned about the long-term implications these actions will have on our collective efforts to solve our homelessness crisis – a point expressed in Destination: Home’s most recent letter to the City Council. To truly solve homelessness, we must address the root cause by building permanent affordable housing and stop robbing the coffers for one strategy to fund another.
While this is a setback to solving homelessness in San Jose, there are some exciting opportunities on the horizon – including a potential regional affordable housing bond measure in Nov – that will allow us to increase funding for both shelter and affordable housing production at scale without having to sacrifice one important need for the other.
We hope you will consider joining these critically-important upcoming campaigns and would be happy to chat more about how you can plug in (if you aren’t already connected to these efforts).
Thank you to everyone who voiced their support of solutions backed by data and research. Let’s continue working together to advocate for more deeply affordable homes to end and prevent homelessness in our community.
