The City of San Jose will soon build or expand a half dozen “tiny home” villages for homeless residents, adding a total of 400 units.
The City Council voted 8-2 to approve building four new tiny home communities and expand two existing villages, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Two new tiny home projects and the two village expansions are slated to break ground this summer.
The city’s housing director estimates each site will cost $15 million to develop, plus $3.5 million per year to operate. The prefab houses are usually 64 square feet in size, without bathroom or kitchen, which are typically provided in a commons area.
San Jose is among several in the Bay Area to embrace the small, individual units of temporary housing for unhoused residents instead of traditional dorm-style shelters. It aims to add 400 new tiny homes where unhoused people can sleep while waiting for permanent housing.
Its homeless population has grown an estimated 11 percent since 2019, to 6,739 residents.
San Jose currently has four temporary housing villages. But finding places to build new units has become challenging, as most of the obvious locations already have been taken.
As a result, the sites approved this week mostly are oddly shaped slivers of land alongside freeways and exit ramps. Council members expect residents living near those parcels to vehemently oppose the construction of homeless housing in their neighborhoods.
The two new sites slated for initial development are on Noble Avenue near the Penitencia Creek Trail that winds between the Dr. Robert Gross Ponds, and a Caltrans-owned site beside the Highway 85 offramp at Great Oaks Boulevard. Each site would have 100 beds.
When the city had previously proposed homeless housing on Noble, there was an outcry from the neighborhood. It’s across the street from an elementary school, city park and library, next to popular recreational trails, and a block away from a middle school.
“People came with everything but their pitchforks,” Councilmember David Cohen said, adding that he doesn’t expect a new community response to be any different. “There’s no doubt that any site we pick will be opposed.”
The council approved 20 more beds to a 76-unit site now under construction on an overflow parking lot near the San Jose Police Department. And they voted to add 100 beds to a site that’s already up and running on Rue Ferrari near Highway 101.
It also approved a new 50-bed project at a Caltrans-owned site beside the Interstate 680 off-ramp at South Jackson Avenue, and a new 30-bed site at Prospect Road and State Route 85. Work on those sites would start after the other four sites.
[San Jose Mercury News] – Dana Bartholomew
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