The Bay Area’s housing crisis incites pessimism: the prices, the traffic, the very pressure of living here.

Kim Walesh isn’t pessimistic.

San Jose’s economic development director says it’s possible to bring more housing to more people — and even to figure out how to do it affordably. During an hourlong discussion at her office, she ticked off new housing developments from South San Jose to Japantown (near downtown) and the city’s northern fringe.

She also offered this insight: Whereas Palo Alto, Mountain View and other cities to the north have generated tens of thousands of jobs in recent years without nearly enough housing to match, San Jose — though it also struggles to meet the insatiable demand for housing — has generated more housing than jobs. Two sets of “imbalances.” Two sides of the Bay Area coin.

Walesh outlined her own 25-year housing journey, too: first renting a flat for $750 a month in San Francisco’s Noe Valley; then buying a new condo adjacent to Caltrain in Palo Alto for about $250,000 and later “swapping it out” for a 1910 Craftsman home in San Jose’s Naglee Park.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q The region’s housing crisis seems intractable. How effectively has San Jose responded? Are you optimistic?

A I am. San Jose has long had a commitment to building a lot of housing, including affordable. As part of our General Plan, we’ve committed to building 120,000 new units by 2040 — which we will absolutely need because we’ve projected our population will grow by 40 percent, including 117,000 millennials. In the past three years, we’ve issued nearly 10,000 building permits for new units. We’ve adopted new tools, like an impact fee to fund affordable housing.

We’ve produced a ton of single-family housing over the last 50 years. In the past three years, though, 93 percent of our new units were for multifamily housing. Going forward, our big goal is to build a wider variety of housing types in the right locations.

Q What’s driving this shift?

A Demographics and desires. In the past, the growth population was the traditional families with kids. In the coming decades, it’s millennials and seniors. Nationally and regionally, 90 percent of the growth in new households is going to be in households that do not have children under the age of 18. If you think about it, it makes sense: singles, empty-nesters, roommates, couples without kids at both ends of the age spectrum.

So now cities need more “full-spectrum” housing, I call it, because it offers different options for various lifestyles, for people at different stages of life. Cities definitely need to keep providing housing for families with kids. But in the coming decades, we need to add new housing products and adapt neighborhoods, making them exciting to booming populations of seniors and millennials.

Because what people want moving forward is a four-letter word: W-A-L-K. They want to be able to walk to amenities. They want to be able to walk to work, walk to transit, hop on their bikes — a real neighborhood feel. It’s especially true for the millennial population.

Q Give an example.

In Japantown, there’s the Japantown Square project being planned on the former Corporation Yard; it’s where the city used to store equipment and vehicles. The project has been over 10 years and 100 community meetings in the making. And it’s going to be a beautiful complex with more than 550 units, a mix of sizes, along with a public plaza, retail and a creative center for the arts. It will in effect complete Japantown, which has become such a popular neighborhood.

Q As San Jose gears up for a growing population, where is it lagging?

A We need to build a job base to match our housing base. Highways 101 and 280 are crammed with talent driving up from San Jose to work in Palo Alto and Mountain View. Over time, I believe employers will wake up and move closer to where their employees live. Apple, for example, learned that San Jose was the most popular city for its employees working in Cupertino and the South Bay — 1 of every 4 of those employees. No doubt this influenced their decision to buy 80 acres near our airport. The cluster of cool high-rise housing downtown and the tech talent moving in are attracting tech companies and startups to the city center. I sure hope we see more of this going forward — our varied housing options and neighborhoods being an attractor for companies.

Q In the past, you’ve mentioned the need for smaller starter homes — entry-level condos.

A I’m from Wisconsin, and I saw my brother and friends go off to Chicago after college for their first jobs. And after several years of renting in Chicago, people would buy these 600-800 square-foot condos, and it was a way of getting on the real estate elevator at a relatively low entry point. So that’s an example of one of the housing types I hope we’ll see more of as we move forward.

I’d also welcome micro-units — and more granny units. I think there’s huge potential to make better use of our single-family homes and neighborhoods by allowing people to build secondary units, or to modify their homes to include these units. It might be for a relative or a caregiver, or to generate extra income. And in San Jose, there are proposed revisions to the zoning code for granny units. The planning staff will likely recommend a reduction in the minimum lot size, which means more people will have the chance to try this out.

Q Is there broad regional momentum to solve the housing crisis?

A That’s hard to say. The cities north of San Jose have welcomed an unprecedented amount of job growth in this economic wave, and have not built housing to match. As an example, Palo Alto built only 1,900 units from 2000 to 2014, while adding thousands of jobs. This is a key factor in the freeway and expressway congestion affecting all of us as people drive up from the south, east and north to job concentrations on the Peninsula. The fact that the Peninsula’s production of housing has been totally out of step with their job growth is creating pressures across the Bay Area.

On the other hand, residents are starting to recognize that this imbalanced growth is counterproductive, and some cities have taken steps to put affordable housing financing mechanisms in place.

Kim Walesh

Age: 51

Born: Baltimore, Maryland

Raised: Waukesha, Wisconsin

Place of residence: San Jose, Naglee Park neighborhood

Position: Deputy city manager and director of economic development, city of San Jose

Previous jobs: Chief strategist, city of San Jose, 2008-10; assistant director of economic development, city of San Jose, 2003-07; co-founder and managing director, collaborative economics, Mountain View, 1993-2002; senior policy analyst, SRI International, Center for Economic Competitiveness, Menlo Park, 1989-1992

Education: Valparaiso University, bachelor’s in economics and humanities, 1986; Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, master’s degree in public policy, 1989

Married: To workplace designer Stephen Polcyn

5 Facts about Kim Walesh

1. Once a month, she rides her bike along the Guadalupe River Trail from downtown San Jose to Alviso — a 20-mile round-trip — in 90 minutes. “You just see this slice of San Jose as you go: elderly women walking in saris, young adults out and about, talking on their phones, probably taking conference calls. You see egrets, our beautiful airport, new housing in North San Jose. You see what the city is and how it’s changing.”

2. She’s passionate about all kinds of social dance: Salsa, Afro-Brazilian, swing.

3. A “huge jazz fan,” she says the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest has put the city on the national jazz map. Her favorite recent jazz event: the “Rahsaanathon,” a tribute to the late saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk at Cafe Stritch, the popular downtown club.

4. She recently read “The Sympathizer,” the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, who grew up in San Jose. His historical novel won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and opened Walesh’s eyes to the Vietnamese experience after the fall of Saigon.

5. Last year in Peru, she hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with her husband and friends.