San Jose: Newly elected City Council clears hurdle for homeless housing project

After years of bitter back-and-forth with resistant neighbors, the newly elected San Jose City Council pushed ahead with a project to house formerly homeless people southeast of Willow Glen in converted shipping containers.

The council approved a rezoning request that will allow the containers to be placed and turned into 60 permanent supportive housing units on Evans Lane near Canoas Gardens Ave.

The price tag? Some $600,000 per unit, or $2,500 per square foot, according to Rachel VanderVeen, a deputy director in the city’s Housing Department.

That cost, VanderVeen said, isn’t just for materials and labor. It includes preparing the site, such as bringing utilities into the area and setting up storm water drainage.

Still, at Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Johnny Khamis expressed sticker shock.

“This seems exorbitant for recycled metal boxes, quite frankly,” Khamis said.

In recent years, shipping containers have emerged as a relatively affordable housing option as the Bay Area has become one of the nation’s most expensive real estate markets, with many teachers, service workers and others unable to pay rents that regularly soar beyond $3,000. In Oakland, for instance, people have purchased shipping container homes for well under $100,000.

In addition to studio apartments, the San Jose project is slated to include offices for on-site support staff, a community garden, a public library and, at least temporarily, a dog park.

“I understand the costs seem heavy,” VanderVeen said, but they’re “consistent” with costs for other housing developments.

The proposal still needs to clear some hurdles, including securing city funding from the council in February. But the project, the Planning Commission said in a recent memo to the council, furthers the city’s long-term goals to get more of its 4,000 or so homeless people off the streets.

The project “will enhance the neighborhood,” said Councilwoman Dev Davis, who represents the area.

But the proposal, which has been in the works for several years, has drawn ire from neighbors, who have expressed concerns about housing formerly homeless people nearby and about traffic and parking woes.

“It is really bad there, and the only reason I’m there is because I have literally nowhere else to go,” nearby resident Jessabella Hancilla said at a community meeting in 2016. “It just feels like this is a really bad idea; this is just going to make it really worse. All I want is for my daughter to feel safe, and I don’t feel safe already, and if they do this it’s going to be even worse for us.”

Originally, the project had been slated to include more than 150 temporary housing units. But it was scaled back based in part because of community feedback. According to the memo, however, “there is potential to expand the number of units with additional outreach and entitlement applications in the future.”

By the time it finally reached council Tuesday for rezoning, no members of the public spoke in opposition.

The project, which will be overseen by Abode Services, an organization working to house homeless people, right now is set to include single-story studio units. Davis, who would like to see density in the area increase eventually, said the height could go up in the future, with stacked shipping containers.

Noticeably absent from the dais was Mayor Sam Liccardo, who fractured two vertebrae and his sternum when his bike collided with a car on New Year’s Day. While the mayor had said shortly after the incident that he planned to be back at City Hall this week, Liccardo was still recovering and working from home, his spokesman, David Low, said.

The mayor, said Vice Mayor Magdalena Carrasco, hoped to make it back “very, very soon.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, Carrasco welcomed Maya Esparza, who will fill the District 7 seat previously held by Tam Nguyen, and Pam Foley, who will take over the District 9 seat from Don Rocha, to the council, saying on behalf of the mayor that “these are two individuals with deep roots in the community.”

Carrasco noted that the council now includes five women and five Latinos.

“This is historic,” Carrasco said.

If everything goes according to plan, construction on the Evans Lane project will begin in the fall of 2019 and the housing should open in the winter of 2020.

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