SAN JOSE — Amid outcry over housing affordability in Silicon Valley, two former council members are pushing a ballot measure that would allow 910 new homes on empty east San Jose land in defiance of city plans setting it aside for industry and jobs.

The proposal pits San Jose’s need for more industry and jobs against its lack of affordable housing, and has sent shock waves through the city’s political firmament. Among backers is a former vice mayor who once supported the city’s plans to preserve the property for industry.

Critics include Mayor Sam Liccardo, who argues the proposal would upend San Jose’s careful planning process while enriching wealthy developers and failing to provide housing for those who need it most.

“This is about billionaires building a gated community for millionaires and calling it affordable housing,” Liccardo said. “We should not have one set of rules for billionaires who can afford to go to the ballot and another set of rules that applies to everyone else.”

The proposed “Evergreen Senior Homes Initiative” for the June 2018 ballot would allow 910 new homes for buyers 55 and older to be built on 200 acres of industrially zoned land on Aborn Road in eastern San Jose.

Backers say city leaders’ rigid resistance to building homes on industrial property has only worsened the region’s housing crisis. The proposal calls for 20 percent of the new homes to be “affordable” for those earning no more than 120 percent of the area median income — $128,500 a year for a family of four, though there’s no guarantee those homes would be built first in the nine phases of the project.

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“City Hall has not delivered on one of the biggest needs in the region, which is housing,” said Marissa Currie, a supervisor at PR firm Singer Associates, Inc., and a spokeswoman for the group. “We feel that this is an important enough issue to bring to voters and there’s a demand for affordable housing.”

The plan calls for prioritizing the affordable housing for veterans. There would be some outdoor space, but no retail or commercial uses. Voters citywide would vote on the measure, not just those living in the Evergreen area.

The proposal is backed by former Vice Mayor Judy Chirco, former Councilwoman Pat Sausedo and Eddie Garcia, the former president of the East Side Union High School District and chief to former Supervisor George Shirakawa.

During her time on the council, Chirco voted to adopt a plan that strictly limited new housing in the Evergreen area — the same plan the ballot measure would rewrite. She did not respond to requests for comment.

The proposed measure would allow building the homes by changing the city’s general plan — which Liccardo said was crafted with input from 4,000 residents — as well as a specific Evergreen area plan that limits new housing. The land, owned by Carl Berg, is zoned “industrial” and proponents need to change it to “residential” to move forward.

Currie and other supporters said the 200 acres eyed for senior housing have been vacant for at least 30 years.

“I’ve seen firsthand the challenges this housing crisis brings — particularly the impacts on our most vulnerable communities,” Garcia said. “As a retired resident of the Evergreen neighborhood, the decision to support an initiative that creates opportunity for our aging neighbors to remain near family and friends and honors our veterans was an easy one.”

But Bob Staedler, a principal at Silicon Valley Synergy, called the proposal “politically tone deaf” to the community’s real needs to house its workforce and homeless as well as provide jobs. He said it will only enrich home developers.

“The fact that someone wants to go in and develop 200 acres for luxury housing — it’s just stunning,” Staedler said. “It’s a brazen cash grab.”

Berg is selling the land to Ponderosa Homes, which would develop the new homes, according to Currie.

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Currie said the measure’s proponents polled residents and 64 percent of voters support the initiative to build senior homes in Evergreen while 82 percent believe that the cost of housing is “an extremely or very serious problem” facing the city. Twenty percent are opposed.

Liccardo said that while the land in question has sat vacant for a long time, investors have recently looked at it, including one who wanted to build a science park with a university six months ago.

The initiative would require any changes to the plan over the next ten years to go back out to voters — another concern for Liccardo.

“Our hands are tied,” Liccardo said. “This is going to be almost 1,000 housing units that will be built out over the next decade or so and there will be no opportunity to pivot if suddenly some great university decided they wanted to build on that land.”

Councilwoman Sylvia Arenas, who represents the district, did not respond to requests for comment. But former Vice Mayor Rose Herrera, who represented the Evergreen district for nearly a decade, said the city limited housing there because the area’s against a hillside and faces serious traffic problems.

“Developers are trying to make a profit, that’s their major concern,” Herrera said. “But if it’s a bad place for housing, it’s a bad place for housing.”