Bay Area billionaire philanthropist offers land for tiny homes for $1 a year

A prominent Bay Area philanthropist is offering his land to house the homeless for a price that's hard to beat. 

On Tuesday, the San Jose City Council is voting on whether or not to accept the offer and use the land to develop tiny home communities.

The 2-acre land in San Jose is being offered for a sum of $1 a year. 

Mayor Matt Mahan says billionaire philanthropist John A. Sobrato called him after seeing a press conference on one of the city’s so-called “rapid housing sites.”

Sobrato says he wants the land used for the same kind of housing for, at least, the next five years. 

“What I think is really exciting about this model is that it gets private property owners in on the solutions to homelessness,” said Mahan. 

Sobrato has also donated $5 million to bolster a similar project at Monterey and Branham Lane. 

The newly-proposed site is located in South San Jose at San Ignacio and Via Del Oro. 

It’s in an industrial area, but sits close to a bus line and right near the Interstate 85 and Highway 101 interchange. 

If it's built, the city would offer the 150 units to the unhoused within a mile and a half of the site – along with homeless seniors and veterans. 

“This is an emergency, and San Jose is really taking the lead in demonstrating their ability and their interest in treating it like the emergency that it is,” said Elizabeth Funk, CEO of Dignity Moves, the nonprofit tasked with helping build out the sites. 

This site would look different from the other rapid-build housing sites.

The homes will be solar-powered with two beds and they’ll be mobile. So, once the lease is up after five years, they can be transported somewhere else if needed. 

“The beauty of relocatable is that it opens up all sorts of possibilities in terms of land that we can take advantage of while the next thing is being planned,” said Funk. “It also helps us with neighborhood resistance because it’s only here for five years and then they pick up and move to another location.”

While the rent is essentially free, the project isn't. It's estimated to cost about $18 million to develop. 

But the mayor says that's even cheaper than other sites the city's developed and will provide the unhoused with something critical -- a room of their own. 

“This is a slightly different model. At the end of the day what all these sites have in common is they give someone an individual room with a door that locks and that sense of stability and privacy,” said Mahan.

Read Sobrato's full statement bellow:

“My father’s offer of a five-year no cost lease of the property on Via del Oro for interim housing is an admirable effort to help one of San Jose’s most vulnerable populations. It complements The Sobrato Organization’s broader Housing Security Initiative, a pilot program to address housing insecurity in Silicon Valley through a three-pronged approach that includes preservation, production, and pro-housing policy. While the Via del Oro project will provide immediate relief for the unhoused, we are concurrently advancing more permanent solutions such as our recent acquisition of the Townhomes on Gading in Hayward, to ensure it remains as affordable housing.”