San Jose announced Thursday that it has solved an obstacle that threatened an ambitious plan for a safe parking lot to help unhoused people living in RVs.
Last June, the city signed a 10-year lease on a 6-acre lot for about $19 million from Terrano Realty to build the city’s biggest safe parking lot for more than 80 RVs used by the unhoused population. But after months of delay, Mayor Matt Mahan said it was time to confront the additional rising cost of putting up buildings, utilities, sewage and services.
"And that means not being afraid to admit when something doesn’t work, and clearly a $15 million price tag for this safe parking site wouldn’t work," he said.
City leaders announced Thursday that they have redesigned the site, cutting the cost of the project by about $7-8 million and emphasizing no programs or services will be lost, but workers will go from four buildings to two.
"I think they should be able to get used to it," Public Works Director Matt Loesch said. "I think because this was an ambitious build in terms of the types of buildings for them, and I think that'll be just fine."
Councilmember David Cohen, who had to overcome community resistance to the project, said RVs parked in those neighborhoods will get moved in first.
"They will get priority for this site," he said. "But even if we fill it out half the sites here with people from District 4, there will be opportunity to use this site for other crucial locations across the city."
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In the big picture, a report by the groups Destination Home and Santa Clara County Continuum of Care shows how difficult it is to keep up. In 2023, they were able to move 2,500 families into permanent housing – an almost 30% jump – but 4,300 households fell into homelessness during that same time.
Mahan said that shows they need to respond faster to the newly unhoused.
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"We see that behavioral health issues, addiction, other forms of mental illness increase and it becomes harder to help those people ever get back to self sufficiency," he said.
City leaders said they hope to open the new parking site by the fall. Mahan plans to have a virtual public forum about the site and other homeless projects on March 11.
