After lengthy delays, an interim housing site near the Guadalupe River in San Jose will finally begin construction next month.
The city has selected DignityMoves as its development partner for the 136-bed, tiny home site on a Cherry Avenue parcel owned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
“This project, to me, is a real model, and I think it’s exciting and shows how far we’ve come over the last four or five years of experimenting with this interim housing, quick-build approach,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said.
The proposed facility on Cherry Avenue is one of several interim housing sites the city hopes to have up and running soon. A preliminary timeline released by the city indicates the tiny home site could be completed by the fall.
Over the next 18 months, it will attempt to add 784 beds to its inventory.
Along with the Cherry Avenue location, the city plans to add interim housing at Via Del Oro, the VTA Cerone Yard and the Monterey Road and Branham Lane sites. In October, the city also broke ground on the $30 million expansion of Rue Ferrari, which will more than double its shelter capacity.
While San Jose has agreed to pay DignityMoves $15 million to develop the Cherry Avenue site along with Gensler Architects and Swinerton Construction, the actual costs to taxpayers are much less thanks to contributions from philanthropic partners and up to $10 million in funding from the state.
Between philanthropic contributions and fee discounts, the city has shaved off $2.4 million in costs. John Sobrato, the real estate mogul and philanthropist, contributed $1 million.
Mahan credited DignityMoves CEO Elizabeth Funk with helping spur charitable giving by boosting the message that philanthropists needed to have “skin in the game” because the city and its partners were doing their part to combat the homelessness epidemic.
“They’ve gone out and said, ‘We expect 20-30% of these projects to come from philanthropists as well,’ and they’ve been making good on that by raising millions of dollars,” Mahan said.
San Jose was also the beneficiary earlier this year of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to pull a grant from San Diego County after it failed to approve an interim housing development initially earmarked for the funds.
Mahan said Newsom rewarded San Jose because of its expediency in delivering homelessness solutions.
“San Diego County could not move with the urgency the housing and homelessness crisis demands,” Newsom’s office previously said in a statement. “The governor is committed to accountability, and we will not allow local delays and opposition to impede the state’s unprecedented efforts to get people off the streets and into housing.”
As part of its agreement, the city and Valley Water will create a water resources protection zone to safeguard the waterway by helping people living in encampments find other shelters and enforcing a no-encampment area.
Unsheltered homeless residents living along Guadalupe River Reach 12 will also be given first priority for living at the new site. In the interim period, the city has agreed to develop a plan to identify shelter resources during construction.
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District 9 Councilmember Pam Foley, who represents the area, said the process has taken about two years since she first sat down with the neighborhood to discuss the project and credited them with supporting it from its inception.
“A lot of our neighbors have pushed back on these… but we have never had pushback from (the) Erickson or from (the) Thousand Oaks (neighborhoods) from day one,” Foley said. “It’s really beautiful that we’re finally here and we’re creating interim housing in District 9, which I have been pushing for from the very beginning.”