Urban Planners Call for 120,000 New Housing Units in San Jose

Aug 25, 2017

A new report is calling for the creation of 120,000 new housing units in San Jose, to be built over the next three decades, as a solution to alleviate that market’s affordable housing problems.

According to a San Jose Mercury-News report, the urban planning group San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, which uses the acronym SPUR, called on municipal leaders to alter zoning rules in order to encourage the construction of new housing. SPUR advocated smaller housing developments rather than large complexes, mixed-used properties that incorporated retail and public spaces into the projects, and more funding for the construction of housing.

“The Silicon Valley economic miracle has become a housing nightmare,” SPUR said in its report. “We aren’t building enough housing for all the people who want to live here.”

The report focused primarily on the San Jose market, although it said that its proposals should also apply to the other metros in the South Bay region.

“While most of Silicon Valley has a jobs-housing imbalance, with many more jobs than housing units, San Jose has the opposite problem,” the report added. “San Jose is the only large city in the country to actually lose population during the daytime, because more of its residents work outside the city itself.”

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Phil Hall

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Aug 25, 2017

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