What You Need To Know

1

For the SAFETY AND WELFARE of the neighboring communities, we are requesting that the City and developer pause this project and give the community and immediate neighbors an opportunity to review the actual impacts of this massive housing project and provide their input.

When the 1371 Kooser Road project was first introduced and until March 26, 2024, the City emphasized that the tenants would preferably be from three groups: Police, Fire, First Responders, Healthcare Workers, and Teachers. Sadly, it has been evident that there are no preferences given to these groups of essential residents. No proof of income verification or background checks, including drug or alcohol screening, are conducted, further raising concerns about the safety, welfare and security of our residential community.  

As best as we can tell, there will be no limit to the number of occupants in each unit and no restrictions on the possibility of subleasing a unit. 

2

The DENSITY of this project will be overwhelming to our community. There are 336 bedrooms and will include approximately 400 to over 700 people living in this project. There is currently unlimited and unregulated occupancy for this project.

3

The HEIGHT is 7 stories in our 1-2 story single family community. The shadows will cover several local streets to the West, North and South. They will severely limit solar access of neighboring homes at several times of the year, especially in the winter.

4

The City has developed an economic model called the Displacement Algorithm that calculates the DECREASE IN MARKET VALVE of our single family homes of 20% that are in proximity to this high density housing project. After several requests, the City has refused to disclose these calculations to our neighborhood community.

5

The project will only be providing 147 on-site PARKING spaces which means that there will possibly be over 200 cars that need to be parked on local streets. The City has already declined to provide parking permits for local residents to alleviate congestion. The City has previously stated that tenants rely on public transportation, but unfortunately, the availability of public transport is far from adequate, with one intersecting VTA bus arriving per hour. This scarcity of service does not practically support the residents' commuting needs. 

6

The developer is receiving substantial funding from City, County and State sources and the developer will realize outrageous TAX BENEFITS for 55 years of no property tax payments. That means that the local community will take on the burden of covering the costs of police, fire protections, schools and infrastructure support. Additionally, there will be substantial Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs) that run with the property that it cannot be used for anything other than affordable housing for the next 55 years.

Demand Accountability For Homeless Spending 

San José has spent more than $300 million in recent years trying to manage the homelessness crisis in our city. Despite this enormous outlay of taxpayer money, the number of homeless living in our streets, waterways and neighborhoods has only marginally decreased.

Why has over $300 million failed to improve the situation?

An official California state auditor report determined that San José could not identify revenues and expenditures related to homelessness efforts, and the city does not evaluate the effectiveness of service providers that receive city money for homeless programs. We literally do not know how much we are spending, where we are spending it, and if any of this spending is making any difference.

The entire unhappy auditor’s report can be downloaded here:

https://information.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2023-102.2.pdf (Pages 1 & 2 of the audit report summarize the findings. The city’s responses to the findings start on page 77. The auditor’s responses to the less than adequate city’s responses start on page 93.)

Before we throw more good money after bad, the city must evaluate if its spending is actually improving lives in San José in a cost-effective manner. Contact the mayor, your councilmembers asking for a formal audit of homeless programs as part of the annual budget approval process. The press release with additional information on the requested features of the audit is provided below.

City Prioritizes Funding only to Developers that Maximize Density and Height

In October 2022, the city declared to:

“Direct the Housing Department to communicate clearly to all affordable housing builders seeking City financing that reductions of project unit count for reasons unsupported by City policy will result in their project being deprioritized for City funding.”

This memo came from Mayor Sam Liccardo, Vice Mayor Chappie Jones and Council Member Magdalena Carrasco. 

This means that regardless of the community context and the fabric of the neighboring communities, any developer applying for City tax-dollar funding must build the tallest structure on a site. And they can ignore existing zoning for a site, as they are doing on the Chuck E. Cheese site, and build grotesque, overwhelming structures that negatively impact the adjacent communities.  For example, the Chuck E. Cheese site is zoned Pedestrian/Commercial, not high density residential.