Many local land-use planners found puzzling the Sept. 23 op-ed penned by David Cohen, Robin Roemer, and Jim Canova.  The authors bemoan the lack of affordable housing and mixed-used development in North San Jose, but demonstrate poor understanding of the problem or how to fix it.

Cohen, a San Jose City Council candidate, asserts with his co-authors that San Jose had a “great vision” laid out in a 2005 plan, the North San Jose Development Policy, but asserts that there has been little development in the last “four years”; conveniently the tenure of Cohen’s opponent, incumbent District 4 Councilman Lan Diep.  Yet the problem lies in the very 2005 plan that the authors praise.  A plan that has mired North San Jose in a 15-year, legally-mandated “deep freeze.”  A lawsuit from the city of Santa Clara resulted in a 2006 legal settlement that has prevented the construction of any housing in North San Jose for the last half-decade.  The authors’ obliviousness to these obstacles explains their inability to articulate any solution.

The 2005 Plan inhibits the creation of vibrant, mixed-use communities in North San Jose in two ways.  First, the 2005 plan legally bars the construction of any new housing in the area above a 8,000 unit “cap” for the Plan’s first phase until the development of 7 million square feet of new industrial and office development.   Yet the 2005 plan essentially prevents the city from ever reaching that 7 million square foot goal, because of a second flaw: it imposes prohibitively steep fees on development to pay for $460 million in new roadway improvements.

For years, the City of San Jose has fought to extricate itself from these constraints in order to facilitate badly needed affordable housing in the area.  The County of Santa Clara and City of Milpitas signed the 2006 settlement agreement and have agreed to allow San Jose to do so.   Yet the City of Santa Clara continues to threaten to sue San Jose and any builder seeking to construct any housing — until San Jose builds hundreds of millions of dollars of additional roadway improvements first. Santa Clara’s repeated threats of lawsuits persisted even after the City signed a 2017 agreement with San Jose that it would negotiate this issue “in good faith.”  That hasn’t happened.

Our organization and many homebuilders wish that the City of Santa Clara would follow the lead of the county and Milpitas in recognizing the imperative to unwind the 2005 North San Jose plan, to build the housing needed in North San Jose to address our region’s crisis.

Despite these legal hurdles, we have seen progress in North San Jose under Councilman Diep’s and Mayor Sam Liccardo’s tenure, including an agreement with Apple to commit $300 million in land for the future development of affordable housing there — if Santa Clara ever relents.   They’ve further enabled the expansion of key employers like Broadcom, Nutanix and Supermicro; the opening of new headquarters for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Bloom Energy; and critical infrastructure improvements to prevent flooding in Alviso and to expand the bike network.  More recently, the city announced it would leverage recent changes in state law to push ahead with a new plan to enable the construction of affordable housing and vibrant mixed-use urban villages in North San Jose — despite Santa Clara’s legal threats.

Leadership requires far more than bemoaning problems; it requires problem-solving. The Silicon Valley Organization stands with those who get their facts straight, and push for real solutions.

Matthew R. Mahood is president and CEO of The Silicon Valley Organization, the region’s Chamber of Commerce.