Letter in support of the city of San Jose’s Affordable Housing Siting Policy

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December 5, 2022

City Council Committee Members
Community and Economic Development Committee
City of San José
200 East Santa Clara St.
San José, CA 95113

RE: San Jose’s Affordable Housing Siting Policy

Dear Mayor Sam Liccardo and Members of the San Jose City Council,

The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley advances the rights of under-represented individuals and families in our diverse community through legal services, strategic advocacy, and educational outreach; we use the law to address issues like poverty, discrimination, and child abuse and neglect through our free legal services. We write to express support for the Housing Department’s latest draft of the affordable housing siting policy. The Law Foundation and the housing advocate community had several concerns about the previous draft of the affordable housing siting policy, particularly the use of violence as a factor in determining the placement of affordable housing developments. We are happy to see that the Housing Department has removed this factor and instead created a more inclusive siting policy. We urge you to pass the current version of the affordable housing siting policy that will be presented at the December 6, 2022 city council meeting.

The affordable housing siting policy is a means of fulfilling state law requirements under Assembly Bill 686 to affirmatively further fair housing. AB 686 defines affirmatively furthering fair housing as, “…taking meaningful actions that, taken together, address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws.” We believe the current iteration of the siting policy meets this goal by removing poverty and crime statistics to determine the location of affordable housing. The policy also ensures affordable housing is built throughout the city, giving San Jose residents a choice of where they can live. While the City needs to expand affordable housing into neighborhoods with more resources and wealth, it cannot neglect historically redlined neighborhoods and perpetuate practices that disinvest from these communities. Housing should also be built in these areas and the City must consider ways to increase access to resources in these neighborhoods.

We further urge you to no longer consider violence as a factor in any proposed changes to the policy or in future affordable housing policies. AB 686 does not provide any directives to assess the crime rates or rates of violence of a neighborhood in a manner that prevents the development of housing in those areas. Further, California’s Department of Housing and Urban Development published guidance on how to affirmatively further fair housing.(1) Notably, the guide cites policing and criminalization as contributing factors that cause segregation, racial concentration, disparities in opportunity, as well as disparities in opportunity for people with disabilities.(2)

Using crime statistics and violence is inherently problematic, as neighborhoods of color are often overly policed and people of color, particularly black and brown people are often criminalized based on racist assumptions. Police engage in more aggressive policing tactics in neighborhoods with black and brown people, particularly disadvantaged neighborhoods.(3) Black individuals are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and have longer sentences as compared to white individuals who have committed the same crimes.(4) Daanika Gordon, an assistant professor of sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University states, “predominantly Black neighborhoods are simultaneously over-policed when it comes to surveillance and social control, and under-policed when it comes to emergency services… Policing responds to segregated landscapes.”(5) San Jose must not repeat the mistakes of the past by using racist stereotypes to determine the housing landscape.

Therefore, we urge you to approve the affordable housing siting policy without further amendments. Thank you for your time and consideration. You may contact me at 408-293-4796 or at erin.neff@lawfoundation.org if you have questions or would like to discuss these issues further.

Sincerely,
Erin Neff
Lead Policy Attorney
Housing Program
Law Foundation of Silicon Valley

  1. California Dep’t Hous. and Comm. Dev., Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (2021) https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/affh/docs/affh_document_final_4-27-2021.pdf

  2. California Dep’t Hous. and Comm. Dev., Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (2021), https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/affh/docs/affh_document_final_4-27-2021.pdf

  3. Ronald Weitzer & Rod K. Brunson, Policing Different Racial Groups In the United States (2015) https://sociology.columbian.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs1986/f/downloads/Weitzer%20%26%20Brunson%202015 %20.pdf

  4. The Sentencing Project, Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System (2018) https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/

  5. Robin Smyton, How Racial Segregation and Policing Intersect in America, (2020) https://now.tufts.edu/2020/06/17/how-racial-segregation-and-policing-intersectamerica#:~:text=Gordon%20is%20finding%20that%2C%20due,emergency%20services%2C%E2%80%9D%20she%2 0said.

Press Release: The Law Foundation Releases Election Platform For the First Time

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                (Contacts below)
APRIL 7, 2022                                                                          

Long-standing Legal Nonprofit in Silicon Valley Releases Election Platform For the First Time

SAN JOSÉ – The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, a long-standing legal services organization in Santa Clara County, has published its first-ever election platform as a guide for candidates running for local office in 2022.  Read the Law Foundation’s election platform here or on its website, www.lawfoundation.org/2022-election-platform.  

The election platform outlines policies that should be adopted at the local, state, and federal levels to benefit low-income communities of color throughout Silicon Valley in the areas of housing, health, the unhoused community, and children and youth. The elections platform stems from the community-based advocacy that the Law Foundation engages in every day and includes prioritizing creating more spaces for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color to share their needs in policy settings.   

“We hear the barriers that low-income communities of color face through the over 10,000 individuals we provide free legal services to every year,” said Law Foundation CEO, Alison Brunner. “The policies in our elections platform address these systemic barriers with the overall goal of a more equitable Silicon Valley. We encourage candidates to commit to advancing these policies when elected and adopting these policies as part of their campaign platforms.”

Policy recommendations in the election platform include:

  • Housing: Policies rooted in preservation, production, and protection such as expanding community benefits agreements such as the Google Community Benefits Agreement, increasing tenant protections, and passing laws that put back wealth in the community such as the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act.  

  • Health: Reimagining mental healthcare and crisis response, such as removing law enforcement from mobile crisis responses and prioritizing access to quality mental healthcare, as well as eliminating barriers to accessing government disability benefits. Reimagining justice, including removal of carceral settings and better carceral conditions.

  • Children & Youth: Addressing the disproportionate representation of Black and Latino families in the child welfare system, identifying solutions for children’s access to behavioral health services, and creating a safe environment at schools for all students by eliminating school resource officers from K-12 campuses. 

  • Unhoused Community Needs: Ending the practice of encampment sweeps that further destabilize unhoused people and prioritizing access to healthcare, wrap-around services, and safe alternatives to housing while developing more low-income housing stock.

This year, the Law Foundation has also joined the SV@Home Action Fund and other housing justice organizations to host candidate forums for local elections, focused on affordable housing and our unhoused community. 

“The issues our client communities are facing in Silicon Valley demand urgency”, said Ms. Brunner. “Low-income families, our unhoused neighbors, children in foster care – they can’t afford a learning curve. We need newly elected officials to take action from the start if we want to have the greatest impact in communities that have too long been underrepresented and marginalized.”

"The Law Foundation has long been a leader in advancing local policies that improve the lives of low-income families and communities of color in Silicon Valley – such as protections for tenants, people who are unhoused, foster youth, and those with health challenges,” said Kyra Kazantzis, CEO of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits. “This election platform puts the critical and missing voice of low-income families of color into the 2022 local elections," added Ms. Kazantzis.

Read the Law Foundation’s election platform here or on its website, www.lawfoundation.org/2022-election-platform.  

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About the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley

The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley advances the rights of underrepresented individuals and families in our diverse community through free legal services, strategic advocacy, and educational outreach. LawFoundation.org | Facebook | Twitter

More information about the SV@Home Action Fund Candidate Forums can be found here: https://siliconvalleyathome.org/action-fund/candidate-forum-series/ 

Contacts:
Housing: Nadia Aziz, Director - Nadia.Aziz@lawfoundation.org
Children & Youth: Andrew Cain, Director - AndrewC@lawfoundation.org
Health: Abre’ Conner, Director - Abre.Conner@lawfoundation.org
Unhoused Community Needs: Becky Moskowitz, Supervising Attorney - Becky.Moskowitz@lawfoundation.org 


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