On March 4th, San Jose’s General Plan 4-Year Review Task Force advanced staff recommendations to increase the city’s capacity to build more much-needed housing and allow housing types that used to be common across many older city neighborhoods: triplexes and fourplexes, small apartment buildings, townhomes, and cottage courts, as well as small-lot subdivisions. The scale of these buildings is generally similar to single-family homes.

SV@Home appreciates the San José Planning, Building, and Code Enforcement Department staff for bringing forward this bold recommendation. SV@Home is grateful to the Planning Commissioners for receiving it and engaging the work with courage and leadership as the city considers how to update its General Plan to meet today’s housing needs.

Because these neighborhood-scale multifamily homes tend to be smaller than traditional single-family houses, for-sale projects can also provide home ownership options for those households unable to afford a single-family house. 

Expanding the places we can build all kinds of homes we need is an important step toward ensuring everyone has a safe, stable place they can afford to call home, and toward expanding the city’s ability to sustain the vibrant, diverse, and thriving economy we all want to see. This change would allow our neighborhoods to sustain a variety of different housing types, including homes affordable for community members ranging from downsizing grandparents to young individuals and families. The ability to create more homes for more families in our neighborhoods would also help sustain our school communities, which are suffering from declining enrollment as more families with young children are pushed out of San Jose.

More housing types in our neighborhoods gives more people more choices about where to live, and advances equity by opening up access to neighborhoods where housing may previously have been out of reach. That citywide approach is critical, because to meet San José’s fair housing obligations, missing middle housing must be allowed in high-opportunity neighborhoods that have historically limited multifamily development.

Staff’s recommendation to increase the density of most areas zoned as Residential Neighborhood (R-1) from 8 to 32 dwelling units per acre (du/ac) supports the ability to develop these housing types. The Task Force supported staff’s recommendation, and further provided guidance for staff to additionally explore a maximum of 40 du/ac.

SV@Home Executive Director Regina Celestin Williams was there to watch the proceedings and share her perspective in public comment. SV@Home also submitted a letter along with SPUR, Bay Area Council, Greenbelt Alliance, and Housing Action Coalition (HAC) in support of increasing density to support these housing types.

All materials for the Task Force meeting on small multifamily housing, including the agenda, overview memo, and presentation, are now available on the General Plan Four Year Review webpage.