Written by Josh Ishimatsu, Deputy Director of Strategy 

The long and eagerly awaited Part II to my June 2026 Heart & Home column: Santa Clara County Cocktail Napkin Calculations

In my June 2026 column, I laid out two back-of-the-envelope calculations. The takeaway was a big, unvarnished number: Santa Clara County needs at least 50,000 more affordable homes, requiring roughly $10 billion in local public subsidy.

As I said at the end of my June column, these are daunting numbers. But hiding from them does far more harm than facing them head-on. If we want to build lasting public support for affordable housing, radical honesty about the scale of the challenge isn’t just good ethics – it is the only effective strategy.

The Trap of the Half-Measure

For decades, housing advocates and policymakers have leaned into incremental requests. The logic is understandable: ask for what seems politically palatable rather than what the problem actually demands. But nickel-and-diming the public with funding amounts that can’t move the needle in a visible, tangible way creates a destructive cycle.

When voters approve a housing measure, they reasonably assume we are asking for enough money to solve – or at least visually abate – the crisis. When the problem persists on our streets and in our neighborhoods, the public doesn’t conclude that the funding was merely a down payment. They conclude that the effort failed, that the money was wasted, and that local government is fundamentally incapable of delivering results.

The Lesson of Measure A

Consider Santa Clara County’s 2016 Measure A (see documentation of Measure A’s success here and here). It was a landmark $950 million affordable housing bond—a huge achievement at the time and a vital step forward.

By every objective metric, Measure A has been a resounding success. It deployed public capital efficiently, leveraged state and federal dollars, and funded thousands of supportive and deeply affordable units across our community. The money was well spent, doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Yet, because $950 million was only a fraction of the total structural gap, the overall housing crisis remains acute. The disconnect between what was funded and what is required leaves many residents feeling disillusioned. It fuels the cynical narrative that “throwing money at the problem doesn’t work,” when the actual evidence proves the opposite: past funding worked, but we simply need to scale it to match the reality of the need. In this context, Measure A wasn’t the solution. Instead, it was a proof of concept.

Building Trust Through Truth

We cannot build long-term public trust by soft-pedaling the price tag. When we understate the scale of the need, we set up every successful program to look like a policy failure.

Moving forward, our advocacy must bridge this gap in understanding. We need to celebrate the clear, proven successes of past investments like Measure A, while being uncompromisingly clear about what comes next:

• Celebrate past impact: Show voters that past bonds produced real homes and, more importantly, changed lives.
• Be clear about the gap: Explain that a successful $1 billion initiative naturally leaves a remaining gap if the underlying total need actually is 10X larger.
• Demand scale: Frame future revenue requests not as endless asks, but as necessary, proportional investments to serve people at the scale of need.

If we want the public to believe that government can solve big problems, we have to stop asking for small solutions. Being honest about the $10 billion baseline isn’t cause for despair – it is the baseline requirement for real accountability and real progress.

Staying Ready for When the Time is Right 

Events from earlier this month show that more can be possible than what polls and conventional wisdom might say at a given moment. In this context, setting large scale goals isn’t only about building trust and transparency. It is also about inspiring people, about capturing their imagination, about building the world that is possible, about being ready for big things in the moments where the political will coalesces. And taking inspiration from the current moment, we are in a good spot to build momentum. We are in a good spot to set big goals.