SJ’s COPA contradicts city’s housing strategy
Under the Independent leadership Group, this op-ed is endorsed by the following organizations and individuals: United Housing Alliance, Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, Silicon Valley Biz PAC, Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, Families and Homes San Jose, D10 Leadership Coalition, Vietnamese-American Cultural Foundation; Jeff Zell, Seigi Tadokoro, Aurelia Sanchez, Carlos Padilla
While Matt Mahan and Cindy Chavez disagreed on a lot of issues during the mayoral campaign, they were united in finding many flaws with SJ Housing Department’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) proposal. In this, they are joined by national housing experts and local community advocates who conclude that the overly complex proposal is a “bureaucratic nightmare” and simply “not sound policy.”
In brief, COPA aims to economically privilege nonprofit housing providers in the purchase of smaller multifamily properties by giving them: extra time to raise financing, the right to review competitive bids, and the prospect of financial assistance from the City of San Jose.
This highly complex model creates numerous serious problems for all citizens of San Jose.
Consider:
* COPA will lead to further housing scarcity and unaffordability because it hampers new residential development. Experts around the country agree that San Jose is so expensive because our housing supply is catastrophically constrained. We need more housing — lots of it (the State of California requires we build 62,200 more units in SJ alone). So, the #1 objective for SJ, as Mayor Mahan has stated, should be to create an ecosystem that builds more housing supply — and opens up more property for greater density and affordability.
But COPA does just the opposite. Potentially, it would prohibit thousands of properties purchased by nonprofits from being redeveloped into denser housing or other socially responsible uses. That’s because COPA compels nonprofits to protect older buildings through permanent deed restrictions — even if the property is in an urban village along a transit corridor. Simply put, to preserve a small, aging duplex downtown, COPA would deter 20 new units from being built.
COPA doesn’t do anything new to reduce evictions.
First the facts: evictions are uncommon in San Jose — well less than 1% of all rentals result in tenants being forced out. Nonetheless, housing advocates inaccurately claim that COPA will somehow further reduce that number — but it won’t. According to the San Jose Housing Department, nonprofits under COPA must be able to evict delinquent tenants to manage their business model — so there’s no systemic change from current eviction policy.
COPA advocates’ overbroad definition of “displacement” stops the market from finding the best use for property.
Historically the term “displacement” has referred to what happens to renters when people must leave their dwelling and their neighborhoods because the cost of living in their homes and the surrounding area has increased beyond their capacity to pay. This is a legitimate concern, and we support policies to maintain affordable housing in all neighborhoods throughout the city. But it is stretching the definition of displacement beyond recognition to suggest that converting an affordable property into a homeless shelter or a community center for underprivileged youth is somehow the same as flipping that property into luxury condos. It’s not. And it runs counter to common sense and economic realities to suggest that the best use of older, currently affordable buildings in San Jose is for them to be encased in amber.
COPA misdiagnoses the housing crisis in SJ, and as a result its prescription is misguided. Our problem is lack of housing, and anything which makes it harder and more expensive to add density in our city should be given the highest level of critical scrutiny.
— Irene Smith & Roberta Moore are local, small market housing providers.
