SAN JOSE — San Jose’s mayor sketched out Saturday a grassroots approach to improve what he said are the four biggest challenges facing the Bay Area’s largest city: homelessness, crime, blight and economic investment.
Mayor Matt Mahan, in his State of the City speech that took place at San Jose City College, said a renaissance for San Jose depends on more than the actions of political, business and community leaders. He asserted that ordinary residents must also bolster the city’s rebound.
“I am convinced that the way to get San Jose, really our entire region, back on track is to keep local government focused,” Mahan said during a press conference prior to the event. “We will be offering the community ways to get directly involved.”
Mahan kicked off the address — his first as mayor — by taking note of the bloody conflict in the Middle East and sharing that one grandparent of his children immigrated from Cuba and another grandparent immigrated from Egypt.
“Their grandparents came to find freedom, opportunity, tolerance – and peace,” Mahan said in remarks prepared for the State of the City speech. “And now it is our responsibility to work for freedom, opportunity, tolerance, and peace so the promise that brought them here is never broken.”
Mahan added that while the world is complicated, what people in San Jose and elsewhere need is straightforward.
“What we need is so simple,” Mahan said during his speech. “We need a city that works for everyone. A city that is safe for everyone. A city where everyone has a place to sleep indoors and where everyone can find a job that pays the bills. A city where we share the same opportunities today regardless of where we lived yesterday.”
One major approach to achieving the goals of improving San Jose is to ensure that the community is fully engaged in this effort and is not simply watching City Hall function from afar.
“What we can do here, what we can control, is the kind of city and community we create,” Mahan said at the news conference. “As an incredibly diverse city, we can be a model for the rest of the world. We can serve as an example that the world can look to as a success story. It is a place that is incredibly diverse and yet can also be safe, welcoming, inclusive and provide opportunities to people today wherever they came from yesterday.”
During the state of the city event, the mayor brought to the stage people and groups who he acknowledged as community heroes and community champions.
Among those who received awards was Jim Salata, president of Garden City Construction, who appeared on the stage next to City Councilmember Omar Torres. Torres had nominated Salata for the District 3 community hero award. Salata recently led an effort to clean up the site of a historic church in downtown San Jose, including the removal of a huge plastic tarp that had become a forbidding eyesore for the St. James Park area.
The mayor also announced an award to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority for helping pave the way to create a place to house homeless people on an interim basis at the VTA’s Cerone Yard.
“Our partners at the Valley Transportation Authority stepped up in a big way,” Mahan said during an awards presentation prior to his speech. “This quick-build community will offer safe and clean shelter to 200 people currently living on our streets.”
About 4,000 people are living without a home at present, Mahan said, but he asserted that progress is being made.
More than 1,000 new interim units for the unhoused, as well as safe parking spaces, are now under construction or in the pipeline, Mahan estimated.
The mayor also acknowledged the role of the San Jose Police Department in helping to make the streets safer.
An estimated 700 to 800 people attended the State of the City event on Saturday.
During his speech, Mahan pointed to the no-holds-barred approach to house survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
“San Francisco quickly constructed over 5,600 cottages to house those made homeless by the catastrophe,” Mahan said. “City leaders didn’t say ‘a cottage isn’t good enough,’ or ‘let’s wait until we rebuild permanent structures,’ or worse, ‘this is unsolvable.’ No, they recognized that in an emergency, you take emergency action, like building simple, decent shelter for everyone who needs it.”
Mahan also said that too much finger-pointing is ongoing in California in terms of dealing with the homeless woes that haunt the state.
“We’ve seen many elected officials offer excuses for our state’s failure to adequately address homelessness,” Mahan said. “We’ve seen them blame the courts, blame the cost of building housing and blame the homeless. It’s time for the blame game to end. It’s time California created safe, decent and affordably-constructed shelter for everyone – and then required those sleeping outdoors to use it.”
The mayor suggested that if residents remain focused on the four key goals of homelessness, crime, blight and economic growth, people can force San Jose City Hall to be accountable to them.
“By coming together and supporting our small businesses, tackling trash and graffiti, helping our homeless neighbors, and keeping each other safe, you’re doing your part to get San Jose back to the basics,” Mahan said. I want to ask the residents of San Jose to stand strong and stand together.”
