San José city councilmembers discussed and reviewed the city’s first quarter status reports during a weekly meeting at City Hall on Tuesday.
The first quarter status report detailed housing, houselessnessness and increasing community safety in the San José community from the months of June to October.
The annual report reviews priorities that matter to the community according to Dolan Beckel and other members of the organization.
Lee Wilcox, the assistant city manager of San José, presented a report about the safety of the community and said there is a lot of property crime, violent crimes and car-related injuries in the community.
“To put forward successful benefits for our residents going from having many priorities to being much more focused as an organization, something that the administration had requested,” Wilcox said.
According to the presentation, there was an approximately 60% increase in improvement of the overall community safety in the last couple of months.
Rob Lloyd, the deputy city manager, presented how much the city has invested in jobs and housing.
“The University of Toronto School of Cities and the Institute of Government Studies at UC Berkeley show San José's downtown recovery as 96% of pre-COVID and No. 3 in their 66 city analysis,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd said few universities were able to provide recovery from the visitors who come and visit downtown San José before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The city of San José has seen an increase of visitors from approximately 4,127,000 people in 2023 compared to last year to 3,700,000, a 12% increase.
San José Mayor Matt Mahan said he was happy about the progress made during the months of June to October and to see the numbers go up and not down.
“Given how much is going on even within just four focus areas. Not to mention everything on around the city. I think if were looking at these quarterly I know that’s our intention,” Mahan said.
City Councilmember Peter Ortiz said he understands the struggle to afford housing and wants everyone to know houseless people are real human beings.
According to the report, 93% of low income families and individuals were able to live in permanent housing after one year.
“I think this statistic truly highlights the importance of providing aid to lower income families or individuals who are at the risk of losing housing so that they can remain housed,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz said he likes the idea of broadening housing options because it is something many low-income families and individuals are facing and looking for ways to get additional resources and help.
City Councilmember Arjun Batra said the report gives people the opportunity to understand how to break up housing issues in different sections and expand upon potential solutions.
“There is a lot here and I think can work with it, but I think we also have to have the opportunity for public to be able to consume it and be able to make comments on those,” Batra said.
Batra said he is concerned about people leaving San José in the next few years because of the high cost of living not only in the area, but across the state.
