SJSU Votes! held a forum between mayoral candidates Matt Mahan and Cindy Chavez remotely through Zoom Sunday.
The forum, which had about 100 attendees, mainly concerned issues regarding the SJSU community and the greater downtown area.
SJSU Votes! says it's a student-led organization that encourages students to register to vote and participate in elections. It works with organizers on campus and within the city to mobilize voters.
Discussion questions on a wide array of topics were posed by both members of SJSU Votes! and students.
The candidates were introduced by political science junior Sabrina Nabizada. That was followed by Q&A discussion led by Mary Currin-Percival, director of SJSU Votes! and the Institute for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement.
Each participant was given a two-minute time frame to answer each question and were allowed to make one objection when the other participant was speaking.
Housing
The discussion of creating new housing, as well as finding solutions to the ongoing houselessness crisis in San Jose, was one of the most prominent topics of the forum.
In response to a question about the ongoing housing crisis in the city, Cindy Chavez said, "One of my concerns is, frankly, that the city of San Jose has not been permitting housing at a quick enough pace."
Chavez is a lifelong San Jose resident and obtained her bachelor’s degree in political science at SJSU.
“There are a couple of other pieces of property that are proximate to the university that I think the university should consider for housing and perhaps even for expanding some teaching space off campus to make the footprint slightly bigger,” she said.
Chavez said she wants to focus SJSU’s budget on making sure that students have better access to affordable housing, on and off campus.
Matt Mahan said there are not enough new housing developments in Downtown San Jose and barriers to building high-rise apartments should be removed.
Mahan said he is “very concerned” with the direction the city is heading in on affordable housing, houselessness and crime.
“We have a number of policies that are actually barriers to building housing faster [and], to reducing street homelessness to improve public safety," he said.
Mahan said the city needs to streamline the process for both residential and commercial permits.
Crime policies
Throughout the forum, talks emerged about ensuring public safety in the city without the need for police intervention.
Chavez answered that she wants to increase the availability of after-school and late-night programs for teens.
She said programs including recreation centers lead to a “drop in crime” of up to 30% compared to communities that don’t have them.
“When I served on the [city] council, we had a deep partnership with our schools that allowed us to invest in after school programming and evening programming and also summer programming,” Chavez said.
In response, Mahan said when he was a public school teacher in East Side San Jose, he saw the challenges that young people face and the risks of falling into a bad path everyday.
“I also think that we have to, in some cases, rethink our 911 response. There are plenty of emergency calls that don't require an officer with a gun,” he said. “So whether that's a trained clinician, or mental health professional, or it's a community service officer who doesn't have a gun.”
Closing Remarks
After the Q&A, Chavez and Mahan were given one minute each to give their closing remarks.
“If we can get all of our parties working together, we can make San Jose safer, cleaner, build more affordable housing and do even more to address homelessness,” Chavez said.
She made mentions of her work on keeping hospitals open under her role as Santa Clara County supervisor.
“I am convinced that if we are working more closely together, that we really can do all of the things that we know are necessary for our community,” Chavez said.
In his final statement, Mahan said, “We need to focus, we need to set public goals, we need to measure our performance and we need to be more accountable for the outcomes.”
He remarked again on his goals of improving affordable housing, public safety and mental health support.
