{"id":2922,"date":"2026-06-24T10:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2922"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:38:10","slug":"tordillos-downtown-san-jose-has-everything-except-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2922","title":{"rendered":"Tordillos: Downtown San Jose has everything except neighbors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Walk through SoFA on the first Friday night of the month, and you\u2019ll hear music spilling from venues like The Ritz, see galleries like MACLA and the Museum of Quilts and Textiles with doors thrown open and be surrounded by people grabbing a bite and enjoying the nightlife scene.<\/p>\n

Read more Horoscopes June 24, 2026: Mindy Kaling, finding purpose may not solve problems<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve represented downtown for 10 months, and it still has all the elements that made me decide to call it home: the walkability, the arts scene, the mix of people you don\u2019t get anywhere else in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

But walk those same streets for lunch on a weekday or on a Tuesday night, as I often do after City Council meetings, and it\u2019s a completely different place.<\/p>\n

That energy \u2013\u00a0the people\u00a0\u2013 are nowhere to be seen. A neighborhood that runs on one-off events rather than on residents is inherently fragile. Our arts and cultural organizations \u2014 festivals, theaters, museums, live music \u2014 generate nearly $300 million in economic activity each year and draw nearly a quarter of their audiences from outside the county.<\/p>\n

But that audience arrives for events and leaves. With a population of only 23,000 residents and a 31% office vacancy rate, downtown San Jose has everything a great urban neighborhood needs except the one thing that makes it resilient: enough people actually living in it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not for lack of trying.<\/p>\n

Over the years the city has pursued multiple strategies to add housing downtown. And yet, downtown\u2019s high-rise residential incentive program, enacted in 2007, has\u00a0produced just three towers\u00a0in the past decade. In contrast, similar reforms were passed for mid-rise apartments in 2024, and led to 1,444\u00a0new homes\u00a0breaking ground in 2025 alone.<\/p>\n

So why is downtown stuck?<\/p>\n

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The city\u2019s own feasibility study explains why: high-rises are the most expensive projects to build, making them the highest-risk for lenders and requiring builders to plan for higher rents in order to break even.<\/p>\n

When projects do come forward, financing issues often cause them to stall out long before we ever see cranes rise. One developer\u00a0approached 28 lenders\u00a0about a recent high-rise proposal and received only one response.<\/p>\n

Wasted potential<\/h4>\n

The result: vacant lots and underutilized buildings that could support hundreds of new homes sit blighted and empty. While local incentive programs help on the margins, ultimately what downtown needs to build the dense housing that people can actually afford is access to better financing.<\/p>\n

San Jose cannot solve this problem alone, and luckily, we don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Assembly Bill 2074, authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D \u2013 San Francisco), would streamline the approval process for downtown housing projects, making it faster and cheaper to build new homes close to jobs and transit. And critically, it would also establish a $500 million state revolving loan fund to provide financing to high-rise projects at favorable rates.<\/p>\n

To understand the impact of this investment, we must first understand how downtown housing projects are traditionally financed. In order to manage risk, banks will lend only a portion of the construction costs for a new project, so homebuilders must raise the remaining money from private investors who expect double-digit returns on their investment. Those expectations increase project costs, driving up rents for future tenants or preventing new housing from being built at all.<\/p>\n

Public capital at lower interest rates breaks that cycle, lowering overall costs and providing the funds necessary to unlock stalled projects.<\/p>\n

Once the buildings are complete, the homebuilder repays the loan with interest, and the state can recycle the funds to support more housing projects without additional public investment. Downtown San Jose has over a dozen towers already approved that have stalled due to high costs and a lack of financing.<\/p>\n

Read more Asking Eric: They won\u2019t even take a 10-mile detour to visit me<\/a><\/p>\n

Our city would gain immensely from this bill.<\/p>\n

Downtown is the one place in this region where workers can lead car-lite lives close to their jobs, like the half of my office who walk to work every day. It\u2019s where Caltrain, VTA and future BART service converge, and where the best bike and pedestrian infrastructure has been built.<\/p>\n

With rising gas and insurance prices, the ability to rely more on walking, biking and public transportation puts money directly back in people\u2019s pockets.<\/p>\n

And, just as important, it means less time wasted sitting in traffic and better air quality for everyone. More downtown dwellers will also mean more daytime customers for our small businesses, more eyes on the street to support public safety and more people to sustain the bustle of First Fridays throughout the rest of the month.<\/p>\n

We should be doing everything we can to make downtown San Jose an affordable place for anyone to call home.<\/p>\n

The state stands to benefit, too. New downtown housing means more construction jobs, a growing tax base and a more sustainable way to reduce housing costs than one-time assistance programs. Enabling more Californians to live in our urban centers is also one of our most potent tools for combating climate change.<\/p>\n

Broad benefits<\/h4>\n

And while these projects will be mixed-income,\u00a0research has repeatedly shown\u00a0that building new market-rate housing slows and even reverses rent growth while preventing displacement in low-income neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the conditions attached to AB 2074 \u2014 onsite affordable homes, prevailing wages and workforce development opportunities \u2014 ensure that the state\u2019s public investment produces broad benefits for our communities.<\/p>\n

This solution has already been proven elsewhere. Montgomery County, Maryland created a revolving loan fund in 2021 that has already financed over one thousand units and is on track to\u00a0deliver 6,000 mixed-income homes\u00a0over its first 20 years. Since then, at least\u00a0seven states\u00a0have launched their own revolving loan programs.<\/p>\n

On a Friday night in SoFA, street food and live music fill the air. Come back Tuesday evening: same block, same buildings, but the streets are quiet and the bartender is wiping down a counter nobody\u2019s sitting at.<\/p>\n

The culture is already here, but the people aren\u2019t. Until we build the homes for them to live in, they won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

Anthony Tordillos represents District 3 on the San Jose City Council. He previously served as chair of the San Jose Planning Commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Harriette Cole: I just met him, and he said he loves me. How should I feel about this?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A California law, AB 2074, would streamline the approval process for housing projects, making it faster and cheaper to build new homes close to jobs and transit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nTordillos: Downtown San Jose has everything except neighbors - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2922\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tordillos: Downtown San Jose has everything except neighbors - 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