The San Jose City Council voted to draft a source of income discrimination ordinance that would make it unlawful for landlords to discrimination against tenants solely because they use vouchers to help pay the rent. The ordinance, if passed, would not force landlords to accept tenants using vouchers, such as those issued by US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 program, but would prohibit them from using different criteria to evaluate tenants with vouchers versus those without. It would also prohibit landlords from advertising “No Section 8” on apartment listings. Research shows similar anti-discrimination policies in other cities have improved use of government voucher programs by as much as 11 percent. This is important since last year 2,000 federal housing vouchers went unused in Santa Clara County and hundreds of additional voucher-holders were only able to find housing in deed restricted affordable housing developments, as many tenants were unable to find private landlords willing to rent to them.
The ordinance, which is being drafted by city staff, is expected to come before the council for a vote in the spring of 2019.
The City Council also took a crucial step towards creating a Commercial Linkage Fee policy to charge developers of office, R&D, hotel and other commercial uses for their impact on affordable housing. Already most large cities in the Bay Area have adopted a fee to ensure commercial developers help contribute to solving the region’s housing crisis. It has been an issue that’s come before the Council a number of times in recent year, but finally Tuesday the Council passed a memo by Vice Mayor Magdalena Carrasco and Councilmembers Sergio Jimenez, Raul Peralez and Don Rocha. The memo commissioned a nexus study, a required step towards assessing a fee, and a feasibility study to determine appropriate fees that balance San Jose’s affordable housing and economic development goals. The memo also called for these studies to look at High Tech Office development particularly, citing the outsized impact of tech development on the housing crisis and the ability of tech companies to afford higher fees. With pending developments by Google, Apple, and other tech companies in San Jose, the impact of the industry’s growth has become a hot button issue, as was seen in hours of public comment, protest and concern in recent weeks’ Council meetings.
The next step will be for the staff to bring back a proposed work plan to Council towards developing the Commercial Impact Fee policy in February 2019.
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