Things are HaPeNNinG
- Santa Clara Housing Advocates
- Apr 3
- 4 min read
TLDR:
1. Housing Projects in Santa Clara
2. El Camino & Santa Clara Station Specific Plans
3. State Senate Bills
5. Get Involved With SCHA
6. New Council Members
After a LONG time of our city doing very little housing related work and our Leadership Team occupied with other important tasks, a tidal wave of housing projects and events are coming in! Our Leadership Team has a meeting scheduled this month where we will discuss our next steps, including how to get more people involved. In the meantime, we encourage you to keep an eye on these things and share your thoughts with us and City Council.
Housing Projects
We have sent emails to project leaders inviting them to fill out our Evaluation Survey, which compares the project against our Mission, Values, Strategy (MVS) statements.. When we receive answers, we will figure out what our next steps will be. If you would like to be involved in these discussions, please let us know. And if you have information you would like to share with us, please let us know that too!
3. Gianera St
Specific Plans
Specific Plans are development projects for an entire area. Santa Clara has two in the works which include housing, as well as transportation, retail, and more. We haven't had official conversations about these either, but keep an eye out and share your thoughts!
State Senate Bills
Our State Senator, Aisha Wahab, is sponsoring a variety of housing related legislation this session and has asked us to review them and share support. So far, the Leadership Team has agreed to share a letter of support for SB 522, which makes sure that housing rebuilt after the LA fires, and any future natural disasters across the state, is still required to follow tenant protections laws. You can review the fact sheet here, and our support letter here.
We are researching the following additional pieces of legislation, and welcome your feedback:
- SB 262 expands the Prohousing Designation program to include policies and programs that protect tenants and create housing options for homeless individuals.
- SB 381 limits a landlord’s ability to charge fees beyond rent, directly targeting the affordability of rental housing.
- SB 384 prevents algorithmic price fixing by preventing businesses from using software that combines the confidential data of two or more businesses for the purposes of setting prices or stock levels.
- SB 722 prevents corporations from purchasing newly constructed single family homes, townhomes, and condos by limiting the ability to purchase to a natural person.
Benton Updates
The good news is that the state has been in touch with the city and county. The bad news is they haven't officially offered the grant yet. From what we can tell, the state has been requesting documentation for different things. When the grant is offered, we will likely have a very short time frame to organize and take action. So let's be ready to show up with our support for the project that started SCHA!
Join us at the Silicon Valley Housing Advocates Meet Up to meet local volunteers, leaders, organizations, and community members all working to improve the housing crisis in our region. We’ll talk about our work, enjoy each other’s company, and of course have some great snacks.
SCHA is a partner at this event, joining with South Bay YIMBY, Livable Sunnyvale, Palo Alto Forward, and likely more to come. RSVP: actionnetwork.org/events/pro-housing-meet-up-2025
Get Involved With SCHA!
When SCHA first came together around the Benton Project in 2022, we had a core group of strategists and decision makers collaborating on our actions. Since then, we have put together what we call the Leadership Team. As our Group and our work continue to grow, we are looking for ways to get as many residents involved as possible - as part of Leadership or other volunteers.
We don't know exactly what this will look like yet, but if you think you want to help work on any of the projects listed above, or have any other ideas, please let us know!
The primary qualification is that you must live in the City of Santa Clara. You don't have to have any organizing, political, government, or advocacy experience - you just have to care about housing in our city!
And remember to send your friends to our website schousingadvocates.org to fill out the Join form, or email us directly so we can add them to the email list.
New Council Members
In November, Council Member Kevin Park (D4) and Suds Jain (D5) were reelected. We have two new council members: Albert Gonzalez (D1) who won over Anthony Becker, and Kelly Cox (D6) who replaced Kathy Watanabe (termed out). SCHA is working on building relationships with our new council members, and you should too! You can find all the contact information for our entire council and mayor on the city website. We encourage you to write to them about any and all issues you care about!
If you made it this far, thank you for your continued support of housing in Santa Clara! Reach out any time, and look out for more updates.