Silicon Valley has reached a defining moment. We are generating record amounts of wealth, yet, most people who live here are still struggling to get by.
That was the stark finding of the recently-released Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s 2026 Silicon Valley Index. It is a sobering look at our cities and confirms what many San Jose families already experience.
Right now, the median home price in our region is closing on $2 million, nearly five times the national figure. Renters are paying an average of $3,000 a month for apartments, $4,200 for houses. Forty percent of renters spend more than a third of their income just on housing. Child care costs, which can rise to about $2,900 for an infant, are so high that it forces families out of our cities.
The people being squeezed are the ones who keep this city running: nurses, teachers, police officers, firefighters, cooks, child care workers, construction workers, retail workers. They are leaving Silicon Valley to live in more affordable areas, like Tracy and Los Banos, spending hours each day on their commutes instead of with their families.
Households earning six figures — people who should be comfortably middle class — live paycheck to paycheck. Seniors who built this city struggle to survive here.
These are not people on the margins. This is the majority of San Jose.
Over the last decade, Silicon Valley’s population of children under 18 has gone down by 15%, per the report. As a result, San Jose Unified School District is one of many school districts facing the consequences of declining enrollment and making difficult decisions to balance their budget by closing beloved neighborhood schools.
We are staring at the edge of a cliff. Yet, City Hall has treated this as unavoidable. The response has been to bet on economic growth at the top and hope it trickles down.
As councilmembers, we have led and passed a living wage policy, renter protections, immigrant protections and investments in public safety and homelessness. These fights matter. Still, the strongest protections cannot keep people in a city they can no longer afford. For that, we need to radically shift how we invest in our communities, our essential workers, how we care for children and our seniors.
San Jose is facing a $60 million budget shortfall this year. Prioritizing working families is paramount. As members of the San Jose City Council, we are responding to this moment with the San Jose Affordability Agenda. We’re going after the “big three” cost pressures squeezing families: housing, child care and utilities. By integrating these foundational cost drivers into our focus area structure we can tackle issues that are often cited by our residents as problem areas for our city.
The Affordability Agenda addresses the big three head on. On housing, we will pilot a new model for building affordable, union-built homes faster and at lower cost, while expanding emergency assistance to keep families from falling into homelessness.
To make child care more affordable, we will seek to add child care to the “Growing Our Economy” focus area. This will establish the infrastructure and investments that help stabilize and expand early childhood and afterschool programs.
And to protect household budgets, we will shield residents and small businesses from energy cost spikes as data centers come online, and modernize our small business programs so working people can build real economic power. These are just the highlights, the full plan goes further.
San Jose is at a turning point. A new economic boom is reshaping our city, and we have a choice about who it works for. We refuse to let rising costs hollow out our neighborhoods, push out our essential workers and price out the next generation.
Instead, we propose building a San Jose where every neighborhood is enriched with opportunity, every person is able to prosper and thrive, and every child is safe to develop into a healthy, resilient adult.
Pamela Campos represents District 2 on the San Jose City Council. Peter Ortiz represents District 5 on the council.