San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan aims to stand out from the crowded field of California governor candidates with a statewide policy plan to speed up housing production. Advocates say there’s plenty to like — even if certain facets of the plan could cut funding to local public services.
Mahan unveiled his 15-point plan March 5 in Altadena, where the fifth deadliest and second most destructive wildfire in state history razed more than 9,000 buildings in Los Angeles County last year. The proposals include a two-year tax holiday on local fees for new housing developments and a 30-day limit on permit processing. Mahan proposes fast-tracking approvals for new accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, and factories making modular homes. He also wants to revise state building codes and develop a plan to curtail lawsuits used to block projects.
“His plan is bold, comprehensive and grounded in real-world experience, not easy sound bites,” Adrian Rafizadeh, spokesperson for Mahan’s campaign, told San José Spotlight. “It drives down costs by cutting the taxes, regulations and lawsuits that make projects more expensive. It gets more value for every taxpayer dollar by putting housing at the center of California’s industrial strategy. And it holds every community and every level of government accountable for results.”
Kelly Snider, a land use consultant and urban planning professor at San Jose State University, said it’s the most detailed housing plan she’s seen from this year’s governor candidates.
“I think it’s a good platform, and there is a sufficient amount of detail so far to believe him,” Snider told San José Spotlight. “I think it’s credible.”
Yet there are elements in the proposal where Snider anticipates pushback — namely, the two-year tax holiday. Mahan has bemoaned California’s housing construction fees as the highest in the nation and vows to prevent local governments from imposing exorbitant sales or transfer taxes on new infill housing, such as the voter-approved “mansion tax” — or Measure ULA — in Los Angeles.
“It’s a good idea and it’s the kind of centralization of state authority that a governor could probably implement in a four-year term, but it is going to be so unpopular with almost every jurisdiction in California because they have no other source of revenue to pay for things like building permits or housing elements, which are required by the state,” Snider said. “These unfunded mandates are going to be literally impossible for most cities in California to abide with.”
South Bay housing advocate Alex Shoor shares that concern.
“When you cut fees, and you don’t replace that revenue with something else, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face,” Shoor told San José Spotlight. “You need that revenue to provide city services and have to make sure it can be replaced. It can be a gamble.”
In San Jose, the Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department is struggling with a massive $550 million maintenance and infrastructure backlog, which officials have blamed on developer fee cuts. Officials said they’re studying how the department can restructure the funding loss as the city tackles a larger $56 million budget deficit.
“We absolutely need more housing, but adding more residents while cutting the services that protect and serve those residents is a recipe for disaster,” John Tucker, a spokesperson for AFSCME Local 101, the union representing public employees across Santa Clara County, told San José Spotlight. “The reality is that developers won’t ‘pass those savings onto buyers.’ They’ll sell at the market rate and pocket the difference. It’s just corporate handouts disguised as a housing plan.”
In other areas, Shoor said Mahan’s plan has a lot to like.
“This is a laundry list of things that we have been talking about for a long time and have been working on and have already had some achievements on,” Shoor said. “I don’t think anything here is breaking radically new ground, and yet it is super important ground.”
Shoor likes the elements of Mahan’s plan that emphasize affordability. One proposal has the state purchasing apartment buildings to maintain low- and middle-income rental rates.
“I think time will determine whether Matt Mahan is as unabashedly pro-housing as he purports to be,” Shoor said. “But he has always been good about measuring outcomes and making sure government resources are spent efficiently. I think that’s always been his strong point, and I think the elements of the plan that talk about that are going to be really important.”
Another prong of Mahan’s plan includes changing state building codes to make them more affordable to property owners. Mahan said the costs of meeting new building codes every year, including those which are decades old, have skyrocketed.
“I think there is generally pretty popular support for updating and streamlining state building codes and eliminating the patchwork of county fire authorities and city public works authorities that have to get involved, but that will be unpopular, specifically with the unions,” Snider said.
Though Snider points out key signs of optimism that unions are becoming more receptive to lower regulatory hurdles. For instance, the California Conference of Carpenters was a key partner to the state’s biggest legislative effort in years to roll back California’s landmark environmental review law, known as CEQA, and exempt urban apartment projects.
There’s one idea Snider wanted to see that isn’t in Mahan’s plan. While it calls for a two-year tax holiday to support ADU construction and private sector financing partnerships, it doesn’t call for a government-backed, standardized funding mechanism for single-family homeowners to build secondary homes on their property. For example, Snider is interested in new Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac government-guaranteed loans for this purpose.
“We need something that really gets the stamp of approval from all of the insurers, brokers and mortgage lenders and third-party markets and also becomes available to typical homeowners in California,” Snider said. “If there was some way to unlock the equity of someone’s single-family home while they were still living there, that would be a great funding source to build these second units the state needs.”
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.