In an effort to stretch limited staff resources amid sweeping state land-use mandates, San Jose is exploring whether to abandon a one-size-fits-all approach by focusing taller, multi-unit homes near transit lines and commercial corridors.
Though a tiered zoning plan wouldn’t rule out rezoning single-family neighborhoods entirely, it takes into account what a neighborhood’s infrastructure can actually handle.
San Jose City Council’s Tuesday vote directing staff to study the new zoning plan comes as the planning department faces a severe bottleneck: 90% of their workload is currently consumed by state housing mandates, leaving just 10% for local planning decisions. To focus that remaining capacity, staff sought council direction on where and how to evaluate future neighborhood density.
Planning Director Chris Burton said most of the work is “being driven by the state of California.”
“In this most recent session, the legislature considered 1,800 bills — 300 of which were related to planning and land use,” he said. “So this isn’t stopping soon. We know that there is more work coming.”
Like all cities, San Jose is facing critical decisions on how far it should go to meet its housing targets. It needs to make space for 62,000 new homes – the second highest state-mandated housing target in the Bay Area – in hopes of bringing down costs in one of the nation’s least affordable cities.
What was intended as a routine decision on staff work-plan priorities stretched into an hours-long debate. The friction builds on a long-running clash between housing advocates urging aggressive homebuilding and residents fiercely opposed to proposals that could quadruple allowable density in single-family neighborhoods.
Beyond the housing debate, the council voted to prioritize work on a zoning update that will streamline permits for childcare centers in commercial zones. To accommodate that workload, staff postponed a separate study that would have explored adding retail stores into residential neighborhoods.
Ahead of the meeting, the city received over 150 pages of written comments, and more than 60 speakers signed up to voice concerns. Councilmembers repeatedly reminded the public that the vote was merely a direction for staff to analyze options, with no immediate upzoning taking place and final decisions targeted for late 2027.
Even if updates to the city’s general land-use plan are approved by December next year, any actual zoning changes would not take effect until early 2028.
Neighborhood leaders and long-time residents warned that changing single-family zoning rules would overwhelm local streets and alter the character of quiet suburban communities.
“Increasing density threatens our tree canopy and neighborhood character,” said Maren Sederquist, president of the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association, pointing to traffic, parking loss, and three-story structures casting shadows over adjacent backyards. “Please abandon proposals for 32, 24, or even 16 units per acre in established neighborhoods.”
On the other side, housing advocates argued that San Jose cannot afford to back down on homebuilding during a regional affordability crisis.
Housing advocate Manuel Salazar of SV@Home pointed out that San Jose has permitted just 9% of its state-mandated eight-year housing target. He urged the city to “prioritize actions that expand housing capacity, not add hurdles that delay or discourage homes.”
Councilmember George Casey proposed exempting non-transit single-family neighborhoods from the study altogether. Casey argued that if proximity to public transit is the city’s main justification for adding density, neighborhoods lacking transit shouldn’t face local upzoning — especially since recent state laws are already expanding home construction in suburban areas without additional city action.
“You acknowledge that access to transit is what is the impetus behind the tiered approach,” Casey said. “And I would say that if you’re further away from transit, it would make sense that we would keep it status quo.”
However, Vice Mayor Pam Foley, Councilmembers Anthony Tordillos and Rosemary Kamei pushed back. They warned that exempting low-transit areas – which heavily overlap with affluent “high-resource” neighborhoods – would unfairly concentrate new development in lower-income central districts while opening the city up to state legal penalties and loss of local land-use control.
“We don’t have a District 3 or District 5 or District 6 housing crisis,” Tordillos said. “We have a region-wide and a citywide housing crisis, and I think that our policies should reflect that.”