From Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Cindy Chavez's letter to the San Jose Spotlight:
In my recent State of the County address, I highlighted the county’s success with the voter-approved Measure A housing bond. Measure A is ahead of schedule, almost halfway to building more than 4,000 new permanent homes for the homeless.
This week, I called for the county to double down on Measure A — to put an additional 1,000 new affordable, permanent homes into the pipeline before the end of 2020.
The idea for Measure A came out of a Housing Task Force convened by county Supervisor Dave Cortese in 2015, as did a quintupling of county-wide shelter beds.
We’ve found permanent housing for 3,000 homeless families and individuals. Ninety-three percent of the formerly homeless remain stably housed in their new permanent homes. Our new Homeless Prevention pilot has already kept 2,000 people out of homelessness.
The real heroes are the staffs of the county staff and our cities, their nonprofit partners like Destination: Home and affordable housing developers. And let’s not forget the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County, whose groundbreaking contribution of future rent subsidies, called project-based vouchers, allows us to build more and build faster.
Read Chavez's letter to the San Jose Spotlight featuring the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County.