Fact check: SJ Spotlight op-ed misrepresents critique of Measure A
Former CM and small business owner Johnny Khamis recently argued in Opp Now that housing activists are misleading the public about the true high costs and low returns of county Measure A. Long-time subsidized housing advocate Sandy Perry recently attempted to defend the city/county's failed Housing First strategy in a SJ Spotlight op-ed, and in doing so, misstated Khamis' thesis and floated other misinformation. The Opp Now team sets the record straight.
There are a number of factual inaccuracies and logical mistakes in Sandy Perry's op-ed which argued against Mayor Mahan’s plan to allocate city funding to provide immediate shelter to our unhoused neighbors. A few examples:
1. Perry inaccurately suggests that Johnny Khamis, in his Opp Now Measure A Mythbuster piece, was "complaining that Santa Clara County residents are paying $198,000 per unit for the 4,800 homes being built by Measure A." We called Khamis for his response and he said: "That is a blatant misread of my comment and thesis. What my article explained was that voters are being deceived because the $198k/unit figure hides the real cost of the Measure A housing, which is actually over $850k/unit. I only asked for more honesty on our ballots."
2. Perry misleads when he says: “What the critics fail to point out is that we as local taxpayers only pay a fraction of that cost. Our tax dollars leverage significant state, regional and federal funds” The reality is, local taxpayers also pay the state, regional, and federal taxes that fund the high-priced, subsidized housing for which he advocates. There is no "leverage" occurring in this formulation, it's rather a layer cake of funding: multiple, incremental contributions from various sources effectively hiding the real cost to taxpayers.
3. Perry misframes Mayor Mahan’s focus on providing less expensive temporary shelters of our unhoused population when he says it would: “redirect Measure E funds away from permanent affordable housing and into emergency solutions for homelessness” There is no redirection occurring here: The fact of the matter is that Measure E is a General Tax that stated “To fund general City of San José services, including affordable housing for seniors, veterans, disabled, and low-income families, and helping homeless residents move into shelters/permanent housing, shall an ordinance be adopted enacting a real property transfer tax including unrecorded transfers at these rates”
The Ballot measure never said these funds were solely for the brutally expensive, subsidized, Permanent Supportive Housing for which Perry advocates. Otherwise it would have been a special tax and would have required a ⅔ majority to pass instead of the simple majority a general tax requires for passage. {Editors' note: In reality, the Measure E funds can be used for anything from hiring more police officers to funding events at parks--none of it is required to be used for affordable housing.} And even so, Measure E says nothing that privileges Permanent Supportive Housing spending over other more cost effective ones--in fact, "shelters" are explicitly called out in the Measure's language.
4. Perry also repeats a false narrative when he says: “Studies have proven over and over again that the primary cause of homelessness is unaffordable rents.” This is not accurate: all serious studies and experts suggest that homelessness has many causes, and may also include mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, family conflict, and health issues. Unfortunately, Perry may be relying on assertions made by Santa Clara County that have glaring discrepancies. Although no one disputes the fact that the cost of housing has become exorbitant, the press release from the latest county study overlooked that 31% of those people surveyed had “psychiatric or emotional conditions,” 29% had PTSD Post traumatic Stress disorder, and 26 % had drug and alcohol problems. These conclusions are designed to hide the facts that the county’s drug addiction and mental health programs are not working and make it easy to argue to pass new taxes to create new low income housing which we will expect to solve the problem. Passing taxes is always the easy path. Helping people get mental health services and drug addiction services is hard work and doesn’t fit in a sound bite.
Khamis also added that he applauds the mayor's efforts to shelter as many unhoused people as fast as possible and hoped that Perry could use his influence and passion to pressure the county to do a lot more to help those with drug addiction and mental health issues.
Related:
Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity
Opp Now enthusiastically welcomes smart, thoughtful, fair-minded, well-written comments from our readers. But be advised: we have zero interest in posting rants, ad hominems, poorly-argued screeds, transparently partisan yack, or the hateful name-calling often seen on other local websites. So if you've got a great idea that will add to the conversation, please send it in. If you're trolling or shilling for a candidate or initiative, forget it.