The Mysterious case of the delayed COPA program
San Jose’s proposed COPA* legislation has been significantly delayed until later this year--and city staff's claim that the delay is due to sudden staff shortages is raising eyebrows. Is something amiss? Local property owner Dean Hotop provides the background to the backtrack and sees an opportunity for SJ City Council to use the delay to readdress its affordable housing strategy, which has been a bust.
The San Jose Housing Department has been explicitly tasked, and specifically funded with taxpayer funds, to address San Jose’s affordable housing, homelessness and displacement issues.
The Housing Department’s justification for COPA was preserving older, lower cost housing stock and preventing sales transactions which kept such housing in private investors’ hands, who may someday wish to redevelop it, potentially causing displacement of current renters. COPA will give non-profit organizations, community land trusts and tenant organizations the first right to make an offer on this housing stock when listed for sale and an additional first-right-of-refusal to match any free-market purchase agreement between private parties, if the initial offer is not accepted.
On September 22, 2020, the San Jose City Council passed a resolution directing the Housing Department to begin developing an anti-displacement program called COPA, Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, under very specific criteria. The last of those criteria is as follows:
"Return to the Community and Economic Development Committee, with a cross-reference to the full Council, after the framework for the COPA is developed to provide an update and provide any further guidance that may be required."
Over the past 18 months, the San Jose Housing Department (SJHD) has held countless meetings, hearings, costly ($100k budgeted to a meeting consultant) public outreach seminars and even commissioned an advisory committee comprised of non-profits, tenant advocates, property owners and housing/real estate lobbyists to help design the COPA program framework. That task is completed.
The SJHD has regularly provided quarterly updates on the progress of the COPA program development along with the projected timelines for completion and presentation to the City Council for approval. Up until March 17th, there was never any indication that the program was short on any resources or at any risk of falling behind schedule or lacked the capacity to finish the task at hand. The projected timeframe to present the framework to the council was April 2022.
On March 17th, the Housing Department released a memo to the Council’s committee on Community and Economic Development, which very quietly announced on page 12 of the memo “…the Housing Department’s small Policy Team staff will not have the capacity to advance the COPA proposal further…”. On page 13 of the same memo, it is stated that “Draft” COPA program will not be presented to Council until “late 2022(est)”.
The new timeline also happens to coincide with the next election, in which San Jose voters will elect a new Mayor, fill three open council seats and possibly select a fourth new council member. This is on top of having elected two new council members in 2020, who were not part of the 9/22/20 council. All told, a majority of the eleven council seats which ultimately vote on COPA in "late 2022(est)" will likely not be held by councilmembers who originally approved the criteria for developing the framework of COPA.
It's hard not to wonder if the COPA delay stems from concerns that SJHD doesn't have the votes for COPA with the current council, and aims to benefit from a potential change in councilmembers in the new term.
In other words: Is SJHD vote-counting on the current council and hoping for a more COPA-friendly council after the next election?
San Jose’s COPA program has been critically reviewed here, at Opportunity Now, as working against free market solutions to the housing/homeless/affordability crisis.
Regardless: San Jose’s City Council should follow through on the 9/22/20 criteria provided to the SJHD. It's been 18 months and it's time to hold a public hearing on the current state of COPA framework development and have a binding vote on whether to a) Continue developing the current COPA framework; or b) Provide the Housing Department new direction on the framework of COPA; or c) Completely stop developing the COPA program entirely and allocate precious resources to more productive activities.
Additionally, this quietly announced delay raises some fundamental questions for SJ City Council to address for San Jose taxpayers:
1) Should the San Jose City Council begin to re-evaluate the current housing regulatory environment in San Jose, from top-to-bottom, to ensure that excessive regulations are not stifling the production of much needed new housing in San Jose, by private developers?
2) Does this type of heavy-handed regulation aimed at preserving old, low-density housing stock, with large carbon footprints & high maintenance costs, help or hinder the City’s obligations to state housing production goals and greenhouse gas reduction requirements?
3) How much taxpayer money has been spent on the COPA framework development at this point?
4) When do SJ taxpayers begin to see substantial returns on the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds generously provided to the City to solve the homeless issue?
* Community Opportunity to Purchase Act
Dean Hotop may be contacted at SJisbroken@gmail.com
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