San Jose launches accelerated four‑year review of Envision San Jose 2040 to address housing shortfalls and urban‑village backlog

San Jose city council and the planning commission convened a joint study session to begin the city’s third four‑year review of the Envision San Jose 2040 general plan, a process staff said must be completed on an accelerated schedule to ensure the city can meet new state housing requirements and avoid losing local control over land use.

The review, led by Chris Burton, director of planning, building & code enforcement, will focus on four topics: increasing residential capacity, addressing missing‑middle housing, re‑examining the jobs‑to‑employed‑resident ratio and streamlining planning for urban villages. Burton told the joint session that “planning takes a long time” and stressed the need to start now to align future environmental review, general plan changes and the next housing element cycle.

Why it matters: San Jose’s housing allocation for the 2023–2031 housing element cycle is 62,000 units, a number staff said far exceeds recent production rates and stretches existing capacity. At the same time, state laws adopted since 2018 — including SB 9, SB 35, SB 330 and others — have narrowed local discretion on zoning and review, complicating San Jose’s long‑standing strategies for focused growth and employment‑land preservation.

What staff presented - Background and scale: Planning staff summarized 30 years of land‑use choices that shaped today’s map: roughly half the city’s 180 square miles is public open space, about 37% is residential land (largely single‑family), and roughly 14% is employment land. Staff said the city’s current jobs‑to‑employed‑resident ratio is about 0.79–0.8, short of its 1.1 target and the earlier 1.3 goal.

- Housing production and feasibility: Staff reported historic annual housing production measured in the low thousands on average and said rising construction costs (a local index showed roughly a 54% increase from 2018–2025) plus higher interest and insurance costs have made many multifamily projects financially infeasible in much of the city. Staff noted affordable housing production drove the recent uptick in permits, not market‑rate multifamily.

- Urban villages and capacity constraints: Envision San Jose 2040 relies on concentrated growth: about 100% of planned growth sits on roughly 16% of the city’s land area, distributed across 62 designated urban villages. Staff said only a minority of villages have completed plans (staff cited about 15 completed plans while noting nearly half of the total village land area has been planned) and that completing the remaining plans has been slow and grant‑dependent. Because many commercial parcels in unplanned villages do not currently allow housing, the lack of completed plans constrains capacity.

- Redevelopment and tenant protections: Staff reviewed how redevelopment, market pressures and new local ordinances have changed redevelopment dynamics. They cited a Winchester Boulevard site where an older 216‑unit apartment complex was redeveloped into 636 units (Lynn Haven Apartments), prompting city policy responses including an Ellis Act ordinance and tenant protection measures passed in 2017 that require advanced notice, relocation benefits and that 50% of new replacement units fall under the city’s rent‑control rules.

- State law impacts: Staff walked through major state statutes that have reshaped local land use since 2018: SB 9 (duplexes/lot splits), SB 35 (streamlined ministerial approval for qualifying affordable and mixed‑income housing), AB 2162 (supportive‑housing approvals), SB 1333 (site zoning to match general plan designation for charter cities) and SB 330 (limits on local discretion and a requirement for objective standards). Staff also noted SB 79 — then on the governor’s desk — could further affect minimum/maximum heights and residential allowances around transit stations.

Council and commission concerns Council members and commissioners voiced similar themes: the need to preserve employment lands and neighborhood‑serving commercial uses, the risks of losing community‑serving retail when small strip malls are replaced by housing, and the desire to find ‘‘gentle densification’’ (missing middle) approaches that preserve neighborhood character while adding supply. Multiple speakers urged staff to identify school and other public/quasi‑public (PQP) parcels that could support housing or community uses while recognizing the long‑term uncertainty about whether those parcels will be needed again.

Staff directions and near‑term timeline Staff said council had already set a focused scope for the 12‑month review and outlined near‑term steps: the planning commission will act as a task force, staff will hold four broad community meetings between now and June 2026 and the city plans to start the environmental review work (EIR) in 2026 and begin the next housing element update in 2027 to meet certification needs ahead of a 2031 submittal window.

What staff did not decide No formal votes or land‑use changes were taken at the study session. Council and staff framed the meeting as a priming session to gather direction and to sequence a compressed public engagement, environmental review and regulatory workplan.

What’s next Staff will return with task‑force recommendations, revised village planning approaches and feasibility analysis. Officials emphasized continued public outreach, partnership with the Office of Racial and Social Equity on inclusive engagement, and more detailed economic feasibility work (a new cost‑of‑development report was anticipated later in the calendar year). The timeline staff presented aims to provide the city time to complete environmental review and housing element work so the city can better control zoning outcomes under evolving state law.

Ending City staff and council members said the upcoming 12 months will be an intense planning period with decisions that shape San Jose’s growth through 2031 and beyond; the planning commission will use its role as the task force to refine specific proposals before those proposals are returned to council for final action.