Three new affordable housing sites for seniors will open in San Jose in the next few months. This will add about 500 units to the current 4,000 residences reserved for senior citizens.
There are about three hundred units available in Virginia Street Studios, a senior apartment complex opening this winter. About 150 more units will be available for seniors at Blossom Hill, in a few months. And Mesa Terrace, also in San Jose, is currently accepting applications for 23 senior units.
But affordable housing advocates are questioning if this effort will be enough.
In 2019, a point-in-time count showed senior citizens represent 40 percent of Santa Clara County's homeless population. Though we don’t have more recent data about the seniors specifically, the preliminary 2022 count shows that the unhoused population has gone up by three percent in the county.
Geoffrey Morgan is the CEO of First Community Housing – a Bay Area nonprofit in charge of developing and managing affordable housing. He told the San Jose Spotlight that seniors are the fastest growing population of unhoused people in Silicon Valley.
Morgan added that the city “needs tens of thousands of more senior affordable housing units to meet the demand.”
