City on the Cusp

I want to take you back to San Jose in ‘97.

Half of my team wasn’t even born yet. Some of you were off inventing the things that have redefined our world. And I was sitting on the bus. With nothing but my backpack and that day’s edition of the Mercury News.

And the headlines told a story everyone could feel:

UNEMPLOYMENT AT 29-YEAR LOW

SURGE IN GROWTH FORECAST; S.J. WILL LEAD BAY AREA IN MOST NEW RESIDENTS

STATE LEADS NATION’S BOOM, ECONOMIC GROWTH IS MORE DIVERSE, RESILIENT THAN BEFORE

The energy was palpable. The possibility was endless. We were a city on the cusp.

And on my long bus ride from Watsonville, I saw the Valley change in real time.

I watched the Adobe towers go up. Saw Diridon station get restored — all while walking to get a sandwich at Zanotto’s or stuck in traffic alongside all the other people who were drawn to our valley of opportunity.

Once I got to school, I saw the excitement of classmates who were joining the robotics team and heard about the stock market from the campus maintenance crew I worked alongside to pay off my tuition. Everyone was excited about the growth and innovation happening right here in our Valley and there was a special sense of shared prosperity and opportunity.

There was never a better time to be a San Josean. Until today.

Once again, we’re a city on the cusp. What we do today will decide our tomorrow. We can choose to realize our full potential or repeat the same policy mistakes that have held us back.

Over the past two years, we’ve set ourselves up for success. We’ve gotten back to basics. Now it’s time we build on the basics.

Over the course of this year, we will open over 1,000 new safe and dignified places that will be an immediate alternative to encampments and help people turn their lives around. This is more than any other city on the West Coast, and likely the nation.

Helping our most vulnerable neighbors come indoors is the right thing to do. We should be proud of this historic investment. We should feel hopeful that we’re on the cusp of ending the era of encampments.

But our progress is also exposing another problem — persistent mental health and addiction issues that we don’t have the resources or tools to solve here at the city level.

This is a problem that our first responders are all too familiar with. In fact, they get to know the people suffering the most the best. I want to tell you the story of one person they know all too well — we’ll call her Cathy.

Cathy lives on the streets Downtown, and has interacted with our police, fire, and outreach staff dozens of times in just the last couple years.

Cathy needs help, and we’ve tried — again and again — to provide it. But we’ve been unsuccessful.

We’ve offered her resources and tried to place her in housing.

But the help we have to offer isn’t enough. She’s too unwell to take care of herself but not unwell enough to be conserved.

When I was walking down San Fernando a few weeks back, I saw Cathy literally laying in the gutter. She is suffering. Our officers and Downtown neighbors have watched her slowly deteriorate. Our inability to change a system that is failing Cathy puts our city on the cusp of failure.

We let people like her fall into chronic homelessness and only help them if they raise their hands and say “I want help.”

Meanwhile, 200 people like Cathy die on our streets every year. And of the 200 who died last year in our County, 40% of their deaths were due to an overdose or suicide.

Those deaths are on our hands. We know that people in the throes of serious addiction or mental health crises are often unable to make rational decisions about their own well-being.

And yet, we don’t intervene.

Some call it civil liberty. We know it’s a moral failure.

Some call it progressive. We know it’s anything but.

That’s why we’ve been pushing so hard to rebuild our mental health and addiction treatment system. That’s why we’ve been asking our County to chip in and pay for the case management and supportive services at our interim housing sites, and asking the Governor to make funding for shelter and interim housing an ongoing state commitment. And it’s why I’ve been pushing to create enough shelter, enough outreach, and enough accountability that no one continues to live on our streets for lack of alternatives, or by choice.

Without the support of our State and county for practical, scalable alternatives to the streets, our most vulnerable neighbors will continue to suffer and die on our watch. When cities like San Jose do the hard work of building out a comprehensive interim housing and shelter system, it’s up to counties to ensure that the people we bring indoors get the supportive services they need to turn their lives around. And it’s up to the State to ensure that every city and every county knows their responsibilities, has support to execute them, and is held accountable for doing so.

We’re not scared of accountability here in San Jose. I am incredibly proud of our San Jose Police Department — not just today, but every day. Like our firefighters, they put their lives on the line to keep all of us safe, which is the most fundamental responsibility of government. And they’ve made it clear — crime comes with consequences in San Jose.

I don’t think there is any better proof point than this: over the past three years, our detectives have solved every single homicide. From 2022 through 2024, we’ve achieved a 100% solve rate. And if you include cold cases that our detectives solved during that same time period, we’re at a 120% solve rate.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. There is no other big city in the entire country that can say the same.

Every San Josean should feel safer knowing that accountability is assured here in San Jose.

But a safe city isn’t just about how you feel — it’s also about what you see.

That’s why we’re here today — not just to share a meal and hear a vision for a city on the cusp—but to take concrete action to get there.

We have three proven steps here in San Jose to address blight: Education, Eradication and Enforcement.

Thanks to this approach and our incredible network of volunteers, many of whom are here today, we’ve removed over 1.9M square feet of graffiti, hosted over 350 trash clean-ups and taken nearly 10.5M pounds of trash off our streets. Just this year.

We’re on the cusp of cleanliness.

But if we don’t hold accountable those who degrade our public spaces, we will forever be cleaning up after them. That’s not fair to the neighbors who spend beautiful Saturday’s like this one making a difference. That’s not fair to small businesses who are left to foot the bill for repeat vandalism. And it’s not fair to our city staff — who have the seemingly Sisyphean task of maintaining clean and beautiful streets.

So we’re starting to prioritize enforcement once again. We’re conducting graffiti stings, we’re catching prolific vandals and illegal dumpers, and we’re taking grossly negligent property owners to court. And now, some of our most prolific taggers are serving their time by beautifying our community instead of defacing it.

We’re also working closer with partners like Caltrans and Union Pacific than we ever have, delivering new freeway signs, faster weed abatement, new deterrents to vandalism, and collaborating to resolve encampments that are simply unsafe along freeways and train tracks.

Those are the basics — keeping everyone safe, bringing everyone indoors, and cleaning up our neighborhoods. And thanks to our focus on the basics over the past two years, despite the problems that persist, we’ve made real progress. We’re a city on the cusp.

Now, it’s time to build on those basics. And we sure have a lot of building to do.

Because let’s be honest: Our kids can’t afford to stay here and the innovation of our region will find another Valley to call home if we don’t start building the housing we need where it makes sense — in places like Downtown, North San Jose, and along our major transit and commercial corridors.

In 2024, we broke ground on zero units of multi-family market-rate housing. Zero. And that’s despite the fact that our Council has said yes to every single project that has come before us in recent years. They simply don’t pencil!

In response, we took action — we reduced one-time fees that look good on paper, but block investment and therefore rarely get collected. And it’s working.

Since implementation last year, we’ve seen previously stalled projects totaling 2000 units of new housing move forward. Just yesterday, we broke ground on 397 of those units.

The day before, we found out that San Jose is growing again. There’s been a lot of talk about our residents moving to Texas — but Austin, you have a problem: they are coming back! We just retook our place as the 12th largest city in the nation and by continuing to build, we’ll continue to expand opportunity in the years ahead.

But we can’t just build housing, we need to build a brand. I love San Francisco. It will always be an international destination. But it’s time for San Jose to shine — sorry Supervisor Mahmood!

There is no better opportunity to show off what we’ve got here in the South Bay than in 2026, as San Jose becomes the first metro area in history to host the Super Bowl and World Cup matches in the same year.

And we aren’t taking this opportunity lightly. We’ll use 2026 to display the technology of tomorrow and the diversity that makes our city strong. We’re changing the narrative of the Bay. And we won’t leave anything to fate.

This week, the Urban Vibrancy Institute and Steve Aoki proved that San Jose knows how to party — and take a cake to the face! Next month, we’ll kick off the one-year countdown to the World Cup at Creekside’s new space, the Lot, just blocks from here. We’re making lasting investments that will set us up to create a future sports and entertainment district right here where we stand today.

That means, starting in July, special events that activate one of seven entertainment zones will allow you to buy a beer at San Pedro and take it with you as you walk down the recently renamed “Sharks Way,” through Little Italy, to a concert at SAP.

And next year, when we launch an outdoor 13-concert series to coincide with the Super Bowl and World Cup matches, you’ll be able to do the same. Walk around, enjoy our unparalleled weather, build community and help to accelerate our economic recovery.

From big names on stage to local legends visiting classrooms, we’re making sure our entire community has something to look forward to even without a ticket to the big games next year, and topping it all off with drone shows to highlight the technology our Valley is famous for.

Clearly, we have a lot in store next year.

But San Jose won’t be defined by 2026 alone. In fact, we’ve had a hometown team that has helped put San Jose on the map for over 30 years. And when City Council officially approves our new agreement, they’ll be here for at least 25 more.

Sharks, for the last 30 years you’ve helped define San Jose’s identity. I can’t wait to watch you continue to do so on and off the ice for the next 25. And you’re in good company — we have the Quakes, BayFC, the San Jose Giants, the Panthers, our Spartans, and so many other teams that bring us together, give back to our community and create that hometown pride.

But civic pride isn’t just about which teams we cheer for or whether we’re chosen to host world class sporting events — it’s about how we run the city every day, for every resident.

You deserve a city that works as hard as you do. And you’ve set the bar high — we won’t reach it unless we use the technology our Valley is famous for to change the way we work at City Hall. To do that, we’re embracing the AI revolution.

PG&E’s recent analysis found that some of our biggest companies plan to build out over 1 GW worth of new data centers and R&D labs in San Jose in the coming years. To put that in perspective, that’s enough to power the entire City of San Francisco or 400 Super Bowls all at once. And thanks to new grid infrastructure being built out in San Jose, we have the power to make it a reality. This means jobs, it means tax revenue to fund services for all of our neighborhoods, and it means maintaining our edge in the global innovation economy.

But as we position San Jose to power the AI revolution, we must ensure that our children and our current workforce are not left behind. Because we all know that the last time our city was on the cusp, not everyone had a piece of the pie. And I don’t have to tell you that AI will be wildly disruptive. But if anyone can manage its development and adoption in a way that makes life better for everyone, it’s the Capital of Silicon Valley.

We’ve partnered with SJSU to launch two hands-on programs to help staff build skills in data analytics and artificial intelligence. These programs have helped over 75 staff make better decisions, use technology more effectively, save over 10,000 work hours, and give students real-world experience while helping solve real challenges. Through these programs, City staff and San José State University students are building high-demand skills in areas like data analysis, process automation, and emerging technologies, creating a stronger workforce, driving innovation, and helping the City deliver better services to our residents.

We aren’t hiding from the future, we’re embracing it. We’re creating it. And we’re shaping it for public good: We’re already running AI pilots that are speeding up bus routes, making our public meetings more accessible, proactively identifying potholes, and facilitating real-time crime intelligence that just last year recovered $3 million worth of your stolen vehicles and helped solve a kidnapping. There’s so much more we can do to make our city smarter and stronger, so we can serve you better.

Because of the work we’re doing, because of the incredible dedication of our City Manager Jennifer Maguire, Assistant City Manager Lee Wilcox, and the entire City Team, San Jose is poised to be a model for the state and rest of the nation. Not just because we’ve got the power and data center demand. But because we’ve gotten back to basics. And this focus is showing promising results. Not just because we’re safe. Not just because we’re making massive strides in addressing homelessness. But because we’re doing what most governments won’t — innovating, growing and changing along with the people we represent.

Clearly, San Jose is a city on the cusp. And we’ve been here before — on the edge of something extraordinary.

In the late 90s, we changed the world. I watched it happen. Now, we have the opportunity to do so once again.

But remember — the cusp isn’t where the story ends. It’s where we all get to decide what comes next! Thank you all so much!