Taking the lead from nearby Bay Area cities, San Jose is poised to enact a developer fee to help pay for affordable housing.

Mountain View has no rent control, leaving many long-time residents feeling helpless as housing costs have skyrocketed. While the city has subsidized construction of hundreds of affordable units since 2005, using below-market-rates in lieu of fees from developers, it’s not doing enough to meet the needs of thousands of residents struggling financially, according to housing activists.

A report about the cost of living in Silicon Valley goes before the Board of Supervisors next week. Also on the agenda: a "living wage" ordinance, pro bono legal help for migrant children and a digital security program proposed by Supervisor Joe Simitian.

San Jose may try to settle a spat with Santa Clara County to free up some $20 million-a-year that could pay for affordable housing and homeless shelters.

San Jose should move forward with plans to enact a developer fee that would pay for much-needed affordable housing, Councilman Don Rocha urges.

City leaders will consider moving forward with a plan to create a security camera registry that would allow police to tap into surveillance footage from private citizens.

Santa Clara County's Office of Human Relations is inviting public testimony about the cost of living in Silicon Valley.

San Jose wants to clean up its largest homeless encampment and build a fence around it to prevent illegal dumping. But residents of The Jungle say they have nowhere else to go.

Lax oversight has allowed people to take advantage of the city’s home loan help programs, according to an internal audit up for discussion at the City Council this week.

San Jose can cut the cost of extending library hours with a few simple adjustments to its staffing model, according to a new city audit.

While San Francisco commands more headlines for its exorbitant rental prices, San Jose has struggled to meet affordable housing goals of its own.

With the rental market heating up, more people are asking for the city’s help to mediate lease rate hikes. The City Council on Tuesday will decide whether to pay more for a program to mediate and arbitrate cases between landlords trying to keep up with the market and tenants getting priced out of their homes. Other items on the agenda include a code enforcement audit, a historical landmark designation for a fruit stand and a trash-reduction plan.

Business groups worry that San Jose could scare away developers if it imposes a fee on new home construction to pay for more affordable housing, an effort to recoup a fraction of the money lost when the state closed all redevelopment agencies. The City Council, which was supposed to talk about the inclusionary housing fee in December, decided to table the discussion until the new year.

Rich Robinson writes that Tuesday’s election results provided a firm rebuke to the politics of insanity that has recently become standard in Sunnyvale.

John Dowling and other residents of the Winchester Ranch Mobile Home Park could be forced out of their homes if developer Pulte Homes buys the park property, which is adjacent to Santana Row and the Valley Fair mall in San Jose. Cali-Arioto Properties owns the land, and like a lot of mobile home park owners in the region, the family proprietor is exploring the option of selling the lot, which houses more than 145 mostly low-income seniors and disabled residents. Real estate prices are going up and the park lies in a part of the city pegged for future mixed-use development under the city’s General Plan.

A recent discussion within our community has focused on building even more single-family homes in areas that are reserved for jobs or fall outside of the urban service area. The proposal would allow those who convert industrial land to pay a fee per housing unit created. Those dollars would then be used to purchase open space in Coyote Valley. Although this idea may be worthy of discussion in theory, my concern is that such land use decisions would ultimately hurt San Jose’s economy.