San Jose Lawmaker Calls To Protect Latino Neighborhood From Redevelopment

By Lloyd Alaban, San Jose Spotlight

November 29, 2021

San Jose’s historic Calle Willow business district is facing possible redevelopment and displacement of dozens of small businesses. Vocal residents have pushed back, and a city councilmember hopes to do the same.

A potential zoning change on Willow Street near downtown San Jose would allow increased building height limits and encourage residential development in the business area, along with three other parts of the city: North 13th Street, Willow Glen and Taylor Street. Due to community pushback, city officials are recommending Willow Street, known to locals as Calle Willow, be removed from the potential zoning change.

Councilmember Raul Peralez, whose district includes Calle Willow, thinks the same. Peralez is asking his colleagues to vote for no change in Calle Willow’s zoning. Instead, he’s asking to change the area’s land-use designation to make it more difficult to build high-rise developments.

“We shouldn’t be simply so eager to develop housing that we don’t care where we’re developing and we say we’re going to develop everywhere,” Peralez told San José Spotlight. He’s met with several Calle Willow small business owners, where he says they’ve been reduced to month-to-month leases by their property owners.

A zoning change, Peralez fears, will make future rents more uncertain.

“The same should be said for very specific business corridors,” Peralez said. “(Calle Willow) is one of a few minority-majority business corridors. We can preserve some communities like this and focus our redevelopment and densify other areas.”

The San Jose Planning Commission voted earlier this month to recommend Calle Willow be removed from consideration for residential development. The City Council is set to vote on the recommendations Tuesday, though officials are suggesting delaying the vote until Dec. 14.

The heavily Latino district features businesses often catering to the surrounding Spanish-speaking community—everything from Mexican bakeries to floral shops and taquerias. The area includes Willow Street between McLellan and Almaden avenues.

Business owners on Calle Willow hope to keep it that way. They fear a zoning change will bring new, more expensive apartments to the area, which could translate to a higher cost of living and rent for existing business owners. An increase in costs, business owners say, will force them to close.

“How much housing does San Jose need, and why do you need to come disrupt three or four blocks that are so important and crucial to these families and small businesses?” Rosalinda Aguilar, acting president of the Guadalupe Washington Neighborhood Association, told San José Spotlight. “If it has to happen, why can’t we look at blocks and buildings that really wouldn’t cause so much hurt and pain to people like these blocks would?”

Fears of displacement have impacted other business areas in the city. In June, the council voted in favor of a multi-story retail and housing development at the San Jose Flea Market in the Berryessa neighborhood, though plans for construction are still years away. The development will shrink the flea market and inevitably displace some small business vendors. A group of vendors successfully lobbied the city to include a displacement fund to help vendors out financially in the meantime.

The Guadalupe-Washington neighborhood, which includes Calle Willow, is struggling with an influx of wealthier residents and more development. A new property owner in the area last month pushed to paint over a mural depicting Latino culture in the neighborhood despite community efforts to save it.

“I could lose my income, which is the principal income of my family,” Miriam Raigoza, owner of Unlimited Barber Shop on Calle Willow, told San José Spotlight through a Spanish interpreter. “I don’t have a plan or savings because I live day-by-day. If (rents) go higher, my business will disappear.”

The San Jose City Council meets Tuesday at 11 a.m. To learn more about how you can watch and participate, click here.

Contact Lloyd Alaban at lloyd@sanjosespotlight.com or###a> follow @lloydalaban on Twitter.

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