GILROY
– State Proposition 46 passed with 58 percent of the popular
vote on Tuesday night, creating a $2.1-billion state bond to
provide shelters for battered women and the homeless as well as
affordable housing for seniors, the disabled, farmworkers and
low-income families.
GILROY – State Proposition 46 passed with 58 percent of the popular vote on Tuesday night, creating a $2.1-billion state bond to provide shelters for battered women and the homeless as well as affordable housing for seniors, the disabled, farmworkers and low-income families.
In Santa Clara County, the proposition passed with 60 percent of the vote, much to the liking of the several local elected officials.
“I’m glad (Proposition) 46 passed only because there are people in Gilroy, many who have been here a long time, who are not going to be able to find housing unless we get some additional housing built,” Mayor Tom Springer said Tuesday night. “Particularly our seniors.”
Supporters of the proposition claim it will improve quality of life for thousands of Californians while pumping more than $13 billion in private investment and federal funds into the state. Proposition 46 will be funded through existing state resources.
Opponents to the proposition highlighted the fact that the initiative will cost an additional $1.25 billion to pay off the bond, and that it will only provide minute benefits to first-time home buyers. They also say it will do nothing to remove the bureaucratic and regulatory barriers to affordable housing in the state.
What funding from Proposition 46 will be designed to do is provide first-time home buyers with down-payment assistance, and the affordable housing aspect of the initiative will target families that make less than $80,000, according to proponents.
Springer and former Gilroy mayors Don Gage – the current County District 1 supervisor – and Sig Sanchez rallied in support of the proposition at Wheeler Manor on Sixth Street on Oct. 30. Wheeler was built with the help of bond measures in 1988 and 1990 and is home to more than 100 seniors.
“We want to keep the community together and have the extended family concept once more – grandparents and grandchildren in the same community,” Springer said. “But to do that we’ll have to build more senior housing and to do that in many cases we will have to get this subsidized housing built.”
The initiative will also set aside money for the construction of affordable apartments, farmworker housing and shelter for battered women and the homeless statewide – creating more than 22,000 new affordable rental units and 31,000 new emergency shelter beds throughout California.
The Sobrato Family Transitional Center, an approved, but not yet built shelter in Gilroy, could be one such center that might reap benefits from Proposition 46. The center will include 60 units of transitional housing, a 140-bed emergency shelter and access to support services, such as employment search and parenting classes.
“(Proposition 46) will help make that transitional center occur on schedule, and that’s important,” Springer said. “Turning it into a rehabilitation program has been so important.”
Proposition 46 will not only help those in need of affordable housing, but it will help stabilize the local workforce, Springer said.
“It hopefully will help us address the problem of the financing,” Springer said of the proposition passing. “It’s tough to have to put all these bonds on the ballot and have mortgaging of the state’s future to get all this stuff going.”
The lack of affordable housing hurts business because employees can’t afford to live in Santa Clara County so they move to other regions, he said. Thus, businesses are more reluctant to stay in the area.
Staff writers Jonathan Jeisel and Eric Leins contributed to this report.
