Plan to build 3,500 homes at San Jose Flea Market may be slashed to 900 due to 'Builder's Remedy'
SAN JOSE – A plan to build thousands of new homes in San Jose may be slashed to just a fraction of that as the developer seeks to invoke the "Builder's Remedy" to downsize the project.
Councilmember David Cohen represents District 4 where the San Jose Flea Market is located. The site was approved to have 3,500 housing units built here, until the builder announced that it wants to build 940 units instead, due to cost concerns.
"If it means waiting a few years until interest rates come down and cost of construction stabilizes, I think that's the right thing to do," said Cohen.
Cohen says the developer plans to take advantage of the Builders Remedy law, which takes effect when a city fails to a create a state-approved housing plan. Under the law, the city would be required to approve the housing projects as long as at least 20% of the homes are low-income or 100% of them are moderate-income.
"To take a site that had 3,500 units of housing planned and use this law to downsize to 1,000 units is actually opposite of what the state intended," Cohen said. "So, we will have to see whether the state corrects this and makes it so they can't move forward with this project."
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CBS News Bay Area asked what exactly this means for the Flea Market and its vendors.
"The agreement was set up in 2021 is that the vendors would get a one-year notice before the Flea Market would close down," Cohen explained. "And they would get that notice and they would have time to prepare. So, they have not been given that notice yet, the soonest they could be given that notice is January."
Martin Cruz, a vendor at the Flea Market, said its hard finding customers during the week.
"We don't know exactly when this is going to happen. It could be one year, two years," said Cruz.
He said his family has been running this stand for 10 years.
"We are going to have to look to do something different or keep doing this," Cruz said.
Because of the state law, the power and decision is now in the developer's hands.
"Shutting down the Flea Market but not getting the full benefit of this site, and living up to the promise we made to the taxpayers who paid a billion dollars for the BART station, it is not appropriate," Cohen said.
According to The Mercury News, eight out of 19 Builders Remedy proposals in San Jose have sought to decrease the number of homes or downsize properties. The Builders Remedy was originally intended to allow developers to bypass restrictive local zoning laws, all to boost the housing supply.
