Two mayoral candidates battled it out in San Jose Monday, sharing their vision for one of the nation’s largest cities just two weeks ahead of the elections.
The showdown was between Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez and San Jose City Councilmember Matt Mahan.
One of the biggest topics tackled was how they’d end homelessness.
“We’re going to need to move much faster and more pragmatically to get the nearly-6,000 people in our city living outdoors into safe managed environments,” said Mahan.
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Chavez replied saying, “We've got to find housing now, we need to build permanent supportive housing because of the biggest challenges we have is we don’t have enough permanent places for people to live.”
Both agreed a better partnership is needed between the city and county to get people off the streets faster.
Supervisor Chavez said the county has already housed 20,000 people and is looking at 10,000 more.
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“From the people that were housed to date a little over 2,000 of them are in new housing but we need to move on all levels as quickly as possible,” said Chavez.
But Mahan said we're going backwards with homeless numbers increasing.
“We broke the housing market in California by having too many regulations and too many fees. That's why we don’t have affordable housing,” he said.
Another hot topic was helping small businesses thrive.
“First thing we need to do is make sure we're dealing with the backlog, so we're moving much more quickly to help with people getting permits,”said Chavez.
“They need neighborhoods that are safe, they want faster police response times and accountability when people are committing crimes,” said Mahan.
Other topics rounding out were: parking, the city’s infrastructure and gentrification.
A real coin toss for many leaving tonight’s debate as they consider who they’ll vote for Nov. 8.
“I see a lot of hope for the future of San Jose and I think they are both really dedicated to incorporating our voices,” said Malyna Trujillo who was at the debate.
