De-Bug Letter in Response to Mayor Mahan's 2026 Budget Message

Photo outside San Jose City Hall March 2025

March 17, 2026

Matt Mahan, Mayor, San Jose

Rosemary Kamei, Council Member, District 1

Pamela Campos, Council Member, District 2

Anthony Tordillos, Council Member, District 3

David Cohen, Council Member, District 4

Peter Ortiz, Council Member, District 5

Michael Mulcahy, Council Member, District 6

Bien Doan, Council Member, District 7

Domingo Candelas, Council Member, District 8

Pam Foley, Council Member, District 9

George Casey, Council Member, District 10

Jennifer Maguire, City Manager

Re: Item 3.3 Mayor’s Budget Message

Dear Mayor and City Council of San Jose,

We, Silicon Valley De-Bug, are writing this letter regarding the Mayor’s Budget Message,

specifically relating to housing, police, and justice system involved individuals. For over two

decades now, De-Bug has been active around issues of police accountability, housing, and the justice system because our communities have been directly impacted. Despite the $56 million shortfall, the Mayor is still calling for a budget that prioritizes policing as a strategy to criminalize, unhouse, and gentrify our community while lining the pockets of housing and tech developers to create a San Jose that belongs to the wealthy. It is a budget that deems those of us who have built San Jose for generations as expendable. We urge the City Council to reject this budget and create one that reflects that all our children can build their families here — not just those who have the dollars to buy it.

Housing

THE CITY’S HOUSING BUDGET IS NOT ENOUGH TO ADDRESS HOUSING INEQUALITY. De-Bug has long supported San Jose residents who are experiencing homelessness, housing instability and are often at the intersections of the criminal or immigration systems. We have supported tenants dealing with illegal actions of landlords, supported tenants in eviction court and have helped low-income families look for housing opportunities. We have also supported many who were experiencing homelessness including looking for services, advocating for an end to the displacements by sweeps and have supported them to navigate the criminal legalsystem often because they are at high risk of police interactions. This has culminated in us starting participatory defense housing meetings where people from San Jose and the broader county come to get support after they receive an eviction notice or support in looking for housing while navigating the city or non-profit developers application processes. Our entry point of assessing the current and historical budget plans of the City of San Jose will always prioritize stopping displacements in any facet and creating an actually affordable San Jose while seeing all residents as belonging with no one being an exception to displacement. Do not allocate any City budget to be spent on sweeping houseless people and

encampments.

A San Jose Mercury News article from February 6th, 2026 had a Parks, Recreation and

Neighborhood Services spokesperson say there had been “more than 2,000

encampment clearings” from February 2025 to February 2026. This is more than 5

sweeps a day for one calendar year alone. Our conservative prediction of each sweep

costing about $10,000 (police, services, trash, labor, etc) estimates that the City of San

Jose spent $20,000,000 on sweeps in one year. We see no mention of the costs of

sweeps labeled as “encampment management and enforcement teams” in the Mahan’s

budget message. So we ask the City of San Jose to immediately stop the practice of

encampment sweeps and to make public the total cost of sweeps to the City of San

Jose. We, at Silicon Valley De-Bug, have submitted a CPRA request asking for the total

number of sweeps within Matt Mahan’s tenure since 2023 and a cost-average per

sweep. We can not take any conversation around budget cuts and the need to reduce

spending seriously until one of the most inhumane practices of this City on it’s most

vulnerable population stops and is accounted for.

Do not focus City resources to coddle real estate developers who are operating

for-profit housing and making San Jose unaffordable.

Families we support on our weekly participatory defense housing calls join because they

are looking for affordable housing, facing evictions or other challenges with their homes.

We constantly see people, who would otherwise be stable, have one thing happen in

their life that creates the high risk of displacement, often because of unaffordable rents.

Folks at highest risk of displacement are low income folks who are renters, elderly,

disabled, people of color and families with children - yet the mayor’s message on

housing centers the builders, their profits, and their ease of navigating the city process.

We have a history in San Jose of creating incentives for for-profit housing developers to

come build more housing. This has shown over and over again to not reduce housing

costs or the market rate. In fact, we constantly see new developments sit empty either

because of unaffordable market-rate rents or building deficiencies because these

companies have cut corners, exemplified by the now repurposed, empty high rise on

Market Street or the empty high rise near Julian Street in Downtown. Any efforts to make

this process easier for multi-million dollar companies is wasted time and resources.

The Ellis Act in particular serves to prevent displacement for the most vulnerable renters

and is already a weakened ordinance. We urge the City Manager to include

recommendations that include the city playing a larger role supporting preservation

through models that promote resident control and have a commitment to

antidisplacement and deep affordability.

Nothing within the housing budget message addresses the root cause of

homelessness and affordability: an unregulated for-profit housing system. For San Jose to be “a city where working families can stay, where young people can

build a future, and where seniors can age in place” as the mayor says on page 26 of the

budget then the city needs approaches that go beyond the market. If increasing housing

supply alone really stabilized home prices and increased economic opportunity, we

would have housing for all income levels, but our housing system is not designed to

ensure everyone is housed - it is designed to maximize profits. The market is a failure.

We do not see any good-faith effort to protect San Jose renters from unaffordable

market rates. Protections we wish we would see include a more expansive rent control,

funding an indigent defense for those being railroaded through eviction court, and

preserving housing. Even our current supportive services for renters often means

non-profit or government agencies just paying the unaffordable rent to the landlord in

place of the tenant. But what about the next month? This system is designed to fail. And

as we are happy to see that some people transitioned into permanent housing, this

hyper focus on temporary shelters does not stop the demand for shelters. San Jose

residents will continue to become houseless unless the issue of housing inequality and

affordability is meaningfully addressed and prioritized.

Policing

WE OPPOSE ANY INCREASE IN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT’S BUDGET PROPOSAL.

De-Bug families whose loved ones have been killed by San Jose police oppose any increase in the San Jose Police Department’s budget. For years now, these families have been healing, supporting, and organizing with each other through Silicon Valley De-Bug, and have been pushing for accountability for the harm and death of their loved ones. It is in their names that this demand is made.

Funding from diverting calls from 911 to 988 and TRUST should go to youth

serving programs, mental health resources and housing, not law enforcement.

Alternatives to 911 are increasingly being accessed by the community – more calls are

being diverted from police and going to crisis intervention teams like Santa Clara

County’s TRUST program. Your own data shows that monthly transfers to 988 from 911

increased from 10 to 150. That means calls are being diverted from law enforcement

and thus saving lives. We ask the City to analyze the savings from these diverted calls

and direct them away from the police department and towards true life-saving needs in

our communities that need to be fully resourced.

Pause any continued funding on RTIC and the use of surveillance technology

Over the years, the San Jose Police Department has been increasing its reliance on AI

to police, while simultaneously asking for more money for the police department - for

wages. These do not make sense.

San Jose Police using mass surveillance technology puts the entire community at risk -

whether it’s risk of ICE accessing the database, risk of being profiled and targeted, risk

of misuse by local police for their own purposes – all of which have been documented.

Trusting AI to take over body cam footage translation- in one of the most critical pieces

of information in a case – is irresponsible and lends itself to even more mistakes in the

justice system. ACLU has documented that this body cam footage translation has led to AI generated police reports – can only lead to more bias, less transparency, and more errors. It is not enough to just put ‘guardrails’ on this technology; we should not spend resources on it. We urge you to reject this proposed pilot program.

Audit, and then cut, the City Attorney’s resources for defending police in

misconduct and excessive use of force cases

In January of this year, the City Council approved an $8 million settlement in the case of

K’aun Green, who was shot by police in 2022 for deescalating a situation at La Vic’s. It

was proven that Officer Mark McNamara who shot him 4 times, was also part of a racist

texting scandal that revealed this officer’s state of mind as he encounters Black and

people of color. Furthermore, McNamara then texted about Mr. Green and his attorneys,

saying:

“N— wanted to carry a gun in the Wild West … Not on my watch” and “They

should all be bowing to me and bringing me gifts since I saved a fellow n— by

making him rich as f—. Otherwise, he woulda lived a life of poverty and crime.”

He was placed in the decertification process in 2023.

Yet, despite City statements including Matt Mahan “denouncing” these racist statements, the City continued to defend McNamara’s actions well until 2025.

This $8 million settlement is one of the largest settlements in San Jose history – the

highest one being in 2024 when the City settled with Lionel Ruvalcaba for being wrongly

imprisoned for 17 years where 3 San Jose Police officers fabricated evidence and got

witnesses to falsely identify Mr. Ruvalcaba as the shooter in a drive-by that left a man

paralyzed.

We’ve sat in courtrooms watching the City Attorney defend these police actions, and

furthermore criminalize and blame the person killed or harmed by police actions,

villainize their families and diminish their pain. We’ve seen the City Attorney hire experts

to justify the shootings – including John Black, the ‘use of force’ expert defending white

nationalist Kyle Rittenhouse who shot and killed 2 protestors in Kenosha, WI during a

protest against the shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake. We demand that the City audit the City Attorney’s office for the costs of defending officers for misconduct and cut those resources.

The Justice System and Prop 36

Direct funding to mental health resources, not the exploratory trip to San Diego to

observe Prop 36.

Over the years we have seen the struggles and limitations for treatment alternatives

within the justice process but as of recent due to prop 36 which essentially removed

funding for the very same programs running to address this issue. Now with even less

funding or should we say no funding for treatment options those same issues and some

have increased. We now see people waiting for months up to a year or more to get

accepted into a program within mental health court. There are not enough beds or

capacity to handle all the individuals who have volunteered let alone the people who

have been mandated. We will never see the false promise brought by fear mongering

through prop 36. The stalling is filling our jails and keeping its population full

unnecessarily. If we are serious about stopping homelessness and lowering recidivism,we must address and provide funding for our loved ones who need and request

treatment. We ask that you refer funding from the police department to ensure those with

mental needs do not fall through the cracks of our justice system.

Respectfully,

Silicon Valley De-Bug Families