SAN JOSE (KRON) — Hundreds of San Jose residents will need to start looking for new homes after a last-ditch effort to save their apartment complex from the wrecking ball fails.
Those residents had hoped an appeal to the San Jose City Council would stop a planned demolition of their homes but the effort failed. And now, residents said they are disappointed.
“I like living here,” resident Danica Espinoza said.
Espinoza is one of more than 600 people who live at the Reserve Apartments along South Winchester Boulevard in San Jose.
She, along with her mother and special need’s sister, moved in last fall and Danica said no one told them the apartment complex might eventually be demolished.
They only found out when Danica saw a public notice sign along Winchester.
“At first, it was a shock to me,” Espinoza said, “because I only was living here for two weeks.”
Now, what was just a possibility has become a reality. The owners of the property, Greystar Real Estate Partners, have won approval from the city to demolish the 216 rent-controlled apartments and replace them with 640 market-rate apartments, along with 8,000 square feet of retail space.
Everyone who lives there, including Danica and her family, will have to move–by Apr. 2017.
On Tuesday evening, the San Jose City Council considered a last-ditch appeal by a group of reserve residents to stop the demolition.
The issue was hotly debated with some council members, saying the project would add badly needed housing to the City of San Jose.
Other councilmembers argued that approving the project would force hundreds of people, some of whom are low income, out of their homes and into a highly competitive housing market.
In the end, the council denied the appeal, and the project is now set to move forward.
The owners are offering financial help to a handful of residents who qualify, but Danica makes too much money.
“I won’t qualify for that, even if my sister is in a wheelchair,” she said.
Danica also said she is also not sure where she will move to next.