San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan spent his Wednesday evening in San Francisco, addressing at a community meeting about issues that impact every city in the Bay Area.
The event took place at Manny‘s in the Mission District. Mahan named a 300% increase in volunteerism as his number one accomplishment this past year.
“We did 57 community cleanups. We had over 3,700 residence come out and we took over half a million pounds of trash off the streets,” he said,
An issue close to San Francisco residents is homelessness, with Mahan touting his plan for more relatively affordable, prefab modular homes.
“Not everyone’s going to achieve full self-sufficiency, but getting people into their own rooms, with their own door that locks, with a window that opens and closes what temperature controls in many cases with their own private bathroom is transformative,” he said.
One topic that Mahan may not have been ready for was when someone asked you make San Jose cool, which the got crowd laughing.
Mahan actually had an answer to the question.
“We need to invest as a community with our big tech supporters to invest in lifting up our arts and culture groups, create more public spaces. That’s why we are shutting down San Pedro Street and work on the transit connectivity to help people get into our downtown more easily,” he said.
Arpinder Singh told NBC Bay Area Wednesday that he drove from San Jose just to interact with Mahan.
“I heard a lot of good idea about how to increase housing affordability issue. I think that’s a catch all issue,” he said.
Wednesday’s discussion was very civil and stayed on point. There’s going to be another discussion on Feb. 7. That one might be a little bit different as Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is the guest.
