Watch CBS News

Affordable Housing Is Just A Click Away In San Jose

SAN JOSE (KCBS) - The City of San Jose's Housing Department partnered with Santa Clara County to launch a new website designed to help residents locate affordable housing.

KCBS' Mike Colgan Reports:

Finding affordable housing in Silicon Valley could be called a tall order, but this new search service was launched to change that. The online database was geared toward low-income residents, though there were no user limitations - it was open to anyone.

"All of the apartments that are available units, affordable available units in San Jose, will come up," Rebecca Garcia with San Jose's Housing Department explained. "And you'll be able to choose, you can see a photo of it or it will give you the landlord's contact information."

Garcia hoped the website would make the search for affordable housing less of a hassle.

"Rather than having to call every property manager in the area to figure out if there's an available unit and what their process is, whether they have a waiting list or not, they can just go to this website and access all of that information. And it will be updated. So we don't currently have anything like this, this is brand new."

Users were guaranteed to find only properties that met their budgets.

"We've capped it out," Garcia explained. "For example, a one bedroom cannot cost more than $1,435. A two bedroom cannot cost more than $1,726. Three bedroom, $2,482. That's the most it can cost in order for them to be able to list their property on there."

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.