Column: $60,000 ‘casitas’ and giant awnings: Caruso, Bass pitch cheaper homeless units
Caruso wants to build three “casitas” for $40 a month. If it can sell that many, he will keep the project going.
The biggest hurdle? Not finding places to live that can fit them.
“That seems to be the most difficult part,” he said.
In August, Caruso and Bass announced the creation of affordable housing in San Jose through the housing trust, a nonprofit group that seeks to create affordable housing through partnerships with developers and investors.
With the help of the housing trust, Caruso and Bass hope to build three “casitas” for $40 a month.
The casitas will be built in the city’s Bayview Park neighborhood, a swath of land that Caruso said has become the site of a housing crisis.
A few blocks from the new housing project, an office park and a medical complex have sprouted.
The housing trust’s goal is to build 30 “casitas” over the course of a decade, for $100,000 each.
And then Caruso would like to find someplace that would fit each of the three.
“I still believe it’s possible, given our current demographic,” said Caruso, who lives with his wife, Julie, and three sons, ages 10, 9, and 5, on the south side of San Jose.
Their three children, whom Caruso describes as “pets,” live in San Jose with their mothers. The couple plans to have a fourth child, a boy, by the end of the year.
Caruso, who works with technology companies, said he has found the Bayview neighborhood “extremely hard to find” places to put residents in affordable housing because of the many young families who live close together.
He said the number of such families has made it hard to find places affordable for them. “I’ve come to believe that we need to build our way to more housing.”
That means the housing trust, which Caruso said is the first on the mainland