By Gabreil Greschler : mercurynews – excerpt (includes audio track)

City is doing well on keeping homeless off the street — but continues to face challenges with backlog of blight cases

As San Jose nears one year into Mayor Matt Mahan’s tenure — are his major campaign promises going anywhere?

A new trove of data focused specifically on public safety, blight, homelessness and economic development shows improvements in some areas and setbacks in others as Mahan prepares to run for re-election in 2024 with no opposition thus far.

The figures show the city making incremental progress on keeping homeless residents off the streets, the speed of housing permit reviews and the city’s downtown activity rate according to cell phone data. But the city is also facing problems with its enormous backlog of code enforcement cases and housing production.

“I would like us to at least once a quarter have a very focused and structured conversation that is rooted in performance data,” said Mahan to reporters on Tuesday. “Where we are actually objectively looking at how the things we’ve funded are doing. Right now we do that every 12 months. But it is overwhelming, it is in the context of a budget.”

Here are some key takeaways from the data…(more)