One of San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo’s top aides is bemoaning how owners of a commercial complex are pulling a bait-and-switch.

Whether it’s at the City Council or a school board meeting, San Jose is becoming unsafe for fans of free speech.

Records show that a handful of Sunnyvale’s city directors have benefited from loans that are nearly impossible to find on the open market.

A proposal to allow San Jose’s landlords to evict renters based on an arrest got little support at a recent housing commission meeting.

A developer's petition to rezone an industrial property for housing has elicited full-throated opposition from city officials worried about San Jose's jobs-to-housing imbalance.

Mountain View has no rent control, leaving many long-time residents feeling helpless as housing costs have skyrocketed. While the city has subsidized construction of hundreds of affordable units since 2005, using below-market-rates in lieu of fees from developers, it’s not doing enough to meet the needs of thousands of residents struggling financially, according to housing activists.

San Jose may update its procurement card policies to keep employees in check, after a recent audit found several examples of overspending.

Lax oversight has allowed people to take advantage of the city’s home loan help programs, according to an internal audit up for discussion at the City Council this week.

San Jose may join a host of other cities trying to cash in on subletting service Airbnb, a website that helps people rent out vans, whole homes, just the spare bedroom or anything in-between for extra income.

The City Council on Tuesday will consider a one-year, $650,000 contract with the San Jose Streets Team, an organization that finds work and housing for homeless people who can and want to work.

Business groups worry that San Jose could scare away developers if it imposes a fee on new home construction to pay for more affordable housing, an effort to recoup a fraction of the money lost when the state closed all redevelopment agencies. The City Council, which was supposed to talk about the inclusionary housing fee in December, decided to table the discussion until the new year.

A recent discussion within our community has focused on building even more single-family homes in areas that are reserved for jobs or fall outside of the urban service area. The proposal would allow those who convert industrial land to pay a fee per housing unit created. Those dollars would then be used to purchase open space in Coyote Valley. Although this idea may be worthy of discussion in theory, my concern is that such land use decisions would ultimately hurt San Jose’s economy.

The South Bay homeless population appears to be pooling in San Jose, as a new study estimates an 18 percent increase in the number of homeless people in the city since 2011. Overall, Santa Clara County’s homeless population grew by 8 percent—7,361 total—in the last two years, according to the county’s biennial census of the homeless population.

About 47,000 county homeowners will soon find out that their homes are worth more than what they paid for them. Assessor Larry Stone announced in a press release Thursday that the South Bay’s residential property market continues to trend upward.

Silicon Valley home values saw double-digit appreciation in the past year, outpacing the nation’s rebounding real estate market. Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone last week released a detailed breakdown of single-family home and condo prices. The report of prices in 25 South Bay neighborhoods shows growth in single-family home values ranging from 4 to 24 percent, and 13 to 46 percent for condos.

A trend has emerged in the Silicon Valley real estate market, where middle-class homebuyers are losing out to cash buyers—often investment groups from overseas—who convert owner-occupied homes into rentals. The natural tendency of sellers to choose quick, guaranteed sales over offers with financing contingencies is a new assault on middle-class home ownership, a shift likely to expand the ranks of landlords and tenants and make home ownership an increasingly elusive American dream.