St. Paul's United Methodist Church has been at the downtown location across the street from San Jose State University since 1958, doing ministry on justice. This church stands at the crossroad of homelessness, mental health issues, and violence. For generations, it served to find solutions: advocating for justice and delivering kindness. 

The church suffered a two-alarm arson fire on June 8, 2022 and is working with its insurance to rebuild. In the meantime, we are continuing to serve through our ministries where we can. We ask for donations to go towards the following:

We have started a community vegetable garden on the church grounds to alleviate the shortage of fresh food in the community. We plan to use this fund for six garden beds, soil, seeds, and other supplies.

Our tenant partner, Front Door Communities, also lost all of its service items. The organization continues its service from the outdoor space. This funding will supplement their ability to continue serving the homeless and fragile community in downtown San Jose.

This funding will also allow us to be mobile for worship until we can clean up the asbestos contamination and restore power in the usable 20% of our building.

 Veggie Garden

Our 2024 Garden has been planted! St Paul's Members stirred in fresh soil amendments and planted every plant donated. There are 3 tomatoes, 12 various squash, 4 eggplant, 4 peppers, and 2 basil plants. Sincere thanks to Pastor Helen, Fan, Richard and Helen L. for their energy and donations to make our garden of three years grow again!

Fire Recovery Update

St. Paul’s Fire Recovery Update – April 13, 2024
 
I am writing this on behalf of St. Paul’s Fire Recovery Team.  The team is comprised of David and Karen Lowe, Helen Lund, Harry Vacek, Pastor Helen and myself, Connie Hunter.
  • Steven’s House:  Tree Builders completed their work scope on the Steven’s House in early March.  Since then, Karen has undertaken a beautification project, painting the downstairs areas, removing aged blinds and putting up beautiful stained glass window coverings that block blinding sunlight, ugly views and scalding heat. 
 
  • City’s Preliminary Review Findings:  St. Paul’s submitted a site plan depicting three buildings on our property, a church and two 6-story housing units, in late December for a preliminary review.  The site plan called for demolishing the Steven’s House.  In late February, we received the City’s response.  Although a couple of potential problems were identified, the overall response was positive. 
One of the potential problems is that because the Steven’s House was built in 1895, it is on the list of structures of merit in San Jose.  Per the City’s analysis, if the house is to be demolished, then the project does not qualify for SB4, legislation that allows a church to build affordable housing by right (without having to go through a re-zoning process) and that provides for expedited permits and reviews.  Our real estate lawyer, based on prior experience in Palo Alto, is confident this finding is mistaken and can be challenged and overturned.  If our lawyer is mistaken, the requirement to leave the Steven’s House standing is not an insurmountable roadblock.
The second potential problem is the density specified by our site plan (92 units) exceeds the density permitted by SB4 (40 units) even when augmented by a density bonus (76 units).  This problem can be easily remedied. 
 
  • Next Steps:  We must find a housing developer that will partner with St. Paul’s in this project.  We have contracted with Collective Operations (CO - ) to prepare a ‘request for proposal’ (RFP) that can be submitted to developers and to do outreach to developers to encourage a positive response.  We anticipate having the RFP completed in about a month and then will issue it.  We have been advised that developers typically have 4 weeks to respond to an RFP but because our RFP will have some unique characteristics, eg including a church building in addition to housing, that we may want to allow 6 weeks for a response.  If we have a 6 week response window, the deadline for a developer to respond will be around June 21. 
    We have been advised that because of the cost of borrowing right now, and because the City and County’s funds for affordable housing have been allocated, it is not a good time to issue an RFP.  On the other hand, there will be a regional affordable housing bond measure on the ballot in November which if passed will provide San Jose with $1 bn and the County with $1.2 bn for affordable housing.  If a developer responds to St. Paul’s RFP and uses the time between now and November to put together a plan, they will be perfectly positioned to request funds after the bond measure passes.
St. Paul’s does not expect the developer to build the church.  However, the developer’s plan for the property must include a church.  The church may be in a housing building – in which case, the timeline on which the church can be built is constrained by the housing project. 
If the church is a separate building, then once the placement of the church and the size of its footprint have been established, the rebuild of the church can begin.  It should be noted that we have been advised by the City that St. Paul’s will need to apply for a Special Use Permit (SUP) before it can rebuild as a building separate from housing and that it typically requires 7 months to obtain an SUP.