San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan Takes Your Questions

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahan has touted his business credentials and his common sense approach to handling issues like homelessness and crime. In 2024, Mahan was reelected to the office with 87% of the vote, and his profile has risen recently as he has criticized Governor Gavin Newsom’s trolling of President Trump. According to Mahan, “As mayors, we don’t get rewarded for clever tweets or inspiring speeches.” Instead, Mahan says he is focused on concrete results. We talk to Mahan and take your questions. Guests: Matt Mahan, mayor, San Jose Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves.
0:07.9	When you keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money.
0:11.5	Star 1 Credit Union in your best interest.
0:14.8	Support for KQED podcasts comes from Genentech, the original biotech pioneer forging life-altering scientific breakthroughs
0:23.1	to help improve the lives of all patients. Learn more about Genentech's commitment to patients
0:29.0	and society at gene.com slash Our Promise.
0:35.0	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're joined this morning. from KQED.
0:40.9	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:46.9	We're joined this morning by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, now in his second term in office.
0:47.5	Welcome, Mayor.
0:49.8	Thank you. Good morning, Alexis.
0:51.4	Yeah, thanks for joining us.
0:53.9	So, you know, we're going to jump right in.
1:00.0	We all know there are limited resources in every city around the Bay Area to tackle homelessness. And one thing I have admired about your tenure as mayor is that rather than choosing kind of
1:04.0	an attenuated version of all of the above, you've tried to set a direction and kind of pick a path.
1:09.0	So my understanding is you're trying to bring
1:11.7	a thousand shelter beds into use, right? And am I right that the key metric you're trying
1:16.6	to drive down is unsheltered homelessness? Are those things right? Is that the plan?
1:20.8	You got it, but just to be clear, we're adding a thousand beds this year, almost all individual
1:27.3	rooms with doors that lock, and I can say
1:29.8	more about that if you're interested, we're actually adding a little over 2,000 in all. So we started
1:34.9	from four or five years ago, the city had zero shelter beds. They were all on the county side.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KQED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KQED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.