East San Jose

Known as the East Valley or the East Side for its location, East San Jose is a diverse, intensely urbanized San Jose neighborhood. The area hosts a variety of lower-class living terrain, but is mostly filled to the brim with small homes, apartment facilities. While affordable for the modest, single-family, the district is overrun by some eyesore residences and ragtag blocks. Demographically speaking, the racial makeup of the community is predominately driven by Mexican and latino immigrants with a number of Vietnamese, Filipino and Cambodian residents.

For prospective residents, I’d seek out other locations. East San Jose isn’t really known for much except its the armpit of San Jose. But you do have a couple “micro-neighborhoods” to choose from, including King and Story, Alum Rock, East Foothills and Little Portugal. All of which offer unpleasant living quarters. Most homes are of the small, cottage variety with flat topped roofs, short driveways, small front yards and only moderately attractive yards. Some have those ugly chain-linked fences that surround their lots. For parking, residents usually have a one or two-car garage, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see a couple old, raggedy cars parked along the ragtag blocks. Its usually best to note that the closer you get to the freeways, the uglier the residences become. Medium house listings range from a meager $300,000 to $600,000, suited for young families with low incomes.

If you’re looking to shop, you do have a couple options. East San Jose provides a plethora of strip malls and outdoor shopping plazas with sizable parking lots. In fact, the Eastridge Mall is located at the corner of Tully Road and Quimby Road and offers everything from fast food to chain department stores. You can also find your fair share of ethnic restaurants and boutique stores, which suit the district’s population. Also, the district incorporates Cunningham Lake. The body of water hosts a couple running trails that follow the lake’s perimeter.

East San Jose consists of tightly packed ranch homes dating from around 1960 on average. The neighborhood has the feel of a 1970’s style neighborhood, complete with beaten up older cars.

Generally speaking San Jose is a relatively safe city with crime rates only slightly above the national average but nowhere near as dangerous as anywhere in Oakland. There is, however, some gang activity in this area. It is not out of control, and so long as you or a family member do not become involved in these gangs, you are, for the most part, safe from the dangers associated with their presence.

These concerns are largely reflected in the home prices in East San Jose which seem anchored at ~$300K. This is perhaps the epi-center of the Foreclosure Crisis in San Jose with over 80% (perhaps even closer to 90%) of the homes here on the market due to foreclosure. With so many homes being hit by the current downturn, you can imagine the effect this must have on the neighborhoods.

The central feature of East San Jose is Reid-Hillview County Airport—a small private airport with nowhere near the capacity of San Jose International (or even Oakland). Many people in San Jose don’t even know it is there.

There are two high schools that serve the area: Overfelt High whose test scores and other indicators are pretty awful; and Eastside Union, which is comparatively better with solidly average scores overall.

As far as restaurants and nightlife go, this is pretty much like Alum Rock just to the north. There are some okay restaurant in the area—especially if you like East Asian cuisine, but you will pretty much have to head deeper into San Jose for anything more compelling.