he/him

Jerry Wilburn, MUP, brings expertise in urban planning, housing and homelessness policy, geographic information systems (GIS), urban design, community development, and policy writing. He holds a master’s degree in urban planning and advanced certifications in applying technology to urban planning and in community development, with a focus on urban design. His housing policy research has been published in four staff reports presented to the San José City Council, and his thesis examined tiny-home villages as a response to homelessness. He also has more than 10 years of Bay Area experience managing large-scale transportation operations for stadiums, hotels, malls, and convention centers.

His academic experience includes international study in Thailand and Brazil. At Chiang Mai University in 2015, he studied the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar and interned as a transcriptionist with the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development. In Brazil in 2019, he examined post-event planning following the 2016 Summer Olympics and its effects on Rio de Janeiro. As part of a team of urban planning students, he used GIS to map hillside erosion and support landslide-risk mitigation for a small community. At San José State University, he led two research teams focused on housing, community engagement, and the siting and development of tiny-home villages for people experiencing homelessness. He also served on five university boards and committees through student government: the University Library Board as the undergraduate representative; the Parking, Traffic, and Transit Advisory Committee; the Student Hunger Committee; the Economic Crisis Response Team; and the Campus Planning Board. For two years, he served with six other homelessness experts as a housing adviser to the San José City Council, representing San José State University’s Department of Sociology.

As a student and community organizer, Wilburn led a campaign supporting modernization of San José’s business tax, an effort associated with increasing the city’s minimum wage. He built a coalition to oppose a campus bicycle ban and worked with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition on downtown San José riding regulations. As a founding member of the SJSU Coalition to House the Homeless, he drafted policy proposals for a safe-parking program and for the use of vacant residence hall rooms to house students experiencing homelessness. He also helped launch free on- and off-campus food pantries and advocated for the rights of undocumented students.