County Official: One Policy Not Clearly to Blame for Homebuilding Drop 

County supervisors on Wednesday got a briefing from county planning officials on a slew of land use policies, including a notorious one meant to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emissions.

Developers have claimed in recent years that the vehicle miles traveled policy – often dubbed VMT – forced by state law has halted homebuilding in unincorporated areas so this chart that county staff presented documenting housing got some attention.

The chart compared housing production trends in the unincorporated area over the last three decades with those in the state, nation, western states and throughout San Diego County, including incorporated cities. The blue line representing the unincorporated county dropped sharply the last few years.

Supervisor Jim Desmond seized on that.

“It looks like the blue line was following all the other trends there, but it looks like in 2022-ish, all the other indicators are going up, and the unincorporated area of San Diego County is dropping like a rock, so what happened there?” Desmond asked county land use officials.

Vince Nicoletti, the county’s Planning & Development Services director, said that around that time, multiple larger projects that had been underway wrapped up construction.

Desmond pressed him. “So that didn’t have anything to do with VMT, that drop off?”

“It would be challenging to isolate any one factor as the causal factor for a change,” Nicoletti said. “We certainly hear VMT is a force that had played into that for projects coming in but other factors that we hear are labor costs, other legal challenges and other factors. We can present the data in terms of what we’re seeing from a statistical perspective.”

Desmond later made it clear he believes the VMT policy and litigation risks are stymieing development in the county.

Nicoletti suggested the situation may improve as developers learn more about an exemption the county rolled out last year allowing developers whose projects comply with the county’s overarching 2011 plan for development – known as the general plan – to bypass the new vehicle mileage guidelines.

County officials expect to present the Board of Supervisors other options next year that developers could potentially use to address emissions from new vehicle trips tied to projects that fall outside the county’s general plan. Potential fees to help pay for amenities such as bike lanes and transit are expected to be on the table.

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