Morning Report: A Major Housing Policy… Maybe?

On Wednesday, Mayor Todd Gloria rolled out a plan — a plan to create a plan that could lead to more housing. 

At a press conference, Gloria said he wants to create far more townhomes and row homes — units which could be closer to affordable for working class families. But the mayor gave almost no details on how he planned to do it.

Whatever the new policy looks like, it will have to increase the number of units allowed on single-family lots, which cover about 80 percent of the city.  

Essentially, the mayor wants to make it easier to tear down a single-family home and build townhomes in its place. A recent study showed townhomes of that sort would be on average 42 percent cheaper than the homes they replaced. 

But it’s very hard to gauge how effective the policy might be when there is no policy to gauge. The only detail offered at the press conference is that the policy would be applied “near transit.” 

A coalition of groups has been pushing the mayor to achieve this “gentle density,” as people are calling it, by abolishing minimum lot sizes. (Currently, the minimum lot size for most homes in San Diego is 5,000 square feet. Getting rid of it would mean builders can build as many homes as they want on 5,000 square feet, instead of just one.) The groups want to end minimum lot sizes citywide, but the mayor said at Politifest earlier this year that he would only support a targeted approach. 

San Diego Unified Postpones Vote on Affordable Housing

Last night, San Diego Unified’s board considered approving the largest slate of affordable education workforce housing ever attempted in California. 

The board was set to vote on proposals from private developers to develop housing at five sites across the district that could produce 1,500 units – enough to reach the district’s goal of creating enough housing for 10 percent of its workforce. A district committee had already returned recommendations last week. And Board President Cody Petterson was determined to get the items across the finish line. 

“My goal here is to land these planes,” Petterson said. “There’ll be some flak, there’ll be people motioning us into one runway or another … and it may get bumpy at times, but we will land this plane together and historically.”

The board did not, however, land the plane.

But by a vote of three to two – with Petterson and Trustee Shana Hazan opposing – the board voted to postpone the approval of housing proposals at four of the five district-owned sites up for consideration. 

Read more here.

Related: How San Diego Unified Uses Its Land

San Diego Unified didn’t get into the land and housing business overnight. 

The district has gone through ups and downs of handling its  surplus land, our Jakob McWhinney writes in his biweekly newsletter the Learning Curve. 

After the financial collapse of 2008, the district was cash strapped. That led it to start selling off land — a move that, even at the time, many people called short-sighted. Eventually, district officials also started to see that they weren’t getting a good return on their decisions. 

That led the district to start leasing land for housing instead — and guaranteeing itself income far into the future.

Read the Learning Curve here.

In Other News 

• The era of “very big ideas” in public transit is over, declared City Councilmember Joe LaCava, who is also the vice chair of the regional board SANDAG. In recent years, SANDAG offered a grand vision for how San Diego could become a national leader in public transit. But now the agency is thinking in much smaller “reality-based approach,” as one official put it. (Union-Tribune)
• Sheriff Deputies were involved in a shooting in Lakeside Wednesday. It’s unclear who fired or who, if anyone, was hurt. (KUSI & FOX 5)
• Three bush fires began east of National City. The largest was no more than half an acre in size. The cause of the fires isn’t clear, but NBC 7 called them “suspicious.” 

The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry and Jakob McWhinney. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña. 

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