Morning Report: Could San Diego Unified Single-Handedly Solve the Housing Crisis?
EM - News Moderator 
Everyone knows San Diego has a housing problem. What if schools turn out to be the solution?
Our education reporter Jakob McWhinney reports on a plan gathering steam at the San Diego Unified School District to build 1,500 units of affordable housing at five district-owned sites around the city.
The district’s board of trustees is set to vote on the plan today.
The details: The housing would be reserved exclusively for district teachers and other staff, many of whom are priced out of the San Diego home market.
The district would lease land to developers, who would build a series of mixed-use projects providing housing and other amenities to educators.
Rents would be capped at 30 percent of residents’ income. Developers would build and manage the properties and pay ground lease rent to the district. If built as envisioned, the plan could house up to 10 percent of the district’s current staff.
Not everyone is on board. One especially large project proposed for a district property in University Heights already has attracted vigorous opposition from neighborhood groups.
Some housing advocates, though, want the district to think even bigger, setting up a high-stakes vote at tonight’s meeting.
District trustee Richard Barrera said San Diego Unified has no choice but to put on its developer hard hat. Without government intervention, he said, the county’s housing market is “not really going to do anything to make a dent in the affordability.”
County Reserve Funds to Cover Employee Bonuses
San Diego County supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to dip into rainy-day funds to cover millions of dollars in bonuses for county employees.
Republican Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond opposed the staff proposal, which did not require the four votes typically needed to pull from reserves.
Our Lisa Halverstadt broke the news last week on county officials’ proposal to retroactively cover the bonuses using an accounting scheme reliant on unspent behavioral health funds and rainy-day funds freed up by a reserve policy update earlier this year. Officials have promised the move won’t impact behavioral health services or funding.
More Board of Supervisors news:
-The Union-Tribune reported on Sheriff Kelly Martinez’s presentation to supervisors on needed upgrades to county jails and a hoped-for new Vista jail she estimated could cost $950 million.
-CBS 8 reported that supervisors voted 4-1 to back a resolution pushed by Chair Terra Lawson-Remer and Supervisor Paloma Aguirre to oppose a Trump administration plan to expand offshore drilling.
-Supervisors voted unanimously to support a call from Desmond and Assessor/Recorder/County Clerk Jordan Marks to urge the federal government reform capital gains exclusions on home sales that dissuade some from selling their homes.
Where Private Equity Buys Houses
Private equity concerns have been buying up houses all across America, as the Atlantic reports — but the trend is actually not as pronounced in places like San Diego.
Corporations now own nearly 10 percent of residential properties on average in urban counties across the country. Many have suspected this might be driving up rents in expensive, high-demand cities like San Diego.
That’s not exactly the case. Corporate ownership is much higher in places where investors can “buy low, rent high,” the Atlantic noted. The South and the Rust Belt have been hit especially hard.
The trend is different in San Diego. The County Assessor’s office found in a report last year that 3.1 percent of single-family homes are owned by a corporate entity. That amounts to 23,884 homes. You can read the Assessor’s full report here.
In Other News
- The San Diego City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a 16-year-old shot and killed by a San Diego police officer earlier this year. (Union-Tribune)
- A government watchdog group is pressing forward with efforts to stop a proposed sale of the Tailgate Park parking lot adjacent to Petco Park in downtown San Diego. The watchdog group said last week it will appeal a judge’s recent dismissal of the group’s 2022 lawsuit seeking to block the sale of the lot to a development team headed by the San Diego Padres. (Union-Tribune)
- inewsource reports on efforts by residents in Carlsbad to halt growth at McClellan Palomar Airport. Residents say recent approval of more commercial airline flights at the airfield have increased total annual flights to more than 66,000.
- Attention, talking heads. The annual flagship TED conference is coming to San Diego in 2027. The conference of inspirational and educational lectures will take place in and around the San Diego Convention Center. (KPBS)
- Eleven women in National City recently earned international certification as “Cocineras Tradicionales” – cooks recognized by the Mexican government as expert practitioners of traditional Mexican cooking. The women are part of the “Kitchenistas” food education program at Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center, a National City nonprofit that seeks to promote healthy and sustainable eating. (KPBS)
The Morning Report was written by Jim Hinch, Lisa Halverstadt and Will Huntsberry. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.
The post Morning Report: Could San Diego Unified Single-Handedly Solve the Housing Crisis? appeared first on Voice of San Diego.
