Opinion: Developers and Environmentalists Agree – More Housing Is Needed Outside City Boundaries

Silver is the CEO of the Endangered Habitats League, a regional leader in the field of conservation and growth management. Faucett is the President and CEO of the San Diego Building Industry Association, representing homebuilders, building trades and subcontractors throughout the region.

An environmentalist and a developer walk into a public meeting. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but in this case it reflects how strained and challenging the county of San Diego’s direction on land use and housing has become. Decades of chronic underbuilding of housing continue to exacerbate this housing crisis, causing families to flee to more attainable housing markets such as Riverside County and Tijuana.  

The U.S. Census Bureau determined that over 47,000 households commute from Riverside to San Diego daily for work. At an estimated average one-way trip length of approximately 50 miles, this represents over one billion miles driven each year by commuters that San Diego is “exporting” to live in other, more affordable regions.  

Similarly, thousands of workers now commute from Tijuana across the border each day, enduring some of the longest wait times in the nation to access jobs they can no longer afford to live near. To reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions, we must address this imbalance by building more housing in San Diego.

Most of the new housing will be located within the region’s cities, closer to existing jobs, services and transit, but we must also address the housing needs of San Diego County residents who live outside city boundaries. 

To meet those housing needs, we will need to build homes in parts of unincorporated San Diego which were previously identified in the 2011 General Plan Update. 

To begin addressing this issue collaboratively, the Endangered Habitats League and the Building Industry Association of San Diego spoke at a county housing workshop on Nov. 19, where they urged the county to prioritize housing in existing village areas identified in the General Plan 14 years ago. Villages are those central “downtown” areas of commercial and retail uses and slightly higher densities which serve as anchors to the surrounding community.  While these groups don’t often agree, the walkable communities envisioned in these core locations facilitated this unique policy alignment. At the same time, the rural greenbelts that surround the villages – also home to wildlife – can remain intact.

A county study concluded the reasons for stymied building include outdated zoning, uncertain and lengthy processing requirements, high construction costs and lower rental rates and sales prices in unincorporated communities. This has left the county increasingly reliant on accessory dwelling units to meet state-directed housing goals.  Village-style development also creates walkable, compact communities that reduce long commutes and support local services, improving both quality of life and environmental outcomes. New housing products in the villages can be townhomes, courtyards and homes on smaller lots, using land efficiently and increasing affordability.

EHL and BIA advocated for the county to facilitate development in areas already identified for more housing – villages. Our shared recommendations included fast-tracking overdue updates to the county’s zoning ordinance to allow greater flexibility, facilitating more feasible village development at moderate densities, offering expedited permitting to projects in village areas and adopting an inclusionary housing ordinance for low-income homes. These aren’t dramatic, but without urgency we remain deeply concerned we will continue to drive families into daunting commutes that damage both quality of life and the environment.

A key advantage is that they can be adopted without extensive environmental review because they are fully consistent with the general plan.

We urge the Board of Supervisors to expedite action on these recommendations.

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