The Cities Furthest Away from Their Housing Goals

California’s rich, coastal cities – whether Republican or Democrat controlled – are well known for intensely trying to fight off new housing.

But a new analysis by Voice of San Diego and KPBS shows those aren’t, in general, the places where the least housing is being built.

The four cities furthest away from meeting their housing goals are known for their blue-collar roots.

Imperial Beach lags the furthest behind in reaching its state-mandated housing goals.

The state mandates that cities must produce a certain number of new homes during what officials call a “housing cycle.” San Diego is currently in the middle of an 8-year cycle that began in 2021. To be on track, cities should be halfway toward hitting their goals.

Imperial Beach, however, has produced a dearth of new homes. It is just 11 percent of the way toward meeting its goal.

Between 2021 and the end of 2024, the city permitted 142 new homes, according to state housing data.

During that same time, the city also did not produce a single unit of affordable housing, as Voice previously reported.

City Manager Tyler Foltz responded in an email: “The city of Imperial Beach is largely a built-out community surrounded by the ocean to the west, estuary to the south, and bay to the north, providing limited vacant land for large-scale development. As such, new construction is dependent on private property owners to propose and construct housing projects.”

It’s true that several of the cities furthest away from meeting their goals are the most built out. National City, El Cajon and Imperial Beach are relatively small and among the most densely-populated cities in the county. They also have a median income less than many other parts of the county.

Voice’s findings show that what real estate agents call the “desirability” of an area (a proxy for home prices) combined with how much open land is available, greatly affect how many homes get built.

In one sense, all of San Diego County is desirable. The region has high-paying jobs and people badly want to live here – anywhere they can find a home. But within the county, the most building appears to be happening where properties fetch the highest prices or where there is open land.

Take Encinitas and Chula Vista.

Encinitas is the closest to meeting its housing goal, despite being very resistant to new homes and having relatively little vacant land. Over the years, builders have sued the city to force it to comply with state housing laws that demand more permissive zoning. Once Encinitas “upzoned” certain properties, builders came in, bought them and built denser housing.

Developers could just as easily buy properties in Imperial Beach, National City and El Cajon in order to build larger housing projects, but they wouldn’t stand to make as much money in those cities, where the average home price is lower.

Chula Vista is also on track to meet its housing goals, even though it is not a high-rent city like Encinitas. That’s because Chula Vista has an abundance of open land compared to other cities.

But the reasons cities aren’t meeting their housing goals can’t just be boiled down to real estate prices and land availability.

Escondido is not densely populated but has relatively low home prices. Solana Beach, on the other hand, is small, but high rent. Both were among the five cities furthest away from reaching their goals.

Dane White, Escondido’s mayor, said he wants more housing. His biggest goal, he said, is drawing more young, educated families to the city – and he knows he needs more homes to do it.

White said the biggest obstacle to housing in Escondido is Proposition S, which voters passed in 1998.

Proposition S takes away the City Council’s power to amend its General Plan for land-use. If a developer comes along asking for an update to the General Plan that would increase residential density, then Proposition S requires the request be approved by all the voters of Escondido.

Developers “are not going to take that risk” of having to go to the voters, White said.

White said he assumed that some of the state’s laws that require cities to approve certain types of denser housing would overrule Proposition S. City officials and KB Home, a large development company, sent the state a letter asking if the city could ignore Proposition S when it comes to projects that would be allowed under state law, White said.

State officials said “no,” according to White. The city must abide by its local ordinance.

Aside from Proposition S, White – like many mayors across the county – also believes Escondido was assigned an unattainable goal.

Here’s how those goals get assigned. First, state officials assigned San Diego County a number. San Diego County needed to produce 171,685 new homes between 2021 and 2029, they said. Next, the San Diego Association of Governments, SANDAG, assigned each city a share of the overall number.

But this process of SANDAG assigning housing numbers to each city was highly controversial, said Lesa Heebner, the mayor of Solana Beach, and current board chair of SANDAG, which has representatives from each city in the county.

SANDAG assigned the numbers based primarily on two factors: public transit and jobs.

Officials assigned roughly 65 percent of the overall allocation based on each city’s share of public transit. (That meant the bulk of the allocation went to the city of San Diego.) They assigned the other 35 percent based on each city’s share of jobs countywide.

But Heebner said the allocation was flawed – which is why her city is so far away from hitting its target.

“It was bad. The allocation was wrong,” Heebner said.

Heebner was not on SANDAG’s board at the time, but Solana Beach’s representative made a motion that would have reduced the allocation for small cities, Heebner said. Most people on the board supported it, but other members called for what is known as a weighted vote. In a weighted vote, the city of San Diego, by far, has the most power on SANDAG’s board, because of its population size.

The allocation passed and some cities, like Solana Beach, appealed their numbers.

Solana Beach’s allocation was nearly three times higher than it had been in the previous housing cycle, Heebner said. But Solana Beach lost its appeal.

Heebner pointed to Encinitas as a city that got off easy in the allocation process. The city has nearly five times as many people as Solana Beach and nearly six times as much land area – but its housing allotment is less than twice as large as the allotment of Solana Beach.

SANDAG didn’t consider land area or population size in its methodology.

National City’s Mayor Ron Morrison also previously told me his city’s numbers were “totally screwed up.”

National City was assigned the highest number of homes per capita of any city in the county.

Population density and per-capita allocations both seemed to matter in which cities were most likely to be on track with meeting their goals. Voice’s analysis identified correlations related to both.

The more densely cities were populated, the less likely they were on the whole to be meeting their housing goals. The same was true of cities with higher per capita allotments.

When it comes to overall volume, just five cities are on track to meet their housing goals. But it’s important to note that every city in the county is off track when it comes to meeting their affordable housing goals.

Cities are supposed to produce a certain number of homes that are affordable for people with “very low,” “low,” “moderate” and “above moderate” income.

No city in on track to meet its mark in each category and, in general, much more homes are being built for people with above-moderate income.

If a city comes up short in any of its categories, a new state law, SB 423, will make it easier for developers to get their projects approved in those cities. Developers will be able to apply for permits through what’s known as a “ministerial” – or bureaucratic – review, rather than have to seek approval from a City Council or land-use authority.

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