San Diego’s Housing Crisis Isn't Going Anywhere

It’s official. San Diego has punted on a plan allowing construction in sufficient amounts to (maybe) abate the current housing crisis. Mayor Todd Gloria’s already watered down Housing 2.0 plan was rejected by the City Council.

Gone for now are incentives to build off-campus housing projects, extended time for building permits for projects facing unexpected delays and eliminating parking mandates for projects within a half-mile of transit.

Housing Plan 2.0 originally included language inclusive of SB 10, the law allowing communities to opt in to an easier path for "up-zoning" residential neighborhoods close to job centers, public transit, and existing urban areas. Under SB 10, cities could choose to authorize construction of up to ten units on a single parcel without requiring an environmental review. 

A campaign opposing opting in to SB 10 drew demonstrators and enabled some of the city’s most notorious extremists to claim victory when its inclusion was dropped from Housing 2.0 Plan.

At this point, no community in California has opted into SB 10, and the citizen ‘revolt' in San Diego should be Exhibit One on why politicians are afraid. 

It is easier for people to fear losing something (property values, “others,” etc.) than it is to get them to accept a larger vision (climate change, diversity, housing shortage). This ‘me first’ is now a widespread value in this country.

From Voice of San Diego:

• Gloria’s Housing Action Package 2.0 appeared relatively uncontroversial and seemed as if it would sail through Council. But in recent weeks, two details in the package emerged as controversial. 

• First, the mayor wanted to stop giving fee waivers to developers who build studio apartments and instead give those waivers to developers building three-bedroom units. Critics on the council believed this would encourage the development of high-end units, rather than the smaller units they believe are critical in battling the city’s homeless crisis. 

• The second change, revealed two weeks ago by Voice of San Diego, would have watered down a requirement that forces developers who want to build big, dense developments to build mandated-affordable units on-site. The change would have allowed developers to build those units off-site — in some cases in poorer neighborhoods than the original development. 

For a brief moment during the city council meeting, the corruption underlying the way local government works revealed itself. 

Council President Sean Elo-Rivera rolled out a previously unannounced amendment requiring separate buildings for lower income residents be built within the same community planning area.

In response to complaints about the last minute proposed change, Elo-Rivera said:  

• “I suppose we could post potential amendments. But I’ll be honest, that gives industry a chance to lobby this body and tell us what we shouldn’t do. And so there’s a reason why I wouldn’t share these last week. Folks with a lot of power and a lot of influence would have undoubtedly starting making calls to tell us that we shouldn’t make it more restrictive.” 

Sorry, gang, this “secret” amendment was simply an acknowledgement of the way things work.

Changing low income set-asides in new construction to allow such housing to be built elsewhere was an obvious sop to developers. A solution to the bigger housing shortage would need pre approval by builders it seems, so the end result is that nobody wins with the possible exception of the landed petty bourgeois.

I, for one, am predicting that developers wouldn’t follow through on such a requirement regardless of location, with any consequences amounting to a (tax deductible) expense. It’s this sort of thing that allows corporations like Amazon to get away with union-busting; fines for bad behavior are just another expense. 

The mere possibility of densification brought out a noisy crowd at the City Council, apparently concerned about weakening (?) the ‘complete communities’ goal in housing policy, upset that the inclusion of lower income units was used to justify density bonuses, and unhappy with the potential for 8 to 12 story buildings to be scattered throughout various neighborhoods. 

A commenter responding to the Times of San Diego’s coverage of the council meeting succinctly made this point:

• Low-income people should live in low-income neighborhoods. I can't think of a single justification as to why they should be subsidized and allowed to live in neighborhoods where the people paid a lot more money to live in. They just want to spread the ghetto mentality around. Social justice, right commies?

The Mayor’s office has indicated that an amended version of Housing 2.0 will be brought before the council in the near future. At this point I am assuming it will be more watered down, full of aspirational language not offensive to certain property owners. How a concession for developers will work out is something I can’t predict, but you can be sure there will be one.

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The political obstacles blocking construction of the housing San Diego needs seem intractable. 

Densification in the range of neighborhoods needed seems blocked by NIMBYs, who will be quick to tell you that there’s plenty of space elsewhere for housing construction. Except that those spaces don’t pencil out for developers, who would otherwise be putting up buildings in those locations.

While I’m at it, let me lob a grenade at the argument against apartment/condo living, namely that people will be stuck renting for life with those types of developments:

BREAKING NEWS: The days of access to home ownership are mostly over, especially in California. 

Via Capital Public Radio:

• Californians in their late 20s and early 30s own homes at half the rate as their peers outside the state. That’s one of the key takeaways in a new UC Berkeley research paper which chronicles the state’s continued decline in homeownership among all age groups, especially younger adults. 

• The state’s homeownership rate for people aged 25 to 75 dropped to 43.5% in 2021, down from nearly 50% in 2000, the paper found. By comparison, homeownership in the rest of the United States is nearly 60%.

• The decline was more pronounced among younger Californians aged 35 to 45, who saw homeownership drop 10 percentage points to less than 40%. 

• Even younger Californians aged 25 to 35 saw their homeownership rate fall to 15%, down from 25% two decades earlier. 

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This could change with a massive increase in new home construction, which won’t happen because of limited land (wildfires) outside of places where people generally work, and unyielding opposition to densification in places where abodes could be built.

And then there’s the problem of a generation on the receiving end of four decades of trickle down. Between education costs/loans, medical costs (insured or not), childcare, and the gap between earnings and productivity, home ownership is largely an unattainable dream these days, with the possible exception of boomers dying off and leaving estates to younger family members.

In short, access to housing is an economic problem. The costs of all the individual “freedoms” mandated to us by the marketplace economy types, and the failure of the corporate sector to invest substantially in more than stock buybacks are creating a permanent underclass that, unfortunately, includes what we once called the middle class. 

Unions, like the United Auto  Workers, are now just starting to push the economy in another direction.

The ultimate victims in this economy are the people forced to live on the street. As is true with immigration, the right wing will balk at any extraordinary solutions (like social housing) so they can claim the fault lies with liberals/people who include empathy in their world view.

With escapes from this bottom rung of American life blocked, the homeless population will continue to grow. And the more restrictive a locality’s zoning laws, the faster it will grow.

This ultimately is the crux of how we’ll end up with Democratic local officials supporting concentration camps (with a nicer name) for unhoused humans. All it will take will be one heinous crime or health scare. Already unhoused people are portrayed as purveyors of drug use, despite most overdoses occurring among housed people.

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For a few moments last weekend it looked like the fire under the LA portion of Interstate 10 was going to be blamed on homeless humans.  Traffic will be diverted for three to five weeks in a city notorious for parking lots disguised as freeways. 

Breitbart and other right wing outlets are still suggesting encampments are somehow associated, in the hope this incident would be the one triggering mass outrage enabling their cruelty is the point solution. 

At this point signs in the I10 fire point to an exploitative situation wherein a property was leased from Caltrans, and illegally subdivided, with small businesses mostly operated by migrants paying month rent in violation of terms of the lease. A greedy landlord was exploiting people who had no legal recourse.

Caltrans was finally ready to act on previous eviction threats. And then the fire happened. The insurance required by the state agency didn’t include fire damage. After all, why would one worry about fire in a concrete space under a freeway?

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Thought: If you think housing is expensive now, just wait until Trump deports the people who build them.

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Wednesday’s Macho Men in the News

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Sean Hannity Gets Weird In Interview With Fight-Starting GOP Senator Via HuffPo

• In a wild back-and-forth, Mullin, a former MMA fighter, criticized O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union, for mocking him on social media and told him to “stand your butt up.”

• Hannity told Mullin his popularity with the people of Oklahoma would “probably go up tenfold” due to the altercation.

• “He called you out. You called him out for calling you out. And that’s kind of old school the way it used to be,” he told the senator.

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Greene calls GOP colleague a p‑‑‑‑ Via The Hill (It’s Issa and a synonym for cat)

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) called fellow GOP Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) a p‑‑‑‑ Tuesday after he attacked her for lacking the “maturity and experience” to understand the proper way to bring an impeachment vote against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

• In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Greene included a meme of former President Trump saying, “She said he’s a p‑‑‑‑.” The meme was a response to another post from her official House X account, which also attacked Issa.

• “Darrell Issa is right, I am a hardworking member of Congress who puts the American people first. But we all know what Darrell Issa lacks…,” Greene posted, before including emojis of five different sports balls.

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Burchett: My 16 Year Old Daughter Hits Harder than McCarthy Via MTN

• Tim Burchett went on Newsmax this morning and was asked what he was going to do to respond to Kevin McCarthy elbowing him in the back yesterday in the hallway.

• Burchett said he prayed for McCarthy this morning and will continue to pray for his lost soul. He then predicted that the disgraced former Speaker will be out of Congress in 2025 and working as a lobbyist "making 7 figures."

• When asked if he was feeling OK after the assault, Burchett responded, "It ain't no big deal. I got a 16 year old daughter. She's hit me harder."