Ricardo Flores is the executive director of Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) San Diego.
Anti-status quo fervor swept the recent elections up and down the ballot in San Diego and across the country as shown by San Diego County voters who “did not turn out for the Democratic ticket in near the numbers they did before.” Voters expressed dissatisfaction with incumbents whom they feel have failed to address critical issues let alone provide policies to make their lives easier. First among those issues is the cost of living or, more specifically, the high costs of housing, including soaring rent prices and high interest rates.
Voters also expressed frustration with the lack of progress on homelessness and basic maintenance of streets, sidewalks, parks, and other city infrastructure.
Frustration with incumbents and their performance manifested locally when San Diego voters rejected Measure E – a full cent increase in the city’s sales tax that would have generated an estimated $400 million a year to address everything from fixing potholes to retaining and hiring more police officers.
The city of San Diego is now facing more than a billion dollars in deficits over the next five years, which will require “some important conversations about what we prioritize, who we prioritize, and what that means for the city as a whole” said previous San Diego Council President and now Councilmember Elo-Rivera.
San Diego is not only the government agency facing crushing deficits. San Diego Unified School District – the largest school district in the county is facing a $176 million budget deficit for the 2025-26 school year, and a projected $230 million deficit for the following year.
As Scott Lewis, the CEO and editor-in-chief of Voice of San Diego, explained in a recent VOSD Podcast episode, San Diego voters are “frustrated” and ready to “revolt.”
So, what can San Diego’s elected officials do to address voter frustrations and head off another anti-incumbency election?
The solution is simple: lower housing costs. To do so, the mayor and City Council members simply should allow San Diego residents to buy less land – 1,000 square feet to be exact – to build a three story 3-bedroom townhome with a garage. Currently, you must buy 5,000 square feet of land to live in the 81 percent of the city zoned single-family.
A new and growing coalition of local leaders, Homeownership Opportunities for SD (HOSD), has come together to advocate for this policy change in San Diego. The purpose of our initiative is simple: If you can build a home on a smaller lot, it will be cheaper. And San Diego needs more homes. A lot of them.
Initial estimates suggest that allowing for this simple change in zoning will lower the cost of a new home by approximately 40 percent. Creating more home buyers will increase the city’s largest revenue source – property taxes.
Increasing property tax revenues can be bonded against to obtain billions of dollars that can be invested into neighborhoods, for: new sidewalks, new streets, new streetlights, new pocket parks, new libraries, and more. This is the same approach city leaders used to build and expand the Convention Center.
More property tax revenue also means more revenue would flow to San Diego Unified to help it close its systemic budget deficits.
And where will these new townhomes be built? The city should reform single family zoning in every neighborhood but especially in neighborhoods that the state classifies as Highest and High Resourced. These are communities with: higher employment rates, higher home values, more bachelor’s degree holders, higher public-school ratings, lower poverty, and less environmental burdens. Allowing working class families access to these upper class neighborhoods with median home prices of one million dollars will, according to researchers, increase the health, wealth and life expectancy of working class children.
But the benefits of single-family zoning reform don’t end there. Increasing density will also have a direct impact on lowering CO2 emissions by slowing sprawl and conserving limited resources like water and power through more efficient use and distribution.
The San Diego City Council passed the largest zoning designation – single family — in 1923, when the city had a population of only 73,000 residents. One hundred years later, the city maintains the same archaic zoning that today it accounts for 81 percent of the residential land in the city, yet the population has grown to more than 1.3 million residents.
Meanwhile, apartment renters only have 19 percent of the city in which to live, yet the majority of San Diegans are renters, not homeowners.
This disparity, in which 81 percent of all residential land is zoned single-family and only 19 percent for multi-family, is why the cost of housing and number of people living on our streets remains high and growing.
Incumbent politicians are at a crossroads. If the public’s demand for lower housing costs and more investment in their neighborhoods is not realized, voters will replace them with individuals who will promise to act, to do something.
Locally, incumbents need to understand – quickly – that they have the authority to lower housing costs by allowing residents to buy less land to build a home that will be cheaper.
The housing crisis is not only solvable but avoidable, but to get there we need to take bold action starting with allowing homeowners to subdivide their 5,000+ square-foot-lots. That would clear the way for up to five “small lot” homes to be built on the same property, just spread across smaller lots.
If it sounds simple, it’s because it is.
This article is inaccurate, Currently most of San Diego is zoned Multi family because of the changes in the Adu and Jr Adu rules. Currently most houses in San Diego may add an Adu up to 1200 square feet and a Jr Adu which is smaller.
Actually, you are incorrect, the zoning is still single-family. Yes, an ADU and a JADU are both permitted on the same lot, but all of these structures are single-family dwellings. The zoning designation is not multi-family.
Heidi, if a lot is permitted to have three units on it, isn’t that the same as Multi family? When the governor signed the bill authorizing this he stated that is there is no longer any single family zoning in CA.
Where will we obtain the additional water, etc. that will be needed for these homes?
No, they have been shrinking lots for decades. The issue is mainly companies buying up homes and sitting on them. Stop with this garbage and report actual info instead of blame shifting and nothingness.
This is false. The idea that a company would buy a home and not rent it out is ridiculous. They buy homes to make money from renting them out.
People like suburbia, I like having distance between my house and the ones around me.
Admittedly, the exurbs around Sacramento are excessive, so let’s start there; not in existing neighborhoods.
“ San Diego Unified School District – the largest school district in the county is facing a $176 million budget deficit for the 2025-26 school year, and a projected $230 million deficit for the following year.”
How much money was collected from the taxes and how much was given to the schools? And how was that money spent?
You should ask a fire marshal about this, I would like to know if 1,000 sq ft can comply with fire requirements
Infrastructure needs to be in place to support any increase in housing density (roads, water, sewers, school, etc). Higher density can also be a higher fire spread and evacuation hazard, so planning is critical. I don’t under why more ‘mobile/modular’ home parks aren’t being considered – like on the vacant land that was the old land fill along I-94 .
This article is a joke. No one wants 5 Houses in their back yards but developers. The infrastructure cannot support it either. And yes it’s real simple. Move to a place you can afford to live instead of sponging off me and trying to turn my residential home into tenement alley.
The op-ed implies that SD Dem leaders have power over home loan interest rates, which is silly. Many SD Dem voters have indeed been frustrated with Gloria et al. precisely because these pols, like Republicans before them, seem to be in the pockets of developers in sheep’s clothing who are here to “solve the housing crisis.” Check the vacancy rate on the huge multi-family buildings that have crowded out the skyline in midcity before telling more tales about no where to rent or live. No one wants a Hong Kong style cramming in of tall buildings on top of one another except for developers.