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SOHO President's Message
By David W. Goldberg
March/April 2025
 Photo by Sandé Lollis |
I must admit that the City of San Diego’s approach to bringing down the cost of housing confounds me.
The premise that increasing housing supply will lower prices may seem to make sense on the surface, but when the result is largely an increase in market-rate housing with only miniscule amounts of affordable housing units thrown into the mix, it’s hard seeing how real progress is going to be made. Moreover, doubling down on refuted talking points, including the false claim that the historic property review process slows down housing production, makes no sense at all.
Will the fog ever clear? Good question. On a positive note, two actions taken at the City Council meeting on January 28, 2025, demonstrated that councilmembers understand that the City needs to address unintended consequences of rushing to increase housing production.
First, the City Council voted to reverse a 2019 zoning update error known as “Footnote 7,” which reduced minimum lot sizes on some parcels in the Encanto neighborhood without going through the proper Community Plan Update process.
Second, the City Council voted to have staff prepare an action item to remove the City’s accessory dwelling unit (ADU) Density Bonus Program, thereby aligning San Diego’s overreaching ADU program with state-mandated regulations. This change, if enacted, will help protect historic and established neighborhoods citywide from negative impacts stemming from the most aggressive ADU incentive program in California.
The absence of a cap on the number of units that can be built on a single lot is what’s causing the greatest concern about the Density Bonus Program. The only significant constraint is the allowable maximum floor area ratio (FAR), the ratio of a building's total floor area to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built. Even with this limiting factor, there have been instances of constructing what by any objective standard are multi-unit apartment complexes. These projects are a far cry from the “gentle density,” homeowner driven, one- or two-unit ADUs SOHO supports.
Other negative impacts include the bidding up of underlying property values, which makes surrounding housing more expensive for first-time buyers; strains on infrastructure not designed for intense development; loss of neighborhood character; increased traffic congestion; and the forfeiture of Development Impact Fees, which are waived on Bonus ADU projects. This last, significant loophole—a subsidy benefiting investors—could cost the City millions of dollars in lost revenue—with taxpayers forced to pick up the bill.
The ADU Density Bonus Program is flawed legislation. It’s a very expensive and destructive way to build “affordable” housing. Considering the serious budget shortfalls the City routinely faces and today’s deep deficit, it’s astonishing that an overly generous and short-sighted subsidy was built into the program. Kudos to the City Council for stepping up and taking a second look.
Although the recent fires that devastated Los Angeles have been out for nearly two months, I’m still in a state of shock over the magnitude of death, destruction, and havoc left in their wake. The scale of property loss, including historic resources, communities destroyed, and lives turned upside down for years, if not decades, boggles the mind. It’s nearly impossible to adequately prepare for such catastrophes, but there are lessons to be learned and precautions that must be taken.
In San Diego we were fortunate to have been spared much damage from the fires. That said, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing we’re out of harm’s way. We aren’t. As was the case in Los Angeles, San Diego’s urban water infrastructure, especially in historic and older neighborhoods, isn’t capable of handling maximum water demand when multiple large fires are burning simultaneously—even when local water supply is at or near full capacity. Another issue is that road networks built decades or a century or more ago aren’t capable of handling the heavy traffic of mandatory mass evacuations.
We must address these and other climate change related dangers when updating housing policy and considering increased density. This is especially important in a city with a history of making poor choices and paying out large settlements for bad decisions.
Yes, we need more affordable housing and greater housing supply, but we must accomplish this in ways that move the city forward without destroying existing affordable housing stock and irreplaceable historic resources.
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