This Saturday is a day to leave Ocean Beach and Point Loma and join other neighborhoods from around the city in protesting the city’s out-of-wack housing policies.
Hundreds will be gathering Saturday along Friars Road at Ulric Street (Northeast of Fashion Valley Mall) from 11 AM to 1 PM.
The protest is being organized by San Diegans For Responsible Growth in support of responsible growth and against SB 10. They state:
We support a sustainable, walkable, community-driven approach to housing and planning. SB 10 is yet another poorly-conceived density bomb for single-family neighborhoods and an obstacle to these goals.
Worse yet, it’s irreversible.
When organizers first listed the rally captains of the neighborhoods involved, from the coast, Bird Rock, Pt. Loma, Pacific Beach and Mission Beach were mentioned, but not OB. This has to change.
OB has a long history of resisting the city’s shenanigans, most recently in voting against the lifting of the 30-foot height limit in the Midway District (as did Point Loma, the Midway area and the rest of District 2). But that history goes back to the unsuccessful effort by the city to install a jetty at North Beach in 1970; to the saving of Collier Park; and to the establishment of the very first democratically-elected planning board in the history of San Diego.
Please attend this city-wide rally.
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The Planning Commission is hearing HAP 2.0 again on August 3.
One of the organizers for Sat’s event emailed and said that she “got off the phone with the beach communities rally captain, Brita Lindstrom, to confirm that she has been reaching out to OB residents to participate and she definitely has. Like me, she has been helping to deliver SB 10 yard signs and has delivered a lot of them to Pt. Loma and OB.”
I should have mentioned above that the organizer is Bonnie Kutch.
As a long time renter in OB, I see SB 10 as a total boondoggle. It flies in the face of any local planning;
any neighborhood preferences. Like short term rentals, it’s another town wrecker. But it makes developers happy- is this the new bottom line? The planet is burning and the city wants more density, more concrete, fewer trees?
Maybe look at it in another way….high-density housing is actually beneficial to the environment. This excellent article shows you why.
What Are the Environmental Benefits of High-Density Housing?
Cities worldwide are expanding at an alarming rate, and the current infrastructure can’t contain all residents. Cities are forced to extend outward to build more housing to keep up with growing demand. The suburban sprawl consumes astronomical amounts of land and resources, causing devastating damage to the environment.
The American dream conjures images of a house on an acre with a white picket fence. However, there are far too many people for that to be possible without wiping out all our natural resources and destroying habitats. What if there was a way to create enough room for new families to live without taking over new acreage? The answer could be more high-density housing, which can be incredibly beneficial for the environment and the people who live there.
https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/benefits-of-high-density-housing/#:~:text=High%2Ddensity%20housing%20pulls%20away,and%20animals%20need%20to%20survive.
Heat islands are typically found where asphalt streets, tarred roofs and other hard, dark and impervious surfaces are plentiful but trees, air circulation and open green space are scarce. That composition causes greater absorption, retention and generation of heat by buildings and pavements, and often runs parallel to heat-causing human activities.
Plus,
The U.S. birthrate is down sharply from 15 years ago, as women report that economic and social obstacles are causing them to have fewer children than they want. The number of babies born in the U.S. started plummeting 15 years ago and hasn’t recovered since.
Sources: http://www.wsj.com + http://www.usnews.co
Vern, your points are spot on, let me add to them. Here are additional environmental considerations regarding SB10; exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), may build in fire zones if the building materials used meet some fire resilience standards; upgrades for infrastructure not included, inadequate public transportation available within the one mile walk zone (by the way this distance started with 1/4 mile, then 1/2 mile and is now at 1 mile), no parking requirements for additional housing will lead to more cars, traffic and carbon footprint due to inadequate public transportation, more people, more density = more noise pollution and impact on public services such as sanitation, water, and public park maintenance.
In addition to these environmental impacts consider these: once SB10 passes it can NEVER be rescinded. SB10 is untested in cities as large as San Diego.
Finally, Todd Gloria, Jen Campbell, et al have a history of creating ordinances without input from the beach community (30’ height limit) & shoddy research (current loophole for STVR’s) come to mind. Gloria & Campbell write these ordinances with no regard to the consequences or resources to enforce them. They make a mess and walk away.
Good points, OB Toby.
Additionally, SB10 does not address affordable housing, which is needed in and around much of SD. It will not lower rental prices, but likely increase them while the already low wages in SD continue to stagnate. It may just make a more permanent “rental class” of low and middle income taxpayers.
No on SB10!
What work is being done to disincentivize non-primary residence (owner occupant) uses of housing here in San Diego that comes anywhere close to the scale of SB10? Pure supply-side solutions ignoring all the actors in the market are just handouts to large capital interest.