Why are San Diego City leaders tempting fate with single-family zoning loopholes in high-risk fire zones?
By Sandra Johnson / Neighbors for a Better San Diego
The first call came in at 11:52 a.m. on Sunday, June 30, 1985, but the fire was already out of control when the first units arrived. By 1:00 p.m. it had gone to four alarms and formal evacuations were in progress. By evening, the Normal Heights fire zone was more than a mile long and a half mile wide.
Everyone thinks it won’t happen to them.
My spouse and I suspected that when the small vintage 1926 house next door sold in October 2021, the buyer might plan to add on to it. But we were entirely taken by surprise when we discovered that he applied for a building permit to add nine Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) behind the existing house on this 8,282 square-foot lot. His plans include keeping the existing house, demolishing and rebuilding the garage with an ADU on top of it, and adding four two-story buildings, each with two ADUs.
At first, we thought the owner had submitted the application in anticipation of the City’s adoption of Senate Bill 10, which would have allowed 10 units (or more) to be built on single-family lots.
However, I discovered that this development is already allowed under the City of San Diego’s 2020 Bonus ADU code and that there are no requirements for additional off-street parking or owner occupancy. The project is allowable in our Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone as long as the builder uses materials and construction methods for exterior fire exposure.
We bought our home in this neighborhood in 1988 and have lived here ever since. Considering the planned development abutting our back fence, we have concerns about the potential impacts of this project on privacy, noise, and parking. But our overwhelming concern is that we are located within the boundaries of the 1985 Normal Heights fire, a national disaster that burned over 300 acres. Flames raced up the canyon toward our homes and destroyed 76 houses and damaged 57 others. The house on the lot where I now live had burned.
Fire can change the trajectory of one’s life, and its scars can run deep.
The San Diego Union-Tribune coverage of the 1985 Normal Heights fire describes how fast the flames came up the canyon and suddenly overtook the neighborhood, like an explosion. Facing a wall of flames from the canyon, residents fled. Residents of the 3300 block of North Mountain View Drive panicked as homes began to catch fire. Evacuated by police, some people could only gather up children, grandchildren, and pets and flee. They didn’t have time to take anything more than the clothes they were wearing.
Just as we are discouraging new development in fire-prone backcountry areas, we should also be discouraging dense development in our equally-hazardous urban high-risk fire zones.
The City of San Diego is unique because of the many majestic but hazardous canyons that are part of our city’s topography. Most high-density development has traditionally been positioned along major transit corridors away from canyons. Whether this was intentional or not, it continues to make the most sense from a fire safety perspective.
What is the wisdom of packing people into ten or more rental units on single-family zoned lots in the midst of Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones? Considering that important Development Impact Fees are waived on Bonus ADUs (funding that would go, in part, to fire rescue services) these loopholes are not only risky but reckless.
Dense ADU development in high-risk fire areas is likely to stretch already strained resources on top of our city’s current $5.2 billion infrastructure funding gap. In addition, the continued wildfire threat is so very real that we have started to see limits on homeowner insurance.
For these reasons, San Diego’s Bonus ADU program should be removed from the City code altogether or be sensibly revised to prohibit ADU development in High Fire Hazard Severity Zones to avoid adding fuel to our city’s high-risk fire areas.
Sandra Johnson is a resident of Normal Heights.
Photo credit: sdnews.com/Remembering the 1985 Normal Heights fire
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for publishing this. We should be concerned by the effects of haphazard planning by the city. Fire protection, and the ensuing insurance costs are a factor into expanding random housing by our elected leaders.
Talk about this issue and you will find consensus. Discuss the full ramifications of shoving SB 10 down Californians throat in conjunction with the other causes that Todd Gloria and Toni Atkins have championed and see how detrimental and destructive SB 9, SB 10 and the fortified Eminent Domain Law that Todd Gloria cut his teeth on in the State Assembly AB 2792 are as a tool chest.
Jujitsu. The People are using this egregious legislation to seek, and finding more and more consensus amongst our neighbors.
Homeowners and renters, responsible landlords and families, conservatives, progressives, independents WE ARE ALL AFFECTED, our City is a $h!thole, and our State is a pit.
See SB10 & Eminent Domain for the unmitigated damage that they will really do in conjunction with one another.
There will be nothing and we do mean nothing to stop a Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg from purchasing corner lots on block after block of our communities claiming “Eminent Domain” to then be “subsidized” for building thousands of units up to 15 stories tall (in the case of the sports arena redevelopment) and required to provide little or no parking if the horizontal high-rises are within a mile from a bus stop.
San Diegans, take a moment to think about the hyper-development since the ’08 Self Inflicted Market Crash.
For perspective, the City has built one (1) new fire station in this century.
We’ve currently lost over 250 officers in a little over 6 months and that number is declining as we speak.
Our City is hemorrhaging Nurses, Fire Fighters, School Teachers, and every profession earning less than what were once considered careers. They cannot even rent. Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers cannot compete with the Wall Street Corporations outbidding families for single family homes as it is.
Least I mention that our roads are worse than Falujah, during the occupation.
And our “elected” California Democratic Party backed candidates cannot take their hands out of the till.
We do not have to take this!
There is nothing more American than dissent, holding truth to power of your own “Party.” Single “Party” rule has corrupted everything and we are uniting against legitimate Politico-Corporate Real Estate tyranny and the Corporate Media Monopolies that suppress the truth.
The City and County have NEVER had a metric to measure the number of deaths of unhoused-evicted San Diegans.
See SB10 & Eminent Domain for the unmititgated damage that they will really do. There will be nothing and we do mean nothing to stop a Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg from purchasing corner lots on block after block of our communities claiming “Eminent Domain” to then be “subsidized” for building thousands of units up to 15 stories tall (in the case of the sports arena redevelopment) and no parking if they are a mile from a bus stop.
San Diegans, take a moment to think about the hyper-development since the ’08 Self Inflicted Market Crash.
For perspective, the City has built one (1) new fire station.
We’ve lost over 250 officers in a little over 6 months.
Least I mention that our roads are worse than Falujah, during the occupation.
And our “elected” California Democratic Party backed candidates cannot take their hands out of the till.
We do not have to take this! There is nothing more American than dissent, holding truth to power of your own “Party.” Single “Party” rule has corrupted everything and we are uniting against legitimate Politico-Corporate Real Estate tyrrany and the Corporate Media Monopolies that suppress the truth.