The long, contentious 5-hour city council meeting that ended Monday night, Nov. 13, ultimately witnessed a rejection of Mayor Gloria’s current Housing Action Package because of its controversial give-away to affordable housing developers.
Ultimately, by a 5 to 3 vote, the council turned down the entire package (Councilmember Raul Campillo was absent for the birth of his first child). Councilmembers Stephen Whitburn and Marni von Wilpert made the initial proposal. So, Councilmembers Joe LaCava, Jennifer Campbell, Monica Montgomery Steppe, Kent Lee and Council President Sean Elo-Rivera opposed the proposal with Whitburn, von Wilpert and Vivian Moreno supporting it.
An earlier vote that stalled at 4-4 was taken on a proposed “secret” amendment by Elo-Rivera (that has a backstory all of its own).
The package contained several positive elements and housing incentives but had become toxic to a majority of the council members due to the element that would have allowed developers to build the required affordable units of a particular multi-unit development off-site and in a more impoverished community.
Critics called this a new type of “redlining” – a policy by banks that continued for decades that prevented African-American and other people of color from purchasing homes in certain communities. Today, critics contend this giveaway to developers would actually reduce economic diversity across the city.
The current San Diego law, known as Complete Communities, allows developers to build much bigger and denser projects as long as those projects include a certain proportion of affordable housing that is “on-site”, that is within the same projects and obviously then within the same communities. This would lead to increased diversities of those communities and allow for inequities to be lessened. This is stated city policy.
When this law requiring the units to be on-site passed in 2020 under former Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer, it was seen as a substantial reform and supporters back then argued that on-site affordable units ensured economic diversity across the city and led to fewer poor people being displaced from their communities. It was tougher than many state laws.
Fast forward to early 2023 and Mayor Gloria made public his crafted changes for the Complete Communities and Housing Action Package 2.0. His proposal passed the city’s Planning Commission and land-use committee and fell into the lap of the council. And for all these months, Gloria pushed his proposal around City Hall and it didn’t seem controversial until people figured out the consequences of some of its elements. By allowing developers to build off-site, they could make more profits and cut costs – literally a give-away.
And the grassroots began grumbling – which by Monday had morphed into an “Alert” campaign by Neighbors for a Better San Diego and other concerned residents who filled at least half of the council chamber Monday night.
But opposition had been growing for months. Councilman LaCava voiced his opposition back in February and said:
“There is no doubt that the push for off-site affordable housing as a part of Complete Communities is a backdoor way to bring back redlining and poor doors. People should be embarrassed to introduce that idea.
If you want to go for off-site housing let’s change the name to incomplete communities.”
Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe had come out against it. She said she couldn’t vote for the package with that element included, saying the program must continue to require the low-income housing be built on the site of the market-rate units. She explained, “True integration — that’s what on-site provides for.”
According to U-T reporter David Garrick,
“Such concerns prompted Council President Sean Elo-Rivera to propose an amendment that would have tightened which middle-income areas would be suitable locations for building the low-income housing in question.
He proposed that it be allowed only if the middle-income area is within the same community planning area — essentially the same neighborhood — of the market-rate housing, or that it be within one mile of the market-rate housing.”
But that vote, as mentioned, deadlocked at 4-4. Von Wilpert and Whitburn voted no on the amendment because they thought Elo-Rivera proposed it too late in the process. Montgomery Steppe and Campbell, who said she was voting against the package because it was too complicated, made it 4. Campbell also was quoted by Garrick criticizing Gloria and her colleagues “for approving too many housing incentives in recent years, contending those incentives either don’t spur more housing or ruin neighborhood character when they do.” Wow. That’s quite a statement from Campbell. Recall that she was the councilmember who brought “reforms” to the short-term vacation rental world helping to cut back on the available housing stock and who was instrumental in ending the 30 foot height limit in the Midway.
And here’s the interesting backstory. Von Wilpert and Whitburn complained that Elo-Rivera’s “secret” amendment was brought out too late, that the package of housing incentives has been under debate at City Hall since early 2023. They claimed they and the rest of the council and staff had not seen the proposed amendment until three hours into Monday’s public hearing.
Garrick reported that “Elo-Rivera apologized but said his timing was prompted by concerns that developers might have bought the votes of council members had he made his proposed amendments public in advance of Monday’s meeting.” Garrick quoted him:
“There’s a reason why I wouldn’t necessarily 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.”
Think about that for a moment. The president of the city council didn’t make his proposed amendment known to his colleagues because he feared “folks with a lot of power and influence would have undoubtedly starting making calls” to those colleagues to push back against it.
This incredulous and public statement is historically noteworthy in its own right.
City officials said a revised version of the package would likely return to the council next year with some revisions.
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Such concerns prompted Council President Sean Elo-Rivera to propose an amendment that would have tightened which middle-income areas would be suitable locations for building the low-income housing in question.
Garrick reported that “Elo-Rivera apologized but said his timing was prompted by concerns that developers might have bought the votes of council members had he made his proposed amendments public in advance of Monday’s meeting.” Garrick quoted him:
And you wonder why I don’t trust this guy? LOL
“There’s a reason why I wouldn’t necessarily 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.”
Think about that for a moment. The president of the city council didn’t make his proposed amendment known to his colleagues because he feared “folks with a lot of power and influence would have undoubtedly starting making calls” to those colleagues to push back against it.
This incredulous and public statement is historically noteworthy in its own right.
Smells like a lot of bad fish.
Here’s Wed. Voice of SD rendition of what transpired at Monday night’s city council meeting vis a vis Elo-Rivera’ s claim about the influence of developers:
But something even more interesting also happened: Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, who was clearly frustrated, got candid about the influence of development money on the city’s legislative process.
Elo-Rivera and several other councilmembers supported a series of amendments that would have taken away two big concessions to developers in the housing package. Some of his colleagues didn’t like that. They said they liked the amendments, but they didn’t like seeing them proposed — as Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert put it — “on the fly.”
The legislation had been in the works for months, they said. Why were the amendments just now surfacing?
“What I have seen in my experience,” said Elo-Rivera, “is that oftentimes very complex policy proposals will not come to us first for input about the general direction we would like things to go. This is not a knock at staff,” said Elo-Rivera.
It seemed, instead, like a knock at the Mayor’s Office, which frequently originates policies, like the housing package.
“To be frank I’m tired of that. We are the legislators and I want us to legislate,” Elo-Rivera said.
He wasn’t done.
Elo-Rivera held back his amendments for another important reason, he said.
“That gives industry a chance to lobby this body and tell us what we shouldn’t do,” said Elo-Rivera. “There’s a reason why I wouldn’t necessarily share these last week. Folks with a lot of power and a lot of influence would have undoubtedly started making calls to tell us that we shouldn’t… tell them the standards for which they need to [build off-site affordable housing.] I wasn’t ok with that.”
The mayor’s housing package likely isn’t dead. It’s likely to head back to the council’s Land Use and Housing Committee or the full council soon. It’s also likely those calls are already being made.
https://voiceofsandiego.org/2023/11/15/morning-report-council-prez-goes-off-on-development-money-influence-need-to-legislate/?goal=0_c2357fd0a3-5323437b23-81846877
Elo-Rivera is just figuring out what many of us have known all along and that is all of this density is for investors and developers to make huge profits. Did Rivera honestly believe these folks cared about equity and whole communities? I’m still not sure he realizes that by playing the equity card it was their way of getting him to attack and label anyone who opposed up-zoning in their neighborhood as a NIMBY or even a racist.
All these policies that have recently passed are turning San Diego into a corporate owned rental housing mecca that we will be lamenting as a community for decades to come.
Rivera owes a lot of people an apology and deserves to be voted out of office.
And after all the support for SB9 & 10 in the first place. I’d predict he’s going to make a run for Mayor after Gloria.