Alert: Housing Action Package 2.0 Up for 2nd Read at City Council — Tues., Jan.9 — Public Can Submit Written Comments

From Neighbors for a Better San Diego

The Housing Action Package 2.0, which was passed on a 7-1 vote on December 12, 2023, will get a second and final reading as part of the consent agenda at next Tuesday’s — January 9th, 10 AM — City Council meeting.

While Neighbors For A Better San Diego supported most of the initiatives in HAP 2.0, we continue to oppose the changes to Complete Communities Housing Solutions (CCHS).

Not only are the proposed changes ambiguous, contradictory, and incomplete, but they undermine San Diego’s commitment to housing affordability and starve the city of development fees to pay for needed infrastructure in older communities that will be disproportionately targeted by the new regulations.

Public comment on consent agenda items is limited, so we have submitted a list of 18 unresolved questions to the Councilmembers and the Planning Department that were not addressed at previous Planning Commission and City Council meetings. We have asked the Council to get answers to these questions before they make a final and fateful decision on January 9.

Despite the reduced in-person public testimony, there are no limitations on written comments, which can be submitted through the webform. HAP 2.0 is Item 56 of the agenda.

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Here is the intro to the letter with the unresolved questions:

OPEN QUESTIONS REGARDING THE INTERPRETATION OF PROPOSED COMPLETE COMMUNITIES HOUSING SOLUTIONS CODE AMENDMENTS IN HAP 2.0

Because of the lack of full and meaningful public input during the drafting of the code in the Housing Action Package 2.0 (HAP 2.0), the amendments to Complete Communities Housing Solutions (CCHS) contain an unusual number of ambiguities and omissions. It is essential to resolve these questions for the legislative record so that both developers and the public have a clear legal understanding of what types of projects are permitted under the new regulations.

The most recent update to the HAP 2.0 proposal attached to the January 9, 2024, agenda resolved one of the questions raised in public testimony related to the scope of the three mile distance exception §143.1015(a)(7)(A)(ii); however, there are several questions that remain. These pertain to the following amended code sections:

143.1005
143.1015(a)(7)
143.1015(a)(7)(A)(ii), including contention with existing CCHS code 143.1030
143.1015(a)(7)(B)
143.1015(b)

Neighbors For A Better San Diego has compiled a list of 18 questions, as detailed below. We feel that it is in the interest of the Council to make sure that the code unambiguously captures their policy intentions, and accordingly that the Planning Department answers these questions prior to final approval of HAP 2.0. As we have seen with previous sweeping land use changes, loopholes and misinterpretation of code by DSD have created profound distrust in City government and avoidable
delays in projects as ambiguities in code are adjudicated in courts. Clean code and clear legislative intent would benefit all parties.

In the interest of time and clarity, we have simplified these questions to Yes/No and multiple choice answers. The code in question has been inserted for reference