Bogus ‘Report’ on Coastal Commission from Developer-Aligned Circulate Group Accepted as Gospel by San Diego Media

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels famously said that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. We’ve definitely seen how this has played out at the national level with Trump denying he lost the 2020 election. But it also happens at the local level.

And this is what has happened since mid-June when the developer-aligned group Circulate SD issued a report claiming the California Coastal Commission is worsening the housing crisis.

The so-called “report” which is full of half-truths and exaggerations was picked up by several other local media as gospel, including Times of San Diego — whose headline was unabashedly uncritical, “Report: California Coastal Commission Often Stymies Affordable Housing Plans,” and the local NBC affiliate was a tad more circumspect with “Critics say California Coastal Commission resists, delays affordable-housing projects,” but its live TV kicker was less so, with: “New Report Criticizes Coastal Commission.” CBS8 had this: “Report accuses California Coastal Commission of blocking affordable housing, bike lanes.”

And writer David Garrick in the U-T had a sub-head: “Report: Agency blocks low-income housing, transportation projects.” The online version was not better, with: “Has the Coastal Commission made housing and climate crises worse? It’s offended at even the suggestion”

Readers of these pieces are offered a one-sided view, Circulate’s view.

Local activists fighting against the onslaught of San Diego’s housing policies that promise to wreck havoc in places like Hillcrest and University City are familiar with the lead author of Circulate’s report, Will Moore. Moore was publicly ecstatic when the San Diego City Council’s housing committee pushed a plan forward to bring more high-rises and housing to Hillcrest and allow developers to build higher, and more than double the population of the area by 2050.

For Moore, increasing housing density is paramount to all issues. It’s a build, build, build world for him.

Just for starters, Circulate’s report misrepresented the history of the California Coastal Commission and pretended it was totally a creature of the California legislature. Yet, the people of California made it — in 1972 the state’s voters overwhelmingly approved the Coastal Act that established the Commission. It was later extended indefinitely by the governor and legislature.

Circulate itself has long been a target here at the Rag for its corporate and developer backing. And for good reason. Here’s one: Circulate led the charge against San Diego’s volunteer community planning groups. We’re not alone. Coastal Commissioners themselves said Circulate San Diego is speaking for developers who want to be able to build without sensible restrictions.

But Will Moore claims this:

“The Coastal Commission is supposed to protect the environment and coastal access for all Californians, but its actions have excluded Californians from the coast and made segregation and climate change worse.”

Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, a Commission member, was particularly incensed by these claims that the commission actions are akin to redlining, a federally endorsed practice in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in which home loan approvals depended on race, income and neighborhood. She said:

“Comparing the Commission’s efforts to protect beach access and the environment to redlining is not only inaccurate, but it’s extremely offensive.”

Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the Commission remarked:

“[The report] cherry picks a handful of cases that omit significant facts to paint a dishonest picture that the Commission denies density bonus projects or doesn’t support affordable housing.”

“The allegation that the Commission regularly opposes, blocks or delays density bonus projects in the coastal zone is demonstrably false. Of the five projects featured, four were approved and one is pending on appeal.”

Other Commission members said the report is filled with dishonest and offensive claims, and fails to provide credible evidence to support its conclusions and misrepresents the agency’s track record.

The chair of the Commission, Caryl Hart, was particularly upset with the report, and shared a keen observation with the Sacramento Bee:

“This disgraceful excuse for a report intentionally distorts and misrepresents actions taken by the Coastal Commission. It even goes so far as to say the commission is manipulating the law to promote racial segregation in the Coastal Zone, which is profoundly dishonest and offensive.”

“The report is clearly a developer-backed hit piece masquerading as an academic endeavor.”

“The industries behind this effort are the same ones that opposed the passage of the Coastal Act in 1976 and continue to fight common-sense environmental protections today.”

In response to the the report’s claims about the commission exacerbating the affordable housing crisis, Hart said that the state Legislature has historically catered to Realtors and developers, and that the commission has long warned against doing so. She said:

“Despite warnings that the Coastal Zone would turn into an ‘enclave for the wealthy,’ the California Legislature, at the behest of Realtors and developers, removed the Coastal Commission’s ability to require affordable housing in 1981.”

“The Legislature needs to amend the Coastal Act to again enable the commission to protect, encourage and, where feasible, provide affordable housing in the Coastal Zone.”

A spokesperson for the California Coastal Commission also sent the following statement to NBC 7:

“Circulate San Diego’s recent report significantly misrepresents the California Coastal Commission’s track record on affordable housing. The agency has been and continues to be deeply committed to equity, environmental justice and affordable housing in the coastal zone.

“Without background or context, the report fails to provide credible evidence and cherry-picks a handful of cases to paint an erroneous picture that the commission does not approve density bonus projects or support affordable housing. The reality is very different. Density bonus projects are regularly approved in the coastal zone every year by local governments and the commission.

“We have and will continue to proactively work with local governments and developers to find opportunities to increase the availability of affordable housing in the coastal zone, ensure coastal resources are protected and ensure that the beach is accessible to all Californians. These priorities are not mutually exclusive.”

An Op-Ed in the LA Times in February this year against SB 951 is important to revisit.

If the coast of California is a state asset worth trillions of dollars — and it is — why is the state agency that has successfully protected that asset for 50 years under assault? The answer — “unnecessary permitting delays” — is unfounded. Yet California’s exceptional history of coastal protection is in greater jeopardy today in the halls of our state Capitol than it has been for generations.

Like water flowing downhill, California’s incomparable coast has always been a magnet for development. In 1972, with this in mind, the voters of California overwhelmingly approved Proposition 20, a ballot initiative that set in motion the 1976 California Coastal Act. Unlike South Florida, the Jersey Shore or other coastal regions devoured by privatization, the California coast was by law given special protection: The coastal zone would be developed not as an enclave for the wealthy but for everyone’s use, with provisions for protecting its natural resources and its breathtaking beauty.

The California Coastal Commission was created to enforce the act with a specific charge to balance the needs of the ecosystem with the need for public access and economic development, including affordable housing. It works like this: Local jurisdictions come up with coastal plans that the commission must approve. Once a plan is in place, development permits are handled by the city, town or county, although those decisions can be appealed to and by the commission.

 Over the years, the Coastal Commission has successfully defended public access to the beach in Malibu, Half Moon Bay, Carlsbad and other towns. It has helped preserve state parks, open space along the coast and the beach itself — denying permits for oil drilling, more than one luxury resort, an LNG port (in Oxnard) and a toll road (at San Onofre Beach). In 2019, it fined a developer nearly $15.6 million for replacing, without a permit, two low-cost hotels along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica with a boutique hotel.

Predictably, this process has often been in the bull’s-eye of Coastal Act critics, and while the rationale may vary with the moment, their goal remains the same: to weaken oversight by the commission and return land-use control entirely to local governments. …

The claim that the Coastal Commission is responsible for housing inequity in the coastal zone, though long on rhetoric, is belied by the historical record. Indeed, when the Coastal Act became law in 1976, it required that “housing for persons of low and moderate income shall be protected, encouraged, and, where feasible, provided.” The commission actively complied, approving or protecting from demolition more than 6,100 affordable units between 1977 and 1981 and collecting an estimated $2 million in “in lieu” fees to support affordable housing.

But in 1981, the state Legislature amended the Coastal Act to remove the commission’s affordable housing authority. Contrary to the claim of “unnecessary permitting delays” on which SB 951 is based — only two coastal development permits in San Francisco have been appealed to the commission in 38 years — it is this amendment, and the fact that developers prefer to build high-end projects, that has produced today’s affordable housing deficit in the coastal zone. As then-Coastal Commission Chair Leonard Grote warned in 1981, “The passage of this bill would make sure that the ability to live near the coast is reserved for the wealthy.” And so it has.

If increasing the supply of affordable housing near California’s coast is actually the goal of SB 951, then restoring, not reducing, the commission’s authority is needed. It was a mistake in 1981 to remove the commission’s power to require that projects it approved included affordable housing, and it’s a mistake in 2024 to expect that diminishing the coastal zone will right that wrong.

The California Coastal Commission has an extraordinary record of success in protecting California’s most valuable environmental and economic resource, and its regulatory role is as essential today as it has ever been. SB 951 would weaken, not promote, equal access to that resource, and it threatens to erode, perhaps irrevocably, the most successful coastal management program in the country.

We cannot allow ourselves to be deceived here at the local level because our local media delivers crap as gospel. The voters enacted the Coastal Commission and for over 50 years it has been the only institution designed to protect the coast — for all of us. Groups like Circulate masquerade as goodhearted citizens just trying to do their civic duty — while hiding their true intentions. Look at their corporate and developer backers and then get back to me about how they’re just a simple, grassroots group doing their thing.