By Alex Lai / CBS8 / April 19, 2025
The American dream of owning a home is being reimagined. Developers are buying single-family homes and adding high-density units in backyards, or as Realtor Jim LaMattery calls them, “alligator projects.”
“The reason I call these alligator projects is because they’re over-built, bloated, monstrosities in the middle of our neighborhoods,” LaMattery said.
He leads LIMBY, or Look In My Backyard tours, to show residents the projects in neighborhoods. One “alligator project” is in the backyard of a single-family home on Almayo Avenue in Clairemont.
“These are 17 units that are all one bedroom, one bath, and they’re 441 square feet and they’re going to rent at $2,600 a month,” LaMattery said.
Projects like this often use city density bonuses for affordable housing and fall under the Complete Communities Program, which doesn’t require public notice or input. The project came as a shock to neighbors, including Bill Buchwald. Beyond parking and overcrowding concerns, he is worried about fire safety, with power lines overhead and tight access for emergency vehicles.
“If you get a high winds and they, they arc against the building, everything’s going to go up, including this whole neighborhood,” Buchwald said.
Concerns stretch beyond the block. Clairemont native, John Schwartz, is worried about other projects coming. “It’s an exploitation of neighborhoods that shouldn’t be happening,” he said. “But if I did anticipate that it was a possibility, I don’t think I would have bought in the area.”
Now, LaMattery is creating a ballot initiative to repeal the Complete Communities Program and return project approvals to local planning groups. He’s aiming to collect 144,000 signatures through his survey by the end of the summer before launching the initiative in his fight to take back the American dream of buying a single-family home.
“My greatest joy in real estate was selling to young people a new home,” LaMattery said. “That, to me, is what the American dream is. This ain’t no American dream, this is an American nightmare.”
His next LIMBY Alligator Tour is Sunday, April 27 from 12-4 p.m. at 2921 Field Ct., a proposed location for up to 20 units.
