Editordude: This is an expanded version of Paul Krueger’s letter to the U-T Editor we posted last week.
By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / August 24, 2025
New laws often have unintended consequences, and those impacts are almost always negative.
In San Diego, predatory developers and their investors gamed the “Bonus ADU” program by cramming a dozen (or more) apartments on single-family lots, often in high-fire zones, with no off-street parking and no infrastructure improvements. Despite promises of reduced rents, the program has failed to produce a single unit of very-low or low-income housing.
In Pacific Beach, a proposed 23-story residential tower is the unwelcome result of state legislation intended to increase the supply of low-income rental units. But a majority of the 213 units would be hotel-type rentals. Only five units would be set aside for very-low-income tenants.
The latest and arguably most egregious example of unintended negative consequences is “surge pricing” at hundreds of downtown parking meters for Padres’ games and so-called “special events.”
The city could try to balance its budget by shrinking its workforce — offering buy-outs to upper- and middle-managers and, if necessary, laying off employees. Instead, it is increasing user fees. The cost of metered parking already doubled this year to $2.50 an hour. Starting September 1, sports fans and music lovers have a choice: pay $10 an hour for metered parking, use a public lot, or take a bus, trolley or ride-share.
Those of us fortunate enough to afford a $300 family night at Petco or a $150 concert ticket can probably absorb the additional $60 added for “surge” parking. But thousands of low-paid hospitality workers and night shift employees don’t have that option.
Worse, the city’s new “Special Event Parking Zone” is so big and extends so far from Petco Park that it will cause a huge financial hardship for countless San Diegans who live and work downtown.
The new $10 an hour “surge pricing” includes metered parking all the way north to Broadway, eight blocks from the stadium. The zone goes west to State Street, east to Interstate 5, and south to Newton Avenue.
Until now, downtown workers with late-shift jobs could pay five dollars for two hours of late afternoon/early evening parking and keep their cars there when meters expired at 6 p.m.
Now, they’ll pay more than half their hourly wage to feed those $10-hour-meters.
Critics might tell them to use a parking lot, take public transportation, or ride-share to and from work.
But public lots charge $30 or more on weekend nights downtown. Ride share to and from work would cost even more for most workers. And public transit doesn’t fit your schedule when you finish work at 2 am.
Many downtown residents will face similar hardships. Wealthy condo owners and renters have off-street parking spots (some enjoy 24-hour valet parking). But those who pay less for rent or live in buildings outside the downtown core often have no off-street parking.
East Village resident Autumn Atherton told Fox 5/KUSI that surge pricing could break her budget. She lives in a building with no assigned or underground parking and relies entirely on street parking. “I’m barely making it,” she said. “(And) that’s an extra 40 bucks a day I’m going to have to pay to park,” she said.
Small business owners also predicted significant hardship from the 400% increase in meter parking on “Special Event days.”
“Nobody’s going to pay $10 [at a meter] just to buy a $30 bag of dog food,” one business owner told Fox 5/KUSI. “If you drive around, there are already a bunch of empty retail spaces. Now there’ll just be one more.”
It’s highly unlikely the city can find a solution to this avoidable inequity. Even if our mayor and council were to acknowledge they were blinded by the pursuit of revenue and failed to predict the consequences, they have less than two weeks before the new rates take effect to make changes.
And don’t count on Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera to discuss this urgent cost-of-living problem at the Sept. 25 meeting of his “Select Committee on Addressing Cost of Living.”
Paul Krueger is a retired journalist, current writer for the OB Rag and founding member of both the San Diego Community Coalition and Neighbors for a Better San Diego.
San Diego City Council resumes Tuesday September 9th at 10 am…
Reasons to go…
The new parking rules. 10 bucks an hour at meters for special events, later hours to charge, balboa park and beaches will have meters now, and no more free parking on Sunday.
Current laws that violate rights.. San Diego, Sidewalk Vending ordinance, and expressive activity code!
The way the city spends tax payer money on things no one wants while finding ways to charge the citizens extra for everything, through any means they can tax the citizens.
Nicely stated. The points you bring up are the most important–the people who won’t be able to park and those just priced out of the parking areas who will go elsewhere for goods and services at the expense of small businesses. Another hardship will be on the neighborhoods–as they add meters along Park Blvd. and other places the people who live there without off-street parking (many) will have to move into the neighborhoods to park. I don’t resent them because that’s what I’d do if I lived a block further east and it [still] free parking there. But it will contribute to the decline in desirability of living in San Diego with a government that is at war against the people who live here.
And I suspect to new rates will not bring in the revenue expected, and enforcement will cost more than expected.
So a lose, lose, lose all the way around.
Well written, Paul,
I totally agree the people driving in to town to work minum wage jobs will be hit the hardest.
I hope the San Diego Community Coalition and Neighbors for a Better San Diego can help stop the increase. And I think it is time for me and others to join in the fight. I’ll be looking for the next meeting dates.