By Danna Givot
The City is planning to increase the College Area’s zoning to allow 34,150 (2050) versus 8200 housing units on the ground in 2024 – a 316% increase. That’s crazy when SANDAG estimates the entire city of San Diego will increase housing by 107,778 units between 2023 and 2050.
Why should the College Area be upzoned to provide almost one quarter of the City’s new housing between now and 2050? It shouldn’t!
In 2020, the College Area housed only 1.8% of the City’s people and accounted for less than 1% of San Diego’s acreage, so why would it be upzoned to accommodate 24% of the new housing in San Diego. It makes no sense.
Let’s look at what other recent community plan updates have upzoned their community planning areas for and compare them to what is being asked of the College Area.
Mira Mesa, University, Hillcrest/Uptown and Clairemont have three or more times the existing housing and their community plans are only increasing their housing density by 98% on average, while the College Area is being hammered with a 316% increase. What could justify this?
Could this be about providing greater resources and opportunities to San Diego residents? Highly unlikely.
Of these communities with recent plan updates, the College Area is the poorest and has the lowest resource and opportunity ratings according to the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC) Map. Note the comparative 2025 CTCAC maps below where light green and lower numbers show low resource areas and darker blues and higher numbers indicate higher opportunity areas. By increasing density in the College Area, the City is violating state and federal laws requiring the City to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH) by concentrating density in higher opportunity neighborhoods, not lower resource areas.
Could this be about transit opportunities in the College Area? Not really. We do have two trolley stops and one bus that go downtown, but downtown offers only 4.9% of the San Diego region’s jobs. To get to the biggest employment centers in Sorrento Valley 7.9% and Kearny Mesa 5.9%, it takes from 3 to 4 hours round trip on mass transit, not even counting time to access transit at both ends.
Is the College Area itself a large employment center? It is not. SANDAG indicates that only 1% of the region’s employees travel to the College Area for work and SDSU employs 0.62% of the region’s employees. It is highly likely that many of these employees are part time lecturers and students who work part time as part of work-study programs.
Is there still a large demand for new off-campus housing for SDSU students? No. Since 2021, 3,500 new beds have been permitted off-campus with another 4,500 permitted on campus. Many of these off-campus residences are experiencing vacancies. In addition, SDSU west is building additional on-campus housing. It is also likely that some students will choose to live in Mission Valley, which has a variety of housing options with much building in process.
Meanwhile, SANDAG Series 15 population estimates project a 1,630 (8.8-17.3%) decrease in the 18-24 year-old College Area population between 2022 and 2050.
(https://adlsdasadsprodpublicwest.z22.web.core.windows.net /datasurfer/sandag_forecast_15_cpa_college%20area.pdf)
Is the College Area being punished because it has not been producing new housing? The College Area has been responsible for large portions of the City’s new housing permits. From 2021 to 2024, the College Area was home to 5.4% of San Diego’s building permits and 8.8% of San Diego’s affordable building permits – even though we are only 0.9% of the City’s acreage. The College Area is producing more than its fair share of housing, especially affordable housing!
Beyond this, 71% of those building permits were in bonus density programs that the City’s 316% unit upzoning doesn’t include – ADUs, Complete Communities, and City and State Affordable Density Bonus Programs. These programs would create additional housing beyond the upzoning the City has planned for our community of 29,000 people. We should also point out that the City doesn’t count the 8,500 SDSU students who live on campus as part of our population, nor will they count the additional 4,500 who will soon join them as the Evolve dorms are built. These 13,000 students use our infrastructure every day – water, sewer, streets, sidewalks, etc. They attend off campus parties that tax our police and fire departments and impact our neighborhoods. If these students are included, the proposed plan would increase the College Area population by over 200%.
As it stands, the College Area has a 91%+ park points deficit. We have one 1.6 acre park, a portion of which is a drainage swale. That’s the extent of our parks, other than a few joint use agreements, unavailable most of the time. We have no recreation center for a community of 29,000 people (including the on-campus SDSU students). Our library, with the 6 th largest number of patrons in the City and the fourth lowest median income, has 28 dedicated parking spaces when its size warrants 80.
We are an underserved, under-resourced community and the City wants to increase our planned density by up to 316% with no commitment for remedying our infrastructure deficits. This violation of affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) is indefensible.
The College Area Community Planning Board spent seven years producing its own Community Plan – the 7-Visions Plan. It upzones our community by 137% – more than any of the recent community plan updates. It provides for an increase of 112% in the College Area population. We are very willing to accept this planned growth, which is beyond any recent community plan adopted by the City.
However, the Planning Department, after promising to do so, didn’t even include the 7-Visions Plan in the EIR for the College Area. We are not anti-growth. We support reasonable, measured growth on our transit corridors and nodes, as the 7-Visions Plan makes clear.
Please come to the Planning Commission Hearing on October 9 at 9 a.m. to support the community’s 7 Visions Plan and oppose the City’s excessive upzoning of the College Area. For address and more information, click here.
MEETING LOCATION:
Edric Doringo Hearing Room – “The Edric”
7650 Mission Valley Rd., San Diego, California 92108
Note for those outside the College Area: If the City succeeds in excessively upzoning the College Area, it will continue to do so in future community plan updates, eventually getting to your neighborhood.
It’s really important to attend this meeting. If the city succeeds with these unnecessary, unrepresentative and draconian measures in College Area, there is good reason to think that every area and neighborhood can expect the same treatment. Let’s take back our city neighborhood by neighborhood and let the people have a say in determining the future of their homes and neighborhoods. THIS is what democracy looks like!
As a Chicano, I take great offense at the characterization of the proposed College Community Plan as “discriminatory.” For reference the word discriminatory means: “the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability.” The assumption being that the plan discriminates against people of color or people living in poverty – both of which is incorrect. A simple google search reveals that the College Area is almost 50% white with 41% earning of residents earning $75K to more than $200K a year in salary. The reality is that the College Area’s rating from the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC) reflects the over 40,000 students that attend SDSU seasonally. A second google search reveals that the CTCAC map for UCSD also shows that area as being lowest resourced but no one in their right mind would believe that La Jolla is a lower resourced community. Whether one is for or against additional density in the College Area has merit all on its own. But to claim that the College Area’s proposed plan is discriminatory toward College residents in an effort to justify your position is morally wrong and a flat out lie.
Ricardo Flores is the executive director of LISC San Diego. He lives in a $1.3 million home in that nearly all-white and ‘lower resourced community’ of east Kensington.
Frank, what’s your point?
It’s fairly hypocritical to criticize the College Area presenters and community they represent for attributes you yourself enjoy. Discriminatory doesn’t have to relate solely to “ethnicity, age, sex, or disability”.