Heartbreak in Jamacha: ADU Investors Outbidding Families

By Kate Callen

When the house next door went up for sale, the Hedgecocks were close to realizing their dream of buying a neighborhood home for their daughter and her family.

Instead, they will soon be living next to a nightmare.

The property at 1441 Woodrow Avenue in Jamacha is now slated for a 12-unit Bonus ADU building with only one on-site parking space on a street where curbs already fill up. The closest transit stop, the Massachusetts Avenue Station, is a half-mile walk that includes crossing busy Lemon Grove Avenue.

So far, this is like scores of other Bonus ADU neighborhood encroachments: A speculator parachutes into a quiet residential street, outbids individuals looking to purchase a family home, and crams in a gigantic complex that will reap huge profits.

But the 1441 Woodrow project involves a mystery: How and when did Godavari LLC swoop in to grab the probate property from another buyer with more modest building plans? And why can’t that buyer talk about the transaction?

Holly Hedgecock, who has lived next door for 28 years, recalled how her elderly neighbor let the property languish.

“It went into probate,” said Hedgecock. “It was a big mess. We tried to buy it, and the owner accepted our offer. But probate wouldn’t let the owner sell it to us.

“Then it went up for sale, and it was snatched up immediately by a young investor in Encinitas. He was so excited. He loved our neighborhood. He was going to restore the front home and put an ADU in the back.”

Months went by with no activity. “I contacted him and said, ‘How come you haven’t started?’ and he said, ‘I can’t talk about it. I’m super unhappy about what happened.’

“Then I reached out to the original owner and said, ‘What have you done?’ She said she was devastated. She thought it was going to turn into a single-family home.”

There are two possible explanations for this outcome. Godavari somehow coerced the young investor into selling the property, or Godavari offered him more money than he could turn down. Either way, it sounds like he was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

This is the infill plague the Bonus ADU program has brought to communities across San Diego: Cutthroat developers wield money like a cudgel so they can build monstrous ADU complexes that disfigure neighborhoods then slither away with a pile of money.

Dorene Dias Pesta, Chair of the Jamacha Neighborhood Council, is documenting every aspect of the project that seems in violation of city law, like the fact that the property backs onto a hazardous downward slope.

Dias Pesta sees the City’s approval of the project as part of the longstanding civic negligence that has beleaguered the Jamacha community.

“We’ve had traffic problems on this street that were identified in our 1987 community plan that have never been addressed,” she said. “And now the City is going to put 13 homes on this property.”

She also questions the City’s commitment to requiring affordable Bonus ADU units. The applicant for the 1441 Woodrow project is Pro Cal Permitting, which shares the same office at 3952 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard as property owner Godavari.

Dias Pesta has seen the application. “On every affordable housing question,” she said, “they wrote ‘No.’ For inclusionary housing, they wrote ‘No.’ And they didn’t put down a description of how they will address affordable housing.”

Like too many other San Diego families, the Hedgecocks have become collateral damage with no recourse and no hope.

“My husband and I are devastated,” said Hedgecock. “We’re just paying off our house. We don’t know how we can live next to that in our retirement. We’re not sure what to do. It’s going to depreciate our property so significantly. Agents have told us we should try to sell before they get started. But we don’t want to sell our home.”

A question for Kevin Faulconer, Todd Gloria, and every other person who championed the Bonus ADU program: Do you feel even a shred of sympathy for the Hedgecock family? Or do you have a block of ice for a heart?