Help Make Sure Gloria’s “Homes for All of Us” Includes “All of Us”
By Paul Krueger
The Mayor’s Planning Department is hosting a June 9 “community input” meeting on his “Homes for All of Us” initiative on Tuesday, June 9, at 5:30 p.m. at the Malcolm X Library at 5148 Market Street in Valencia Park.
If you care about the impact of new housing development on your community, please plan on attending. And be prepared to cut through the bureaucratic spin by asking pointed questions.
Gloria says Homes for All of Us “…will create clear pathways to build townhomes, duplexes, and small-scale multiple homes … and provide more homeownership opportunities.”
Such a program would be a positive step towards providing much-needed for-sale housing, as opposed to the high-rise, cookie-cutter, $2,750/month studio and one-bedroom apartments (with no parking) that are blighting our neighborhoods.
But there’s a very real danger that this potentially valuable initiative will morph into yet another program that serves developer and investor interests by ignoring community input, rejecting reasonable design standards, refusing to invest in needed infrastructure and parking, and producing more “stack-and-pack” apartments that provide no path to home or condo ownership.
Our city’s disastrous experiment with the so-called “Bonus ADU” Program shows us how nice-sounding initiatives can mask destructive land-use policies that can take years of community opposition to undo.
The Bonus ADU initiative was crafted by the building industry, which was given free rein by two compliant mayors and their subservient planning department. The process was devoid of public input, and the City Council approved the program without any real understanding of its pitfalls.
A city-wide grass-roots campaign eventually persuaded the council to restrict ADU density. But too many residents in our lower and middle-income neighborhoods will forever endure the legacy of this terrible program: expensive multi-unit backyard apartment buildings that were poorly constructed and have no on-site parking. The only people who have benefited from them are the speculators who built them.
How awful are these Bonus ADUs? Check out the gallery of “winners” of the Rag’s 2024 “Worst ADU in San Diego” contest.
We can and we must prevent another land-use fiasco by insisting that the Mayor and his planning department actually listen to residents in the neighborhoods where these “Homes For All of Us” will be built.
We must provide a fact-based counterbalance to the special interests who would exploit this new program for their exclusive financial benefit. We must challenge a Mayor who has been laser-focused on running up the numbers of permits issued, a politician who does not care about the expense and the scale of new units as long as their builders benefit.
Space is limited, so you must register in advance.
The review and approval process for “Homes for All of Us” will take at least six months. If there’s no space available at the June 9 meeting, there will be other opportunities to learn about the proposal and provide input.
Neighbors For A Better San Diego led the fight to reform the Bonus ADU program. We will be working hard to assure that “Homes For All of Us” benefits all San Diegans, not just the development industry and the Mayor and his political ambitions.
You can keep track of this important issue by joining our mailing list.
Good for NFABSD!!! He needs to hear the real truth, to his “affordable” housing that’s only affordable to those who make what he does. He needs to know condensing the bike lanes between two tall buildings, increases the poor air quality, with cars idling, so what good is his Climate Action Plan Dept. doing for the City of SD? He and the uninformed City Council needs to learn how communicate with the homeless their their communities, since so much money has been given to them and nothing improves. someone needs to explain to them what the individual groups need. They’re not a one size fits all. SD NEEDS more cops, they’re retiring rapidly. They’re working lots of OT to provide coverage then the community has fits because they’re getting paid to work OT and sometimes mandated to do so. Almost any community activity needs to have Uniformed cops at the event, and they get paid OT, so do the community events pay for police security? If not…. get on it Mayor. I hope people ask DIRECT questions and expect and keep re-asking the same question until he gives a direct answer. No word salads.