By Robert Campbell
On Tuesday, July 7th, we saw something spectacular. Councilmember Henry Foster III and County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe’s defense of the Emerald Hills “Radio Towers” development which relied heavily on a well-substantiated historical truth: that large lot zoning was historically used as an exclusionary tool to keep minorities out of wealthy, white neighborhoods. But applying that historical framework to the Radio Towers project is a profound misdirection.
Their impassioned argument has left the community deeply puzzled, not because the history is wrong, but because the application of it in this instance is completely inverted.
Selective Application of Housing Density
The claim that dismantling large-lot restrictions is an act of racial and economic equity will leave you scratching your head when looking at a map of San Diego. The policy enacted here, Footnote 7, was a direct shot at Emerald Hills and Encanto, historically minority-majority neighborhoods. If the goal truly were to use smaller lot sizes to desegregate and dismantle historical exclusion, that policy would be aggressively targeted at the predominantly white, high-resource neighborhoods that actually practiced that exclusion. Instead, those wealthy neighborhoods in San Diego remain entirely intact and protected with their large lots, while two minority-majority neighborhoods are now forced to absorb density and lose their remaining open space to this density that white neighborhoods are not required to do.
The Divide in Public Testimony
A look at who actually stood at the microphone on July 7 reveals a stark divide between outside special interests and local residents:
In Support of the Project: The voices pushing for approval were not a grassroots groundswell of local families seeking homes. They were individuals with direct connections to the developer or institutional pro-density groups, including board members from the San Diego YIMBY Democrats.
In Opposition: The voices fighting to protect the space were local community members speaking passionately about Environmental Justice (EJ).
Emerald Hills residents outlined clear, documented EJ concerns regarding air quality, infrastructure deficits, and the loss of the neighborhood’s sparse natural canopies. Yet, both Foster and Montgomery Steppe along with 7 of the remaining council members completely ignored these Environmental Justice arguments during the hearing, offering no explanation or counter-analysis to the community’s concerns.
Footnote 7 and the Reality of the “Settlement”
To add salt to a fresh wound, Councilmember Foster actively directed the City Attorney to ensure that the ongoing legal challenges regarding Footnote 7 were buried within this project’s approval. Foster made a point to highlight that the local planning group had settled its lawsuit with the City, presenting it as a validation that Footnote 7 was legal.
What he failed to mention, and what the community knows all too well, is the true reason for that settlement: a severe lack of funds to continue. Pitting a volunteer, low resource local community planning group against the unlimited legal reserves of the City of San Diego is not a fair fight, and a settlement forced by financial exhaustion should never be weaponized as proof of community consensus but it was on Tuesday, our own council member against his own community.
Where is the Reform for Wealthy, Whiter Neighborhoods?
If Councilmember Foster and Supervisor Montgomery Steppe along with most of the rest of the council are genuinely moved by the historical injustice of exclusionary zoning, their legislative record should reflect a citywide campaign. Yet, no policy has emerged from either office targeting the large lot sizes in San Diego’s wealthiest, predominantly white neighborhoods that have RS-1-2 zoning. If large-lot restrictions are an equity barrier, why have they been left completely intact in the coastal and northern pockets of the city?
Instead of crafting a comprehensive, citywide reform to open high-resource areas to working-class families, they crafted a hyper-local policy that uniquely targets a minority-majority neighborhood, historically redlined neighborhoods, forcing them to bear the burden of high-density development, then trying to shame us for advocating for the same zoning white neighborhoods have in San Diego?
The Mirage of “Generational Wealth” for District 4 Families
Another glaring flaw in the council’s justification of this project was the total absence of a mechanism to deliver on its core promise. The project, as approved, carries no legal requirement to provide homeownership opportunities to existing local community members. The market will dictate who buys these homes, not the council’s impassioned speeches.
The harsh economic reality of San Diego’s housing market exposes the fantasy of this “equity” argument:
- The median household income in the 92114 ZIP code sits at $97,794.
- The current median price for a single-family market-rate home in San Diego has climbed to $1,074,000.
A household earning the neighborhood average cannot qualify for a million-dollar mortgage. Because there are no local preference protections, there is a high likelihood that wealthier buyers from outside the area will purchase these new properties. Built on the high ground of the Radio Towers site, this development sets up a painful visual dynamic of a wealthier, newly arrived demographic literally looking down upon the existing minority-majority community that has lived there for decades who had fought for a park and healthier environment. Using the rhetoric of wealth building for marginalized families to approve a project that will likely be well outside their budget and price them out isn’t equity, it’s called gentrification.
If that was not weird enough, around 81% of the community is already single family homes, it’s not like we have a shortage of them in our area. Many of our homes have been bought by investors who saw opportunity to capitalize on Bonus ADUs.
A Unified Front for Environmental Justice, Completely Ignored
The dismissive handling of Environmental Justice (EJ) concerns by Councilmember Foster, Supervisor Montgomery Steppe and the rest of the council becomes even more egregious when looking at the depth of the coalition they chose to ignore. The appeal against this project was not a fringe, localized complaint. It was a massive, unified front of local grassroots organizers, regional environmental advocates, and official city-sanctioned bodies, including:
- The Hold The Hill Initiative and Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek, groups deeply rooted in the local neighborhood’s watershed and environmental health.
- The Chollas Valley Community Planning Group and
- the city-wide San Diego Community Planners Committee, representing the democratically elected voices of neighborhood planning.
- The San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action, a major regional political group advocating for climate equity.
Every single one of these organizations brought forward critical arguments regarding the loss of rare urban open space, degraded air quality, heat island effects, and the systemic environmental deficits already plaguing our District 4 communities. For Steppe and the rest of the council to sit silent and offer absolutely no explanation, counter-analysis, or engagement with this wall of testimony is a profound betrayal of the very Environmental Justice laws they are sworn to uphold.Conclusion
True equity is not achieved by using the language of the Civil Rights movement to override the explicit Environmental Justice demands of historically marginalized neighborhoods today. By continuing to shield wealthy white neighborhoods from density while forcing it onto Emerald Hills and Encanto while dismissively burying valid legal and environmental concerns, the City Council did not dismantle a historical wrong, history will prove that they simply repeated it. It’s one of the oldest phrases in the books, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Where is the policy to remove large lot zoning from historically white, wealthy neighborhoods? Where is Environmental Justice? I’ll continue waiting.
