Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
The first one is on Monday, September 28 at the Conference Center at Liberty Station, 2600 Laning Road, 92106. It’s hosted by the Point Loma Association and the League of Women Voters of San Diego.
And here’s the second one on Thursday, October 1, at the Point Loma Library. This one is hosted by the Peninsula Community Planning Board.
by Cody Dulaney / inewsource / September 23, 2026
Jay Goldberg swears he’s a capitalist.
It’s a Thursday afternoon and the 42-year-old Hillcrest homeowner is seated at his kitchen counter, scrolling through lines of code he wrote to analyze multiple datasets on his laptop. He’s a Google engineer by trade, but his workday is over, and now he’s hunting through the local real estate market.
His target? Properties that he calls “apartment hotels” — or entire complexes that have been converted from long-term housing to short-term rentals.
He’s a capitalist, he says, but he’s a capitalist with guardrails, driven by one guiding principle: What’s good for one person shouldn’t come at everyone else’s expense. And he’s become convinced that’s exactly what’s happening in San Diego.
Earlier this year, inewsource revealed a glaring loophole in a San Diego law that allows property owners to obtain a short-term rental license even after carrying out an illegal eviction. It works like this: Investors buy up multi-family properties, clear out the long-term tenants with buyouts or no-fault evictions, and post the units on short-term platforms, such as Airbnb.
Goldberg has spent years working to identify these properties.
He gathers data from short-term rental platforms. He combs through active licenses and property records. And when he thinks he’s identified an apartment hotel, or really any short-term rental violation, he turns over what he finds to San Diego officials.
Then he waits.
by David Alvarez, Brian Jones and Darshana Patel / Times of San Diego / Sept. 17, 2026
The area known currently as the closed San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park belongs to the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. That is the first thing to understand about Assembly Bill 2770, a bill we authored which is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.
It is not a new idea, but rather the fourth attempt by the tribe, spread across nearly two centuries, to secure what was already theirs.
The San Pasqual people have lived in the valley northeast of San Diego for generations, long before any government drew a line around it. In 1835, the Mexican governor of California formally recognized that fact, establishing San Pasqual as a civil pueblo: a self-governing industrious community with unique skills.
When a San Diego landowner named Bonifacio Lopez tried to take the valley in 1845, he dismissed its residents as “lazy and disreputable.” Yet the Mexican government refused his request.
The tribe’s second attempt to secure its land came after the Mexican-American War ended in 1848. The tribe’s leader, Panto Duro, presented American officials with the documents from Mexico confirming the San Pasqual people’s title to the valley, and in 1852 he signed a treaty guaranteeing the land under American authority. Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate rejected that treaty under pressure from Gold Rush settlers.
From Neighbors for a Better San Diego
We Asked.
The City Refused.
Now We’re Suing.
San Diegans deserve to know who the Mayor’s secret housing advisors are.
Earlier this year, we asked a simple question:
Who is helping shape the housing and density policies that could dramatically change San Diego’s neighborhoods?
Trump Approval on Handling the Economy at 26%
A total of 29% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 68% say they disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. In August, 30% of Americans approved of the way Trump was handling his job and 66% disapproved.
In September 2018, 37% approved of the way Trump was handling his job as president and 59% disapproved.
When it comes to Trump’s handling of the economy, 26% of Americans approve and 71% disapprove. In August, 28% of Americans approved of the way Trump was handling the economy and 69% disapproved.
In September 2018, 39% approved of the way Trump was handling the economy and 55% disapproved.
Speaker Mike Johnson could block the seating of victorious Democrats in the House of Representatives on January 3.By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout / September 23, 2026
After the 2020 presidential election that resulted in a clear victory for Joe Biden, Donald Trump tried mightily to overturn the outcome. He has persistently insisted to this day that he won and Biden lost. On January 6, 2021, Trump ordered then-Vice President Mike Pence to violate his constitutional duty to certify the duly elected electors before the joint session of Congress by counting only some of the electoral votes from certain states and returning the rest to state legislatures.
But Pence refused to obey Trump — and, in response, MAGA fanatics threatened him with execution by hanging. Court after court rejected Trump’s entreaties to reverse the results of the election.
Now it appears that Team Trump may be poised to undertake a similar tactic to prevent Democrats who prevail in the midterm elections from being seated in the House of Representatives.
In an explosive op-ed in The New Republic, former Judge Michael Luttig, a noted conservative, argues that the “catastrophic end [of U.S. democracy] could well come on January 3, 2027, when Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican Party.”
From CNN / Sept. 24, 2026
CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed an emergency request for a hearing Thursday morning after reporters were refused access to the White House despite a court order.
Federal Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate CNN, MS NOW and Politico’s access to the White House after they were banned from the premises by President Donald Trump.
In his ruling, Kelly found the revocation of reporters’ press badges was done without “constitutionally adequate due process.”
The ruling — which comes just hours before Trump is set to welcome Chinese leader Xi Jinping — means journalists should now be able to return to work at the White House complex, but some staffers from all three outlets were refused entry.
CNN reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist were denied access to the White House grounds despite multiple attempts, including one after 9:00 a.m. One CNN producer was able to enter the White House using their pass after 6:00 a.m. It was not immediately clear why the person had been able to access the building.
By Marty Graham / Special to the OB Rag
Our worst fear about the city trash fee being placed on the tax bill came true this week.
The city bungled the numbers provided to the county, which then billed the mostly higher fees (though a small number were lower) on the county property tax bill – and my mortgage company got the numbers.
Councilmembers Joe LaCava and Sean Elo Rivera fought the public and insisted on putting this service fee on the tax bill issued by the county tax collector – while saying it’s not a tax – at the June 24th, 2025, city council meeting. The council voted 7-2 in favor with only council members Henry Foster and Raul Campillo voting no to tax roll billing.
Those councilmembers approved this mess – pushed by LaCava and Elo Rivera, despite 46,000 protest votes and dozens of written and spoken comments. Tax roll billing would save money, they said, agreeing to pay the county and setting us up for unpaid tax liens if we don’t pay in full.
So we have this error in front of us now. We knew this would happen, we just didn’t think it would be as widespread – with current estimates of 87,000 wrong bills.
By Debbie L. Sklar / Special for the OB Rag
There was a time when Mission Valley was measured in acres of farmland rather than shopping centers, freeways and stadiums.
Along the San Diego River, fields stretched across the valley, cattle grazed and family farms produced vegetables for San Diego markets. Dairies became an important part of that landscape, but they were only one piece of a much larger agricultural community.
Before World War II and the wave of urban development that followed, much of Mission Valley was farmland. Farmers of different cultural backgrounds operated family businesses, raising crops and livestock on land that eventually would become one of San Diego’s busiest commercial areas.
A Valley of Family Farms
The city of San Diego’s historic research identifies dozens of agricultural and dairy operations that once occupied the valley, including the Ferraris, Allens, Guglielmettis, Jepsons, Obres, Gibsons, McDermotts, McCreadys and others. The same historical record identifies vegetable gardens and nurseries, showing how varied the valley’s agricultural economy was.
By Laura Henson
As San Diego considers the future of Mid-City through its Community Plan Update, we should ask a fundamental question: What kinds of neighborhoods does a healthy city need?
Mid-City already offers an extraordinary range of housing choices—from apartments, condominiums and duplexes to small cottages, historic neighborhoods and single-family homes. Its underdeveloped commercial corridors also offer significant opportunities for additional housing. The lack of development on the transit corridors is a deficiency that needs to be corrected. All this diversity should be considered an asset, not a planning problem that needs to be corrected.
Cities need apartments. They need condominiums, townhomes, affordable housing, senior housing and homes near transit. But healthy cities also need something increasingly dismissed in today’s housing debate: stable single-family neighborhoods.
Housing is not simply a matter of how many units can be placed on an acre of land. It is also about how people live, and how their housing needs change at different stages of life.
Lawsuit Seeks Release of Details on City of San Diego Housing InitiativeBy Paul Krueger
A lawsuit filed by advocates for sensible planning seeks the immediate release of important information about Mayor Todd Gloria’s “Neighborhood Homes for All of Us” initiative.
For more than a year, El Cerrito resident Danna Givot has asked the City Planning Department to disclose membership information about the initiative’s “Technical Working Group.”
Input from that “Working Group” will have a significant impact on proposed changes to zoning, density, and design prototypes that would be imposed on San Diego’s neighborhoods under the mayor’s controversial land-use program.
The City repeatedly ignored Givot’s informal requests for that public information, and has now failed to comply with her formal requests for disclosure under the California Public Records Act.
SOHO Newsletter / Sept-Oct. 2026
San Diego’s historic Wonder Bread Building at 171 14th Street in downtown is to be transformed by a winning new recipe into a 4,000-capacity music venue expected to open in 2028. Live Nation Entertainment’s project will adaptively reuse the 1924 red-brick landmark, bringing new life and revenue to one of the area’s distinctive industrial buildings.
In 2016, SOHO named the Wonder Bread Building to our Most Endangered List, when plans for a new stadium threatened its future. At the time, SOHO warned against both demolition and “facadectomy,” which would preserve only a thin historic exterior while sacrificing the historic building itself. Nearly a decade later, the building’s survival makes possible an exciting, forward-thinking adaptive reuse project.
SOHO Executive Director Bruce Coons, who met with the project team, welcomed their approach to the landmark, which was designed by San Diego master architect Eugene Hoffman. Coons routinely works with developers, owners, architects, and designers who bring projects to SOHO, helping them work through any issues, explore solutions, and identify the highest preservation practices and standards.
Say Keep it goin' to the OB Rag
with your donation today!
Recent Comments