Category: Civil Rights

Ground-breaking begins for controversial Rose Creek Village

Shovels overturned some dirt in eastern Pacific Beach. It was the ground-breaking for a controversial 5-story apartment building that will reverberate throughout San Diego’s coastal zones, called the Rose Creek Village at 2662 Garnet Avenue.

It’s controversial because it’s the first development allowed to breach the sacrosanct 30-foot height limit in the coastal zone — and the City and County of San Diego along with the State of California have all conspired to allow this to happen. And all these levels of government are doing this for the grandiose purpose that the building once completed will offer 60 homes earmarked for seniors, families, and individuals earning between 30% and 60% of the area’s median income, along with the dedication of 18 units specifically for homeless veterans.

Now who wouldn’t allow this? Who would oppose this worthy project?

Our simple answer: the tens of thousands of San Diego voters who approved the 30-foot height limit for the coastal zones in 1972.

At one point, about a year ago, San Diego City Councilmember Joe LaCava, who represents the Pacific Beach community, sought to kill the project.

Neighbors for a Better Pacific Beach says the city allows developers to change the face of the community without any public input.

By Dorian Hargrove/ CBS8 / September 18, 2025

The city of San Diego will soon have to defend its ADU program in court.

A Pacific Beach community group, Neighbors for a Better Pacific Beach, filed a newly amended complaint Thursday, Sept. 18, against the city, claiming the law has paved the way for unchecked, unbridled development and environmental harm in San Diego neighborhoods.

Their lawsuit now seeks to overturn the city’s ADU program, limit the number of new units in single-family zones, and require public input for larger ADU projects.
Originally filed on Aug. 15, amended to challenge projects citywide, claims city staff are unlawfully fast-tracking dozens of dense, apartment-style ADU projects without any environmental review or public notice.

By Kate Callen 

Ever see a German shepherd frightened by a barking terrier?

That was the vibe when the organizers of a convention of accessory dwelling unit (ADU) developers were thrown into a panic by a small band of civil protesters.

A September 17 demonstration against predatory ADU builders was organized by Pamela Begeal of Adubonus.org. Her tracking of industry activities found that an
events company called Informa Connect was hosting an ADU builders meeting that day at the San Diego Marriott Marquis.

Begeal identified two speakers on the agenda who have ravaged countless local neighborhoods: Christian Spicer of SDRE Homebuilders and Daniel Shkolnik of
Atlas West Group. And she saw an opportunity to send them a public message.

Some 20 community activists answered her invitation to gather on Harbor Drive outside the hotel. Upon arrival, they encountered a security force of men in dark
suits wearing sunglasses and carrying walkie-talkies.

Demonstrators who strayed from the sidewalk onto a stretch of lawn were told to move. Two people who walked into the hotel lobby were stopped, asked to show
picture IDs, and body screened by electronic wands for weapons.

But the real farce took place inside the convention area when Lisa Becerra and Kim Beck, who had paid $1,599 each to attend the event, were denied admission.

by Cody Dulaney and Charis Johnston / inewsource / September 18, 2025

A single-family homeowner in Pacific Beach recently transformed their garage into a one-bedroom beach house. Four blocks down the road, another property owner built a new unit on top of their garage, complete with a rooftop deck and private hot tub.

Both new homes, known officially as accessory dwelling units, are glowing with five-star praise from out-of-town guests for cleanliness, quiet neighborhood charm and responsive hosts. On the other hand, neighbors tell a different story — one of frequent summertime parties with beer pong, loud music, screaming and shouting late into the wee hours of the morning. In June, San Diego police had to break up what sounded like a rooftop bachelorette party after midnight, city records show.

“Please do something!!!” one neighbor wrote in a string of code enforcement complaints tied to both short-term vacation rentals.

San Diego officials have for years grappled with two competing realities: A worsening housing and affordability crisis coupled with the business interests of property owners in a world-class destination city. The battle over short-term rentals continues even after the city finally decided to regulate the industry with a tiered licensing system two years ago — a decade after short-term platforms like Airbnb exploded in communities across the country.

By Gillian Mohney / SFGate / Sep 15, 2025 

Officials at UC Berkeley have sent over a hundred names of students and staff to federal officials, who are looking into allegations of antisemitism as part of an ongoing federal investigation.

The names of 160 students, faculty and staff were sent to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after the office demanded documents related to complaints of antisemitism and discrimination at the university.

[See below for “Backlash”]

“The UC systemwide Office of the General Counsel (OGC), in compliance with its legal obligations to cooperate with the agency, directed UC Berkeley to provide those documents to the federal agency,” Janet Gilmore, the senior director of strategic communications at UC Berkeley, said in an emailed statement. “Numerous documents were provided over recent months to OCR, including the names of individuals in those reports.”

Gilmore added that the individuals were notified last week if they were named in the documents sent to the federal investigators.

It is very true: top officials in the Trump administration — including Vice-President Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House senior advisor Steven Miller — and Trump himself — are using the horrific killing of Charlie Kirk a week ago as America’s version of the Reichstag fire that broke out in Berlin, Germany in 1933.

What’s this? you may ask. What was the Reichstag fire?

Turning immediately to Wikipedia, we find the following:

The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday, 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. …The Nazis attributed the fire to a group of Communist agitators, used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communists.This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. …

After the Fire Decree was issued, the police – now controlled by Hitler’s Nazi Party – made mass arrests of communists, including all of the communist Reichstag delegates. This severely crippled communist participation in the 5 March elections. After the 5 March elections, the absence of the communists allowed the Nazi Party to expand their plurality in the Reichstag, greatly assisting the Nazi seizure of total power. Wikipedia

Want to protest against the 2 biggest developers of huge ADU backyard apartment complexes in our City — Mr. Christian Spicer — “King of San Diego’s ADU Mega projects — and Mr. Daniel Skholnik?

Want to give Mr. Gary Geiler of the City’s Development Services Department or the San Diego Housing Commission a piece of your mind?

How about the state branch of the national group YIMBY’s or the Casita Coalition?

These are just a few of the speakers at one of the BIGGEST ADU CONVENTIONS in our City.

And here is your chance to do it in STYLE.

Pam has chartered what is called a LIMO BUS to take the first 50 people who sign up at this email: ADUBonus@gmail.com

Here are the details:

By Jan Hintzman / Special to the OB Rag

In our community’s relentless nine-year struggle to restore access to the College-Rolando Branch Library, we are no stranger to city two-facedness. Our case was strong. When opportunities arose, the City needed to recover necessary library parking. The opportunities arose, but the city did not rise to help us!

The City had built generous library parking on part of the church property next door. In the deal, the City made a formal commitment to our community to purchase that property for a park, should it come up for sale, given that our older communities were built without public amenities.

The library was our jewel, the only major city investment on the horizon. And it came with promises for more. But instead of more, we got less. The property was in fact offered for sale to the City, and the City refused to purchase it.

Thus, the library lost its main driveway and most of its parking….and an astute investor scooped up the opportunity.  His plan was to convert the property, having a land use potential of Low/Medium Residential and General Commercial with Residential, into a profitable student housing project.  And ultimately he did, with the cooperation of the city and at the expense of the library.

The following is a letter to the editors of San Diego Union-Tribune by OBcean Steve Pond, published Sunday, September 14.

La Jolla library hours are a telling comment on City Hall

Re “La Jolla Library maintains Monday hours with a little help from its Friends” (Sept 4) [see below]: The wealthy community members of the would-be “city of La Jolla” stepped up and donated enough money to keep their community library open on Mondays.

That seems to be OK with the San Diego City Council, but what about the rest of us? If the city had some kind of fair rules and guidelines, the La Jolla donors would have to donate the funds to the city of San Diego to be placed into a city library hind where donations were collected for all nine council districts.

This seems to be a clear case of the “haves” and “have nots.”

— Steve Pond, Ocean Beach

Here’s the original SDU-T article, pubished in their La Jolla Light:

Email Letter to Mayor and San Diego City Council

By Lisa Mortensen

Good morning Councilmembers:

I wanted to congratulate you, Councilmember Moreno, for pushing forward legislation through the council to launch a $5 million fund to buy apartment complexes in order to preserve existing affordable structures.  While this is a good start, I want to pull back the lens and take a big picture view of some pitfalls that could hamstring your truly earnest efforts.

First off, will the city do its due-diligence when considering making an investment like this?  Because let’s face it, the city’s track record in buying real estate has been extremely costly and not profitable.  If the city continues their approach to real estate investing, it would be doubtful that $5 million dollars would go very far and we hope that the city will spare San Diegans any further taxpayer bailout.

This good intention of yours, Ms. Moreno, will be blindsided by the mayor’s upcoming push to pass the Preservation and Progress program that actually will eliminate any protections for properties more than 45 years old, properties designated as historical, and/or certified as Mills Act.

By Ben Christopher / CalMatters Times of San Diego / Sept. 13, 2025

California lawmakers just laid the groundwork for a highly targeted building boom.

Senate Bill 79, authored by San Francisco Democrat Sen. Scott Wiener, would “upzone” neighborhoods immediately surrounding train, light rail and subway stations in many of the state’s most populous metro areas. That means apartment developers will be able to construct residential buildings — some as tall as 75 feet — regardless of what local zoning maps, elected officials or density-averse neighbors say.

In a legislative year teeming with controversial housing bills designed to kick-start more construction in California, SB 79 has been among the most controversial. Because it would override the planning decisions of local governments, the bill had to overcome opposition from a host of city governments and their defenders in the Legislature, while fracturing the Capitol’s reigning Democratic Party over questions of affordability, labor standards and who ultimately has the final say over what gets built where.

The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom – supporters expect he will sign it.