Category: Economy

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the general San Diego public informed about important Council hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, September 28: Council Closed Session, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Why it matters: Two of three litigation items involve damages associated with lack of city maintenance: a sidewalk trip-and-fall and a leaking water meter. Isn’t it less costly to fix problems than to pay for harm they cause? And these cases date back to 2022, 2023, and 2024. They should have been handled more expeditiously.

By Caitlin Rother / Substack / Sep 22, 2026

Until I found a flyer on my doorstep about a community meeting last night, I was not aware that the city of San Diego was updating the 1998 community plan for my neighborhood of Kensington-Talmadge and several others that are nearby but have completely unrelated interests and socio-economic demographics. Because I covered City Hall for many years when I was still a working investigative reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune, I took my notebook to the meeting.

After we listened to two city planners present the highlights of the community plan update, Neil Winner, chairman of the Kensington-Talmadge Community Planning Group (KTCPG), summed up his group’s very measured response like this: the plan update “is not compatible” with the historic nature or the infrastructure and fire safety needs of our community. He said the KTCPG submitted an alternative plan to the city, but was told that it did not comply, without any discussion or the ability to challenge or resolve that conclusion.

Here’s my view: First, don’t hold back. What the city is proposing is a nightmarish crush of increased density, to fill our cute, historic neighborhood of well-maintained single-family homes in South Kensington with garrish apartment complexes looming six to eight stories, and three to five times the number of people living in that space as they are today. The plan allowing these new complexes, which would all be squished into the few square blocks surrounding my house, is envisioned to triple the community’s overall population and yet developers will not be required to provide any additional parking spaces because they will be built just blocks from a couple of bus routes, some of which are now slated for reduction or elimination.

Just take a minute to process that ridiculous lapse of common sense and logic.

By Angelo Haynes

On Thursday evening, Sept.24, challenger Martha Abraham and incumbent Henry Foster III met at a community forum at the St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Paradise Hills to engage in a moderated discussion on the issues affecting voters in District 4. The forum was organized and coordinated by the Paradise Hills Foundation (PHF), a non-profit organization dedicated to the beautification of the Paradise Hills neighborhood and to improving residents’ quality of life.

Projects for PHF include: neighborhood cleanup and hauling efforts, arts funding (e.g. public murals), improvements to the main street of Paradise Hills (Reo Dr.), garbage cans, signage improvements, and home exterior assistance to elderly or indigent neighbors.

Nichelle A. Wentz, the president of the PHF, was on hand and stated that while many other community concerns affecting District 4, such as policing, Foot note 7 and small business development seemed to garner greater attention, issues affecting the Paradise Hills neighborhood were neglected. The Paradise Hills branch library for instance hasn’t had a capital improvement from the city in over 40 years. For Wentz, this forum was an opportunity to bring attention to her neighborhood and give residents a chance to ask candidates questions before the election.

All public questions participants had at the venue were to be written down and submitted to forum organizers in advance; these questions would then be read to the candidates at the end of the session. PHF organizers stated that this method of questioning was intended to screen for repetitive questions and to organize community concerns into topics to ascertain any patterns or themes for voters in the community.

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 Kate Callen

Andy Kopp wants to make a name for himself, and he has chosen Balboa Park as the place to do it.

Kopp, a former Navy intelligence analyst, is spearheading the “Balboa Park Restoration & Community Improvement Act,” an initiative aimed for the 2028 ballot. If voters approve $1 billion in general obligation bonds, that debt would be paid by an additional tax assessment of between $3.50 to $23 per $100,000 of assessed parcel value.

The proceeds would clear the Park’s deferred maintenance backlog, expand the Museum of Art (cost: $250 million), restore the Old Globe and the Starlight Bowl, renovate the Morley Field Sports Complex, and build a pedestrian bridge from Golden Hill to Inspiration Point.

With his proposal, Kopp has become a player in Balboa Park advocacy circles, where people don’t know much about him but are impressed by his chutzpah. He took the stage at a September 19 Friends of San Diego Architecture Park forum like a prizefighter entering the ring.

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.

SB 79 and Budget Cuts in Letters to Editor

Sometimes the truth is more forthright and evident in the Letters to the Editor than in the news articles — or lack of — themselves.(I always check them out in both the U-T and LA Times daily.)

Here’s two from today, Wednesday, Sept. 23, that speak volumes; they both are responding to the news that San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System may have to make budget cuts that would eliminate over one-third of the current bus routes, force cut backs on another third, and less frequent trolley trains on all four lines. The letters make the case that with drastic, even draconian budget cuts to MTS, the foundational logic for Senate Bill 79 and other pushes for high-density near transit has been lost. Despite this, our politicians are not taking note of these potential heavy-weight changes to our urban landscape.

Let’s say that again, as it’s very important and immediately stands out amid this news.

The grim news of potential major service cuts— including eliminating a third of bus routes and reducing trolley frequency due to projected $100M–$150M deficits by fiscal year 2030—has intensified criticism that building high-density, low-parking housing near transit stops under laws like Senate Bill 79 is losing its foundational logic.

Here’s the first from RC of Sunset Cliffs:

What an eye-opener. After years of the “build, baby build” housing policies of the YIMBYs, Todd Gloria, our City Council and the state Legislature — pushing the building of high-density housing along transit routes — we learn that MTS is going broke and may need to cut back bus routes and trolley service. Yet our politicians keep wanting to build high-density housing with minimal parking requirements.

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.

By Michael Angelo Hernandez

“You can’t go home again” is an expression that comes from the famous 1940 novel of the same name, from American author and social commentator Thomas Wolfe.

At its core, the phrase simply means one cannot return to a previous time or place. Even if one did, they would find both themselves and the world around them have changed since, as change is a fundamental law of the universe.

Back in July, I wrote about some changes coming to Ocean Beach by way of five commercial properties listed up for sale. Since then, there have been some updates to the status of these properties, as well as the addition of more properties being put on the market. Here’s a look at three more properties up for sale in Ocean Beach.

4649 Voltaire Street – The Twin Cypress Apartments

The first property up for sale is the Twin Cypress Apartments at 4649 Voltaire Street. The 18-Unit Apartment building is priced at almost $430,000 per unit, for a grand total of $7.7 million.

Corey Bruins, the former president of the OB Town Council, who drove the long-time favorite OB organization into the drink — forcing it to re-organize itself under a new name and leadership, and then who was charged with embezzling thousands of dollars from the group — has now had his apparent stalling tactics brought to an end, hopefully. Bruins was originally charged more than 18 months ago.

Bruins is charged with nine felonies, including embezzlement as an aggravated white collar crime, grand theft, and six counts of identity theft. He pleaded not-guilty, and was released from custody shortly after his arrest without posting bail.

Bruins’ and his lawyers have repeatedly delayed his preliminary hearing, at which prosecutors will submit evidence and testimony about Bruins’ alleged embezzlement and identity theft.

Most recently, a judge agreed to delay the preliminary hearing after Bruins parted ways with his private-practice attorney, Earl Pott. The public defender’s office then assumed Bruin’s case, and his preliminary hearing was rescheduled for later this year, to give that attorney time to familiarize themselves with the evidence.

Budget Crisis Could Force End to One-Third of Bus Routes and Less Frequent Trolleys

David Garrick at the U-T reported on a scary scenario for San Diego’s mass transit system. Garrick stated “a looming budget crisis” could “eliminate one-third of bus routes,” — and “reduce service on another one-third” and force “San Diego trolley’s four lines [to run] less frequently.”

This is certainly a doomsday outlook as Metropolitan Transit System officials attempt to deal with “annual budget deficits of $100 million to $150 million” but not until fiscal year 2030.

It’s all a “rough draft”, Garrick says. But it could “wipe out 33 of the 95 MTS bus routes….” That’s a lot of bus routes. Garrick must get his info from MTS and he reports the wipe out could include “the end of service to SeaWorld, Cabrillo National Monument, Tierrasanta and parts of Mission Hills.”

There would be notable service reductions for another 29 routes. Like, “Sunday service could be eliminated on a route or the frequency of service could be reduced from once every half an hour to once every hour.”

All four trolley lines – blue, green, orange and copper – would also see reductions in service frequency, MTS officials said. Trains now typically run every 15 minutes on most routes.