OB Rag

By Trudy Grundland

As our mayor and as a City Council Member, Todd Gloria has pushed Faulconer’s Complete Communities, San Diego’s response to SB 375, a 2008 state law that encourages transit oriented development.

The law, set up to accelerate construction timelines by streamlining environmental approvals, allows developers to skip the expensive and time-consuming analysis usually required under the California Environmental Quality Act. Developers save millions because they’re only required to conduct a cursory CEQA review of buildings within a half-mile of transit, using water efficiently, not impacting historical structures, not reducing affordable housing and many others.

Despite being a steward of America’s Finest City, Todd Gloria has fast-tracked the construction of hi-rise tiny studio apartments and ADUs, 500 sqft each, maximum 1-2 persons. But are they affordable? In 2023 86.4% of all new housing,10,300 units was “moderate”, i.e. full-market rate (photo).

Families in need of housing?

Sorry. Very low, and low income individuals need housing? Sorry. But if you can afford $2,500-$3,000/month, you can live near hipster stores, restaurants and bars!

By Laura Henson

The YIMBY movement, mostly associated with the Democratic Party, stands for “Yes In My Back Yard,” even though it isn’t associated with grassroots efforts of residents trying to bring housing, businesses, and other development to their communities.

YIMBYism has been very influential within the California Democratic Party and in San Diego under Todd Gloria’s leadership. It has been backed by special interest groups like the Building Industry Association and the tech industry.

According to a study published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review entitled, The Perils of Land Use Deregulation, YIMBYs support deregulation of the building industry, which decreases affordability and does nothing for racial equity. Simply stated, if you don’t have affordability, you can’t have equity.

By San Diego’s own numbers, we don’t have a shortage of total housing units, we have a shortage of affordable housing.

Resistance among Point Loma residents to a planned 4-story, 56-unit apartment complex coming to Rosecrans and Talbot is growing dramatically.

This resistance was evidenced Tuesday night, October 29, when 300 residents packed a town hall meeting on the project at the S.E.S. Portuguese Hall in Roseville. Organized by members of the Peninsula Community Planning Board, a panel of speakers updated the crowd on the project and efforts to obtain more information about the building.

No representatives of city or of the developer were present. In fact, neither the city nor the developer have released pertinent documents on the project and had ignored its obligations to the local volunteer planning board.

Ever since news of the project was broken by the Rag on October 21, anger within the community has grown at the delaying tactics undertaken by the city. The project had come up at the Oct. 17 meeting of the Peninsula Community Planning Board — which is what Rag writer Geoff Page was reporting on — and more and more residents became infuriated with the city and the complex.

By Kate Callen

For most San Diegans, yesterday’s Halloween Fairmount Fire will be a one-day news story, quickly forgotten in the run-up to a momentous election.

But the people who lived through hours of terror – residents evacuated from their homes, motorists stuck for hours in stalled traffic – will long remember two things.
The College Area and Talmadge communities were lucky. But luck can run out.

Ask Southcrest residents who are still rebuilding nine months after the catastrophic January floods. Like the Fairmount fire, the Southcrest flooding was not a natural disaster. It was the direct result of City Hall’s inaction in the face of repeated warnings by surrounding communities.

People in Southcrest had urged the City to clear out Chollas Creek and the stormwater system. But storm drain maintenance funds had run low; some had been diverted to buy out the 101 Ash Street lease. So drains kept backing up. Then torrential rains fell. Neighborhoods flooded. And now the City is facing lawsuits for hundreds of millions in damages filed by more than 1,000 plaintiffs.

“It’s Going to Happen Again”

Terry Hoskins, a candidate for the City Council District 9 seat, was delivering campaign signs in Kensington yesterday afternoon when he saw a large plume of fresh smoke.

As we prepare ourselves for efforts at destabilizing our free and democratic election, we need to stay vigilant.

Here’s two recent examples of attempts at disruption at polling sites in other parts of the country.

Florida Teen Arrested for Threatening Democratic Voters With Machete

A Florida teenager has been arrested after he “brandished a machete in an aggressive, threatening posture over his head” at two women Tuesday [Oct. 29] outside an early voting location near Jacksonville, police said.

Caleb James Williams, 18, joined by seven juveniles, approached sign wavers and antagonized the “opposing political side,” Neptune Beach Police Chief Michael Key Jr. said. …  The Duval County Democratic Party identified the sign wavers as supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Yahoo News CNN

Before Election Day has even arrived, the “Stop the Steal” movement has reemerged in force, with some of the same activists who tried to overturn former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss outlining a step-by-step guide to undermine the results if he falls short again.

For months, those activists – who have been priming Trump supporters to believe the only way the former president can lose in 2024 is through fraud – have laid out proposals to thwart a potential Kamala Harris victory. Their plans include challenging results in court, pressuring lawmakers to block election certification, and encouraging protests – culminating on January 6, 2025, the day Congress will once again certify the results.

“I have a plan and strategy,” Ivan Raiklin, a former Green Beret and political operative who has close ties to associates of Trump, told a group of Pennsylvania activists earlier this month. “And then January 6th is going to be pretty fun.”

By Sean Wilentz / Rolling Stone – RSN / November 1, 2024

A leading historian looks back at Philip Roth’s novel and how it perfectly predicts the rise of Trump and his willing collaborators

Early in the 2016 campaign, months before Donald Trump won his first presidential nomination, I wrote my friend Philip Roth an email about his novel, The Plot Against America, which had appeared twelve years earlier. The book was Roth’s fanciful but chilling fiction about a fascist takeover of the presidency in 1940 by the pilot and American hero Charles A. Lindbergh. I was curious about the possible connection between the novel and Trump’s all too factual political emergence.

Over the years, several pundits had claimed that Plot was really Roth’s roman-a-clèf commentary on the George W. Bush administration. Having myself written critically of Bush (including a piece here in Rolling Stone in 2006 asking if he was the worst U.S. president in history), and having talked politics often with Roth, I knew that he agreed with me that Bush, with all of his flaws, was no fascist or fascist sympathizer, as Lindbergh was. Roth went on to say as much, repeatedly, in interviews and public appearances. But what did he make of Trump?

By Mat Wahlstrom

We’re being told that the election this Tuesday is most consequential of our lives, possibly even in U.S. history since 1860. And what’s at stake is “saving democracy” from the cancer of fascism.

It’s maddening trying to understand how we got here, that the entire country appears split down the middle over whether to continue “the last great experiment.” But the warning signs have been evident for a long time, and sadly the Democrats have failed to pay attention.

As recently as July, Pew Research found that fully 72% of the population believes the United States is no longer a good example of democracy. And that less than a quarter of those who identify as Democrats think it still is.

By Robert Vardon /Point Loma – OB Monthly San Diego Union-Tribune / October 24, 2024

The city of San Diego is soliciting operators to continue its “safe parking” program for homeless people who live in their vehicles and to expand it to a new lot planned for the former H Barracks site across the boat channel from Point Loma’s Liberty Station.

The request for proposals, or RFP, announced Oct. 23 asks prospective operators to respond with bids by Monday, Nov. 25. The bid website lists 22 prospective bidders.

The San Diego safe parking program currently has four locations on city-owned lots with a total capacity of about 220 vehicles. They are designated for people living out of their vehicles to park overnight, with services available to help them move toward permanent housing.