OB Rag

Locals are bearing the cost of increasing rates, with many spending more than half of their income on rent

By Sasha Abramsky / San Diego Magazine – The Nation / April 4, 2024

Teresa, a 52-year-old with a solidly middle-class job in the healthcare industry, recently separated from her husband. At the time, the couple lived in Encinitas, in a large home they bought in 2010 for $450,000. When interest rates plummeted, they refinanced at less than 2.5 percent with only 13 years of payments left. Each month, the mortgage, the insurance, and the money they set aside for real estate taxes came to $2,900 between them.

But now, the market has shattered Teresa’s financial calculus. Even after she and her husband sold their house and split the profits, affording to buy again seems impossible.

The Biden administration should be preparing for the worst.

By Juliette Kayyem  / The Atlantic -RSN / April 8, 2024

No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election, because Donald Trump keeps talking as if addressing differences through violence is a normal part of the American political process. The presumptive Republican nominee recently promised forgiveness for the January 6 insurrectionists, posted a video involving a fake image of President Joe Biden hog-tied in the back of a truck, and riled up his supporters by claiming that “if we don’t win this election, I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country.”

La Prensa Offers Time Line to Latest Scandal Affecting Midway Rising and Sports Arena Redevelopment

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa / April 8, 2024

Sometimes it takes time and distance to see more clearly how relationships and interests help explain the actions of others.

We learned that lesson with the 101 Ash building debacle that was exposed by the media more than three years after insiders had worked together to fleece taxpayers and left a $200 million hole in the City’s budget with only a toxic, empty building to show for it.

The city of San Diego unveiled what a new Ocean Beach Pier might look like. These 3 renderings were put together based on feedback from the public on three preliminary design concepts that were first revealed in September.

In Southern California during today’ total solar eclipse, we’ll see a less dramatic blockage of the sun with about 50 percent totality as the moon slips between the sun and Earth.

Here are the eclipse times to keep in mind on Monday (all times our local times):

Lake Cuyamaca this Saturday morning – 930ish.

Of all the decisions that the San Diego City Council has made of late, none have suffered the derision and mockery that the go-ahead to spend $4 to $5 million for a consultant to study how much the city should charge for trash pick-up has.

The mid-March decision by a 7 to 1 vote of the council will pay as much as $4.5 million to determine how much single-family homes in the city should be charged for trash and recycling services. And consultant HDR Engineering will be paid to conduct a study.

Councilmember Raul Campillo cast the lone “no” vote and said then he thought the city would be paying too much. “That’s incredibly high. In my opinion, it looks like it’s too much to get a sense of what customers want.”

Herbert Shore was a founding member of DSA in 1982 and San Diego chapter until he passed in February of 2024

by Mark Sherman and Virginia Franco / Democratic Left / March 29, 2024

In Herb’s own words “I was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, New York to secular, Jewish, working class parents. My parents were not actually Communist Party members, but our lives revolved around the ‘fellow traveling’ milieu that existed until the mid 1950s. So you might say I was born into the socialist movement; though no one in my family knew Karl Marx from Groucho Marx.” Those roots stayed with Herb throughout his life.

By The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board / April 4, 2024

The recent report that the San Diego Association of Governments is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department said agency officials weren’t exactly sure what prompted the federal probe. That is in its own way a testament to the fact that SANDAG — the main regional transportation planning agency with a huge $1.3 billion annual budget — has been so awful on several fronts that any might trigger an inquiry.

The latest scandal certainly qualifies. Evidence shows SANDAG wrongly charged up to 45,000 drivers for a toll road they did not use, and an internal inquiry found agency officials knew of the bogus charges for more than a year without telling the agency’s Board of Directors. If a private business knowingly and persistently kept charging people for services they didn’t use, the indictments would be swift and public condemnation would be overwhelming.

Our friend Roger Showley (PLHS 1966]  just had some ideas of how San Diego could handle the “chase [of] the mirage of a new City Hall” that was published in the U-T Letters to the Editor:

Here’s an off-the-wall, back-to-the-future solution: The city buys back the half of the County Administration Center on Pacific Highway that it sold to the county in the 1960s.

The mayor, City Council and key administrators move in and develop a lot more collaboration with the county on a whole range of duties and projects.

Despite incentives from the City, developers are opting to build units for higher income tenants.

By Steve Price / CBS8 / April 4, 2024

Under the City of San Diego’s bonus Accessory Dwelling Unit program, a developer can build more than one ADU on a property as long as every other unit they build on the lot is set aside for affordable rent. But according to city records, the program is not working as city leaders had hoped.

A perfect example can be seen in the College East neighborhood, where six brand new ADUs just went up on a lot that used to have just one single family home.

On Thursday, April 4, Mayor Todd Gloria announced that he is seeking to turn a large warehouse on Kettner Blvd into a 65,000 square foot homeless shelter. The building — at 3570 Kettner — is at the corner with Vine Street, just next to the I-5 freeway and near Pacific Highway. Gloria says it will be space for 1,000 people, showers, a kitchen, recreational facilities and counseling services.

If his proposal passes the city council, then he plans to turn the controversial H Barracks site into a parking lot for roughly 200 spaces of designated parking to accommodate people living in vehicles.