By 2025, the U.S. Navy will add 20 more warships and 15,000 sailors — plus their families — to a San Diego region already reeling from high home prices and rents, forcing the community to work together to find solutions, the “Navy Mayor” said Wednesday.

Speaking before the San Diego Military Advisory Council’s monthly breakfast session at Naval Base Point Loma, Rear Adm. Yancy “Lurch” Lindsey, the commander of Navy Region Southwest, urged political, economic and uniformed leaders to forge creative solutions to accommodate a rise in military staffing as defense strategists pivot their focus to the Pacific Rim.

“There are a lot of challenges that come with that, and that’s only part of the growth,” Lindsey said.

The number of vessels and sailors arriving here could grow even higher. Currently the Navy homeports 52 ships in San Diego and Coronado. Lindsey’s projections are based on previous plans to build a 305-ship Navy. Both President Donald Trump and lawmakers have pushed for a 350-ship force to be deployed over the next three decades.


“San Diego doesn’t have a lot of affordable housing,” he said. “So how do I dump 15,000 more sailors in this area and expect them to figure it out? I can’t. We’re doing a lot of figuring out. A lot of planning, looking for creative, innovative ideas to get at this challenge we have, which is: how do we accommodate this growth and how do we minimize the impact on the community we live in?”

In early March, an analysis by MarketPointe Realty Advisors found that the average monthly rent in San Diego County had risen to $1,748, 8 percent above the 2016 price.

The median home price reached $543,500 in June, a nearly 10 percent increase over the 2016 price tag, according to Irvine-based CoreLogic. It was the third record-breaking month in a row.

In a 2015 study, the Legislative Analyst’s Office pointed to a statewide problem with escalating rents and mortgages. The average California home sold for $440,000, about 2 ½ times the national average, and monthly rent went for about $1,240 — 50 percent higher than the rest of the country, the nonpartisan analysis wing of the California legislature determined.


The analyst’s office blamed community opposition to new housing, environmental regulations, limited land available for development and the lack of incentives for local governments to greenlight housing as the biggest hurdles to slashing property prices.

Headquartered near the Broadway Pier, Lindsey’s command owns a lot of property. It covers 1.4 million acres in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Because his staff handles housing, security, port services and medical care for retirees, 83,000 active-duty sailors and their families, Lindsey is nicknamed the “Navy Mayor.”

The influx of thousands of sailors to San Diego isn’t his hizzoner’s only headache. Housing costs are poised to rise at Nevada’s Naval Air Station Fallon, one of the globe’s top air-to-air training ranges. The Navy has pointed to the construction of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1, a lithium-ion battery maker, for pushing up property prices in rural stretches east of Reno.


Lindsey also faces infrastructure problems. The typical Navy building was built in the 1960s. While the Pentagon laid a $1 billion “golden egg” to erect a coastal campus for Naval Special Warfare commandos in Imperial Beach, he doubts few federal funds to build new bases.

Lindsey thinks creative private-public partnerships might help him revamp firehouses and expand childcare facilities, much like Washington, D.C. got a new fire station by selling the property rights to build a hotel.

He hopes to break ground over the next eight months on a long-planned development across 14 acres of Navy property near the USS Midway Museum. His command is expected to get a new headquarters building in the deal.

In a pitch to area corporations to seize “military market share,” Lindsey’s command also now sells advertising space on Navy properties and in publications. For $350, a company can buy a small black and white ad in a movie theater schedule brochure. For $12,000 per year, his staff will lease the right to “wrap” an ad across a Navy Morale, Welfare and Recreation bus.


“We were making about $20,000 when we first started doing this and now we make several hundred thousands of dollars off of this,” Lindsey said. “It’s not rocket science. It’s just thinking about different ways to get around the challenges and generate resources when we otherwise can’t find them.”

To Lindsey, the Navy must continue to “chase champagne on a beer budget,” experimenting with private sector innovations to fund military operations.


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