As San Diego and California experience a housing construction slowdown, the city has been developing blueprints for a long-term building boom.

Several sweeping plans have been approved in recent years to make room for tens of thousands of additional residents in the decades to come, and that won’t be the end of it.

Granted, this doesn’t do much to ease the immediate critical shortage of affordable housing. The relatively small number of building permits sought recently has been startling, considering the pent-up demand.

San Diego County had the biggest drop in housing construction in Southern California in the first six months of 2019, the Union-Tribune’s Phillip Molnar wrote earlier this month.


That should change given the community plan updates adopted by the City Council and mayor. But while getting such plans approved is important, they don’t, by themselves, reduce home prices or guarantee a faster rate of construction.

The infrastructure needed for planned overhauls in Mission Valley, the Midway District and elsewhere is to be paid in large part by developer fees, which can add up to $100,000 to the cost of a house. Competing efforts are afoot to lower or eliminate the fees. Regulations also are being streamlined.

As any developer will tell you, it costs more to build new infrastructure in developed urban areas than on open land.

Community plan updates — the product of laborious city staff effort and much public input — have largely been approved with modest to little opposition. But they are detailed outlines for a given area and do not include the actual projects, where more specific impacts tend to draw louder criticism.


That’s not to say the city will be in the middle of an all-out political war similar to what is happening over county proposals totaling some 10,000 homes in unincorporated areas. The county has faced stiff opposition to such development from the outset.

While those are planned as suburban-style developments, what’s happening in the city’s core is expected to be more transit-oriented and designed to encourage bicycle riding and walking.

The cumulative number of housing units the city wants to add borders on eye-popping. Consider a few communities that have had big plan overhauls recently:

Mission Valley: Up to 50,000 more residents in 28,000 additional housing units, along with 7 million more square feet of commercial space are expected there over the next 30 years. More than 21,000 people live there now. Refurbishing the San Diego River for more open space and recreational opportunities is part of the plan.


The centerpiece likely will be the planned San Diego State Mission Valley campus, replete with housing, educational and business facilities and, of course, a sports stadium.

Midway District: The population in the area perhaps best known for the sports arena would increase from 4,600 to 27,000 with some 11,000 housing units, more than a five-fold increase. The mostly commercial area has long seemed San Diego’s sleeping giant for the kind of mixed-use development now envisioned, with existing broad streets that could be transformed into major transit corridors and close proximity to Interstates 5 and 8.

In theory, more could be built, but any new structure would be limited by the 30-foot coastal zone height limit. Some view that limit as sacrosanct, but the Midway hardly has the feel of a coastal community. Besides, if voters approved a height waiver for a roller coaster at nearby SeaWorld in 1998, wouldn’t it be worth another shot for more housing?

Grantville: The future is already happening in this little-known, aging industrial area on the trolley’s Green Line between Mission Valley and San Diego State University. The community plan was updated three years ago and thousands of housing units have been constructed, are nearing completion or are in the pipeline. A fair amount of what’s being built are low-income units and others are less expensive than in many areas of the city.


The population is listed at more than 8,000, but that figure is growing. As many as 8,275 units and 22,000 people eventually would be added, with many SDSU students and staff expected to be among the residents.

As development goes, this has been a feel-good story. The Union-Tribune’s David Garrick reported that community leaders welcomed the housing development and amenities, with one hoping for a transformation that would make the neighborhood “the next Little Italy.”

“San Diego officials say they may have a local model for their strategy to solve the city’s housing crisis by placing dense high-rise apartments and condominium complexes along trolley lines. Grantville,” Garrick wrote.

San Diego plans to bulk up housing in other areas, with a major transformation of Kearny Mesa in sight. Much of the housing in these plans will be near current and future transit corridors, such as in the Morena area along the Mid-Coast Trolley line, downtown and other central neighborhoods. No doubt there will be big fights, as there were in Morena.


Broader housing proposals are moving forward in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, is pushing the federal government to take a more active role in creating more housing. On Thursday, he announced the introduction of bipartisan legislation that targets federal transit funding to encourage housing development. The legislation’s straightforward title: Build More Housing Near Transit Act.

The goal is to provide more affordable housing in areas where people won’t have to rely on cars, thereby also helping to combat climate change.

The Legislature has and will continue to push measures cheered by many housing advocates but criticized by some local officials, who contend they are an effort to usurp their authority.


Increasingly, attention is being paid to the fees on housing. Assemblyman Tim Grayson, D-Concord, is carrying legislation to limit local development fees, which he and others contend are often unreasonably high. His Assembly Bill 1484 was held over until next year. While most everyone agrees fees are a big factor in housing costs, critics expressed concern that the legislation would force those costs onto the cities.

A different approach is in an emerging initiative that would shift the infrastructure costs currently financed by those fees to the state. That potentially could ease housing prices, but doesn’t guarantee it.

There are already big fights at the state and local level over housing policies. What to do about fees may be the next one.

Tweet of the Week


Goes to Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (@LorenaSGonzalez), about what Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside, called her as her bill that would end much of the “gig” economy in California, AB 5, headed toward passage.

“‘Black Widow of Public Policy’ . . . Can I put that on a T-shirt?”