01/11/2024

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While we agree that building more housing – especially more truly affordable housing – must be a top priority, the facts confirm that Mayor Gloria's administration has failed to make any significant progress towards that goal.

 

The city's "Bonus ADU" ordinance was not designed to create "middle-class housing". To the contrary, it was sold as an incentive that promised affordable housing by allowing developers to build apartment complexes in the backyards of single-family homes. But the Mayor has sat silently as those builders game the system and reap financial rewards for building small, one-bedroom apartments that rent for more than $2570 per month. This is the same rent the Mayor quoted for a typical one bedroom apartment in San Diego. And it's neither "affordable" nor "middle class housing".

 

And the Mayor's office has not — and cannot challenge the city's own data confirming that not one very-low or low-income ADU has been built under the it's  "Bonus ADU" program.

 

The Mayor's "Housing Action Plan" lacks the framework needed to increase truly affordable housing. Worse, it contradicts the Mayor's supposed commitment to "equity and inclusion" by allowing developers to build the required Complete Communities affordable units OFF-SITE, in lower resource neighborhoods than the primary (add "luxury"? might be too provocative) development. 

 

Community leaders and activists vigorously reject this giveaway to the building industry as "separate and unequal."

 

As for the City's $5 billion infrastructure deficit, the Mayor's policies have in fact worsened that massive deficit. Waiving Development Impact Fees for developers who build profitable, market-rate housing increases that deficit while doing nothing to increase our supply of transitional, very-low and low-income housing.

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Media inquiries:  Better4SD@gmail.com