NFABSD Email Archive
October 26, 2022
As we explained in our last email, the Planning Department is finally proposing to use walking distance to define proximity to transit, as Neighbors For A Better San Diego has been advocating for over a year.
Unfortunately, this change is negated by the proposed overall expansion of walking distance from one-half mile to a full mile. This expansion means that MORE San Diego single-family neighborhoods will be targeted for overdevelopment... (open)
October 24, 2022
Will your street be upzoned from single-family homes to 8-story apartment buildings? Attend the meeting to find out and make your opinions known... (open)
October 11, 2022
...we embrace this opportunity to address the glaring deficiencies of San Diego’s new transit development maps, regardless of what the city wants to call them... (open)
October 6, 2022
At the last minute before today’s Planning Department workshop on the Land Development Code Update, the Planning Department has retracted the proposed Transit Priority Area (TPA) revisions and instead proposes to introduce an entirely new definition of proximity to transit, which they are calling Sustainable Development Areas (SDAs)... (open)
October 5, 2022
Neighbors For A Better San Diego emailed a survey on San Diego housing issues to all eight candidates on the November 8th, 2022 ballot for City Council.
We've entered the results into our at-a-glance chart... (open)
September 30, 2022
After waiting 7 months to see the Planning Department's revisions for the College Area Community Plan Update, many of you were locked out of last night's long-awaited meeting on September 28th, 2022... (open)
September 29, 2022
We are very sorry to report that tonight's College Area Community Plan Update Committee Meeting is having two unexpected technical issues:
The meeting has unexpectedly capped out at 100 participants
and
The Chat has been disabled ...(open)
September 28, 2022
The community's proposal has been submitted to the Planning Department to be considered alongside whatever plans the Planning Department proposes. This plan, which is based on the City's GIS data (SanGIS SANDAG GIS Data Warehouse), provides 10,524 potential additional housing units without significantly upzoning the area's single-family neighborhoods. You can read more about the Community Update and our proposal here... (open)
September 21, 2022
During the July 27 meeting with the College Area community, the Planning Department advised the community's Plan Update Committee that if they wanted a Community Plan Update proposal that reflected their 7 Visions Report, then the community's Planning Group would need to produce its own plan. And so we did... (open)
September 8, 2022
Whether he was deliberately sticking a finger in the eye of Talmadge residents, or just promoting a former lobbying client of his communications director, Todd Gloria lavishly praised a Bonus Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) project on 49th Street in his latest weekly newsletter... (open)
August 12, 2022
Mat Wahlstrom digs into the numbers behind state and local housing policies and points out the inconsistencies between what these policies encourage and what San Diego’s real housing needs are...(open)
August 8, 2022
During the July 27th College Area Community Plan Update (CPU) meeting, the Planning Department abandoned any pretense of working collaboratively with the College Area. If the College Area wants a plan update that reflects its vision for the future, the Planning Department has told them they will have to produce it themselves... (open)
August 4, 2022
Whether it’s the poor stewardship of the public’s money reflected in the Ash Street bailout, or the promotion of poorly-written housing policies that claim to deliver equity and climate action but accomplish neither, San Diego’s homeowners are the only group willing to stand up to the Mayor’s political machine and call out the flawed thinking of these actions... (open)
July 22, 2022
Dear Mayor Gloria, In keeping with the promise of a fair and transparent government, College Area residents deserve to know if grant funding is driving the Planning Department's decisions to unnecessarily upzone its single-family neighborhoods in order to fulfill grant obligations...(open)
June 27, 2022
For the past several months, College Area residents have pushed back against the City's proposals for 5-story (or higher) apartment buildings in its single-family neighborhoods.
As a result, the City of San Diego Planning Department will be holding an Open House to collect feedback from the community... (open)
June 16, 2022
Our recommendations to the Audit Committee specifically focus on the challenges that residents have faced in fulfilling their role in the City's “complaint-driven enforcement”...(open)
June 10, 2022
Frustrated neighbors speak out against up-zoining in College Area...(open)
June 9, 2022
Following the Planning Department's May 25th meeting, more than 100 residents participated in a June 6th planning exercise for the College Area hosted by Neighbors For A Better San Diego and the College Area Community Council... (open)
May 25, 2022
May 19, 2022
Residents in University City are celebrating a hard-fought win against the Planning Department's effort to drastically increase density in the residential, single-family portion of their neighborhood... (open)
May 10, 2022
Eric Rosenzweig spoke for many residents when he outlined the very negative consequences of building eight-unit apartments in older neighborhoods that were designed, engineered, and built for single-family homes... (open)
May 9, 2022
In an effort to bring awareness and transparency to the closed process by which the Planning Department, at the direction of Mayor Gloria, is proposing to radically upzone College Area neighborhoods, Neighbors For A Better San Diego has created this short, ten-minute video outlining the College Area Community Plan Update... (open)
May 7, 2022
Neighbors For A Better San Diego emailed a questionnaire on San Diego housing issues to every candidate running for the 2022 San Diego City Council election... (open)
April 27, 2022
Although this issue is specific to the College Area, we are sending this email citywide because Neighbors For A Better San Diego feels it's important for other communities to be aware of the actions of Mayor Gloria's Planning Department... (open)
April 13, 2022
In this issue of Perspectives, we welcome College Area homeowner Eric Rosenzweig who is experiencing first-hand the repercussions of San Diego's ill-planned Bonus ADU developer-incentive program... (open)
April 6, 2022
We've identified major flaws with the city's College Area Community Plan Update survey, but we feel it's important to fill it out, regardless... (open)
April 3, 2022
It appears that the City is using out-of-date housing and population projections for the College Area Community Plan Update. The resulting grossly-inflated assumption of how many people need to be housed in the College Area is being used by the Planning Department to justify significant upzoning of the area's single-family neighborhoods... (open)
March 22, 2022
We want our members in District 9 to be particularly aware that there is a College Area Community Plan update in progress that proposes to convert a number of single-family neighborhoods to townhomes and other multi-family housing... (open)
March 12, 2022
PERSPECTIVES: With the Help of City Hall, Investors Are Buying San Diego Homes at Record Speed - by Alex Zukas
The Washington Post published a story last month about the rise in investor-owned housing in 40 U.S. cities, including San Diego... (open)
March 3, 2022
Are bike lanes your priority? What about street paving? Sidewalks? More Parks? ...or Police or Fire Stations? Only you can let your priorities be known... (open)
March 1, 2022
It's important that community members show up to vote for candidates who best represent their neighborhoods and values. It's also important to show the City of San Diego that there is broad community support for Planning Groups as the City is working to disempower these groups... (open)
February 28, 2022
Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 1st, is the final approval of the Housing Action Package, which is included in the consent agenda as Item 54... (open)
February 21, 2022
February 11, 2022
Thank you to our many loyal members. We literally took on City Hall and in less than a year and without much money and no big political support, we achieved the following... (open)
February 1, 2022
Rather than address the legitimate concerns raised by Neighbors For A Better San Diego, the Mayor has instead hired a new Communications Director, Rachel Laing, to attempt to bully us into silence by calling us NIMBY racists... (open)
January 28, 2022
She’s not a “Boomer”, isn’t “wealthy”, and doesn’t live in Kensington, Talmadge, or Mission Hills… But this Allied Gardens resident ... (open)
January 24, 2022
Thanks to you, the #1 result of the survey was to "Eliminate ADU fee waivers and [enact] ADU policy reforms" (page 26)... (open)
January 19, 2022
Throughout this process, we have made a rational and compelling case for aligning San Diego’s ADU policies with state law... (open)
January 8, 2022
The Land Use & Housing (LU&H) Committee is going to be taking up the Homes For All Of Us: Housing Action Package, including possible amendments to the city’s ADU code, at its next meeting on Thursday, January 13... (open)
January 6, 2022
The Land Use & Housing (LU&H) Committee will be discussing the Draft Housing Action Package, giving us the opening we've needed to formally propose our changes... (open)
January 1, 2022
Council President Sean Elo Rivera has posted an online survey asking his D9 constituents to share their priorities... (open)
December 20, 2021
We had a tremendous turnout at the December 16th Planning Commission meeting... (open)
December 16, 2021
December 14, 2021
San Diego's Bonus ADU Program is based on a seriously-flawed Transit Priority Area (TPA) map... (open)
December 6, 2021
The Planning Commission is going to be considering changes to San Diego's ADU regulations on Thursday, December 16th and we need your help!... (open)
November 24, 2021
As we begin this Thanksgiving holiday, we'd like to acknowledge your many contributions and thank you all for your continued support... (open)
November 13, 2021
Introducing OurNeighborhoodVoices.org, the California initiative to UNDO SB 9 and ALL overreaching zoning bills pouring out of Sacramento!.. (open)
October 19, 2021
CHANGES TO THE CITY'S ADU CODE: Councilmember Elo-Rivera recently proposed changes (summarized in the graphic below) to San Diego's developer-friendly 2020 ADU code to correct some of the flaws exposed by Neighbors For A Better San Diego (open...)
September 26, 2021
"Brand New Upzoning Laws Create Big Money-Making Opportunities!"
Well, that didn't take long... (open...)
September 18, 2021
Thanks to you, San Diego City Council takes a first step towards revising its ADU code... (open)
September 15, 2021
The City of San Diego has responded to the flaws we exposed in San Diego's 2020 ADU ordinance by sending out an "Accessory Dwelling Units Fact Sheet"... (open)
September 6, 2021
As of September 6, over four thousand San Diego residents have signed our petition asking the city to revise its ADU ordinance. Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD) has met with Mayor Gloria and all of the San Diego City Councilmembers... (open)
September 4, 2021
With the final passage of SB 9 and SB 10 by the State Senate, it is now just a matter of time before Governor Newsom signs them into law. Where does this leave us in the fight against Sacramento’s assault on single-family neighborhoods?... (open)
August 26, 2021
This is an important SB 9 update from Maria Pavlou Kalban of UnitedNeighbors.net
Please know that the passage of SB 9 in NO WAY affects our efforts to correct San Diego's neighborhood-killing 2020 ADU ordinance... (open)
August 24, 2021
Below is a detailed update on SB9 and SB10. Thank you to UnitedNeighbors.net and LivableCalifornia.org for their tireless work on stopping these bills and educating the public... (open)
August 9, 2021
We've been told it's necessary to hand over San Diego's single-family neighborhoods to developers in order to solve the "Affordable Housing Crisis" in our city. The data, however, doesn’t support this claim... (open)
August 4, 2021
Here is the video and the links from last Thursday's ADU event hosted by the San Diego Network of Town Councils...(open)
July 31, 2021
The chart above highlights the various approaches that California municipalities have taken to meet the State's requirements for ADU incentives. Instead of adopting one of these rational alternatives, San Diego chose to develop an extreme Bonus ADU program that incentivizes developers to outbid homebuyers and build apartment complexes on single-family parcels, contributing to the elimination of our single-family housing market, diminishing single-family neighborhoods, and squeezing out the middle class... (open)
Note: We've updated the chart in this email. Click here to view the newest version.
July 28, 2021
Boardmembers of the Kensington-Talmadge Planning Group received a letter this morning from the Chamber of Commerce ahead of a scheduled presentation tonight by Neighbors For A Better San Diego ... (open)
July 14, 2021
Residents from Talmadge and surrounding neighborhoods gathered this morning from 11:00 am to 12 noon in Talmadge to speak out against the transformation of a single-family residence into a **six-unit rental complex** with no parking, no setbacks, and no landscaping, in one of San Diego’s oldest neighborhoods... (open)
July 10, 2021
Since today’s Zoom event with Mayor Gloria and Councilmember Elo-Rivera was not conducive to a full discussion of the motivations and impacts of the ADU ordinance (141.0302) that was passed by the Council last October, we would like to present the issue ourselves... (open)
June 20, 2021
Hijacked and misused to sugar-coat San Diego’s neighborhood-killing zoning changes, this term is the new catch-phrase of City Hall and developers... (open)