NIMBYism in San Diego: How Wealthy Coastal Cities Hinder Affordable Housing

Policy
Written By Ashleigh Padilla Goins and Colin Scharff
landscape view of tops of houses with the ocean on the horizon

For decades, “America’s Finest City’’ and the county that bears its name have been a true destination for families chasing the Californian dream. Amazing beaches, great schools, and economic opportunity are still the draw, but for many this dream has been priced out of reach. While property values skyrocket, working and middle-class San Diegans have been priced Inland and Eastward, away from the beaches, school districts, and economic opportunities that drew so many families to our county. Instead of being a model for the state, we are one of California’s best examples of the chronic housing crisis.

According to a recent report from the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Housing prices and rents have steadily increased during the last decade, outpacing inflation, while our the supplemental poverty rate for San Diego is also much higher than the national rate, hitting a whopping 17.2%. Almost all of this crushing increase is due to our skyrocketing housing prices.

San Diego’s cost of living is almost 40% higher than the national average, driven by our extremely high housing costs, which are 120% higher than the national average. Combined with wages that have not risen to match inflation, we are in a reality in which San Diegans actually pay a higher percent of each paycheck on housing than San Fransicians, which just last year, 2022, made San Diego the “least affordable region in the country in terms of housing prices.”

As a result, homelessness has continued to skyrocket, increasing by almost 10% just in the past two years. Our county’s status quo has made it so homelessness is the final and most desperate rung of our housing ladder.

When San Diegans talk about housing, it is usually a sort of stand-in for talking about the homelessness crisis, a crisis that has continued to grow, reaching records year after year despite city and county efforts to the contrary. The truth is there is no solution to homelessness without building affordable housing. These issues are not separable, they are one in the same.

HUD’s 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report found that California accounted for 30% of the United States’ homeless population, even though California makes up less than 12% of the total population. In actual numbers, that means there are at least 171,521 people experiencing homelessness in California right now, more than nine times the number of unsheltered people in the next highest state. The same state audit from last year put a point on this, stating that; “California’s ongoing affordable housing shortage has contributed to the homelessness crisis and has left more than three million renter households with burdensome housing costs.”

The most damning thing is this is a result of clear policy choices. While California, and San Diego County’s housing crunch is a clear result of too much demand and too little supply; state, county, and local governments have been ineffective at best, and inhumane at worst in dealing with this clear humanitarian emergency.

For San Diego, one of the biggest barriers to affordable housing development has been the lobbying and lawsuits of our wealthy, coastal cities. From Coronado to Solana Beach and Encinitas, many coastal cities across our county have claimed that increased development would harm their “community character,” increase infrastructure costs, crowd their cities, and harm the environment. They have appealed to the regional government, SANDAG, to lower their allocated units and shift the development to inland, more diverse, and less wealthy cities.

Coastal cities claim they simply have no space to develop, whether due to city boundaries or the ocean, where development is regulated by the CA Coastal Commission. Whether or not these communities actually have the space to develop is a matter of density, building up rather than out. And while there are indeed environmental concerns when it comes to these cities, many locals argue that these cities do have the space to develop, and are hiding behind environmental rhetoric to protect their property values and their neighborhood’s exclusivity.

In fact, this NIMBY backlash has made our county a prime example of local resistance to affordable development. A California 2020 housing audit pointed to San Diego County with this very critique, while illustrating how this reaction has resulted in vastly different development and cost of living in neighboring cities. Using the North County cities of Encinitas and San Marcos, (neighboring cities with similar populations, incomes, and sizes), as examples, the state audit pointed to a staggering 25% difference in affordable housing availability between San Marcos and Encinitas. To put a point on that, Encinitas has less than half of 1 affordable unit available per 1,000 residents, while San Marcos has 24. The difference between the two boils down to the property values Encinitas values over lowering their cost of living.

Wealthy cities and neighborhoods across San Diego County try to have it both ways, pushing working class families away, while hiring them to work in their community. This has resulted in cities like Chula Vista or even more inland unincorporated communities where residents commute long distances to the coast for work. These cities absorb residents fleeing ever-increasing prices pushing San Diegans inland, out of the county, or onto the street. Not only is this an unfair burden on our working class and first generation populations, who are most often commuting long distances between where they live and work, this de-facto subsidizes the property values and upscale lifestyle of our wealthiest communities. It’s no surprise that our county continues to suffer under high costs of living and a homelessness crisis that is outpacing our ability to combat it.

Until our wealthiest communities take on their share of affordable development, homelessness and high cost of living will continue to run rampant in our county. Presently, many cities have shown they are content to push working class residents out, and enjoy ever-rising property values. But if we want real solutions to our county’s biggest problems, the root of our county’s dysfunction is housing, and we should start with the cities that refuse to build, and only fuel our regional crisis.

It’s up to them if they want to continue to stonewall, or open the gate and let their neighbors in.

Written by Ashleigh Padilla Goins and Colin Scharff from the Evinco Strategies Policy Department.

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References

Ashleigh Padilla Goins and Colin Scharff
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