Cap and frown

CCDC sees the Hotel Churchill, a Downtown residential hotel that’s currently empty and in need of rehab, as potential low-income affordable housing.
- Photo by Kelly Davis

Rodman, along with attorneys Christopher Sutton and Scott Dreher, have sued the city, its Redevelopment Agency and the Centre City Development Corp. (CCDC), demanding that the cap be reinstated until the city amends its current redevelopment plan to show how the additional money will be spent. Such a plan amendment is required under state law, Rodman said, and should be the product of extensive public input. Without a plan amendment, she said, there’s no guarantee that the money will be put to the highest and best use envisioned by redevelopment law—eliminating blight and boosting the supply of affordable housing.

“You have to get input before decisions are made because, hopefully, that input will color the decisions,” she said. “It may be less than efficient, but we are looking for inclusivity and representative democracy, not efficiency.”

Indeed, the legislation, sponsored by state Assemblymember Nathan Fletcher, eliminated the need for a blight study and redevelopment-plan amendment—a process that was expected to take at least 18 months.

Fletcher said he’s received phone calls from folks in the affordable-housing sector, thanking him for the legislation.

“If [the city had] gone through the process and the study, it’s possible they wouldn’t have been able to lift the cap,” he said. “It’s likely it would have taken years and years and years of litigation to actually get there. I just think this is a big benefit.

“I wouldn’t have done a bill that just allowed someone to randomly start dolling out hundreds of millions of dollars,” Fletcher added. “We raised the cap in order to give the [City] Council the option to determine how the money would be spent.”

Jeff Graham, vice president of redevelopment for CCDC, is surprised that Rodman doesn’t see the upside.

“I’m one of the biggest affordable-housing advocates you’ll ever meet,” he said. Lifting the cap could mean an additional 9,000 to 10,000 units of affordable housing, Graham said, on top of the nearly 5,000 units that have been preserved, produced or are currently under construction. State redevelopment law requires that 40 percent of those units be set aside for people making less than half of the area median income—$28,900 annually for an individual or $41,300 annually for a family of four.

This week, CCDC was expected to announce dates and locations for a series of public meetings that will begin in mid January (the list hadn’t been released by CityBeat’s press time). The meetings are intended to educate the public on what the cap increase means, but also allow residents to comment on spending priorities. The input, however, won’t result in a plan amendment, said CCDC spokesperson Derek Danziger. But since the City Council sits as the Redevelopment Agency’s board of directors, public input could be codified in a sort of roadmap, said Councilmember Todd Gloria.

“Once [public input’s] collected, the Redevelopment Agency board will have a responsibility to try to enshrine it in a particular way,” he said.

At a recent City Council meeting, Susan Tinsky, executive director of the San Diego Housing Federation, called the forthcoming public meetings “making lemonade out of lemons.” Though, she added, “we wish the community outreach would have happened before the legislation went through.”

Tinsky told CityBeat that there’s more to be done for affordable housing, especially residential hotels, also known as single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, that rent tiny rooms —some no larger than 70 square feet— mostly to people getting by on fixed incomes.

“We still have this housing stock that’s Downtown; it’s in private hands, and there’s potential danger of losing that, if not to market forces then certainly to deterioration,” Tinsky said. “Most of these are unreinforced-masonry construction. They’re old. They’re obsolete.

“This really is the housing stock that serves a population that’s just kind of on the edge,” she added. “This is the last rung of the ladder before some of these folks become homeless.”

Rodman’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of five San Diegans who are either homeless or live in substandard housing located within CCDC’s footprint.

The lack of decent affordable housing, Rodman said, is the product of a redevelopment process that was more focused on demolition than preservation.

“There are jurisdictions that, without being sued, on their own—since they drive around their community and walk around it and see human beings on the sidewalk—say, “Gee, we need to do more for affordable housing”—and they do it. San Francisco, when they started redevelopment, set aside 60 percent of the tax increment for affordable housing—60 percent. Many cities frontload the housing to do a lot of it to begin with so that they’re not creating a huge homeless population and displacing people without places to put them in.”

The lawsuit also argues that with the cap increase should have come an increase in the amount of money set aside for affordable housing. Gloria said that increasing the setaside amount—currently 20 percent of new property taxes generated by redevelopment— shouldn’t be an issue.

“Thirty to 35 percent is an extremely reasonable number, particularly when you look at some of the other commitments that people are wanting to use that money for— whether it’s the football stadium or convention center expansion,” Gloria said. “There has to be a balance between resident needs and broader civic needs.”

On Monday, the city filed a response to Rodman’s lawsuit, arguing that asking the Redevelopment Agency to reinstate the cap means asking the city to violate what’s now state law.

A hearing is scheduled for March 18.

Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.