San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
Tony Young
- Photo by David Rolland
Politicians gush about small businesses. And why not? Small businesses are the backbone of Main Street U.S.A., right? Several members of the San Diego City Council took turns professing their devotion to small companies during a hearing on Monday evening billed as “Regulatory Relief Day.” When they were done, Mayor Jerry Sanders’ staff spent about 15 minutes running down all the ways he’s made life better for small businesses.
Driven by City Council President Tony Young and Councilmember Lorie Zapf, the ostensible point of it all was to solicit from the public ideas for helping businesses more easily do what they do so that they can save time and money, hire lots of San Diegans and get the economy humming again.
But as soon as the floor was opened to the people, the proceedings were dominated by representatives from the building industry, who asked the council to lower a long list of barriers to development—everything from providing more certainty in the project-approval process to reducing parking requirements and requiring fewer projects to get discretionary permits, as opposed to easier ministerial permits. Opening the floodgates to development, they essentially said, would put thousands upon thousands of people to work and revive the economy.
On Tuesday morning, Councilmember Kevin Faulconer sent out a press release that quoted Young as saying: “We have our marching orders. This City Council is united behind helping businesses thrive, grow and hire.” The San Diego Union- Tribune (whose report largely ignored the building industry’s recommendations) quoted Young as saying, “The bottom line is we need to get out of the way and let businesses do their thing.”
To the extent that Young is taking marching orders from, and getting out of the way of, the local building industry, consider us alarmed and extremely worried.
Currently, there’s large need for affordable and multi-family housing—38,680 units for people with low and very-low incomes by 2020, according to a Regional Housing Needs Assessment by the San Diego Association of governments. But that’s not what these folks want to build. We assume that they want to build higher-end market-rate developments, and currently, there’s a glut of market-rate housing and office space. Presumably, it would be difficult for these developers to get financing for projects, and if there’s no demand, there’s no reason to build. It seems to us that a building boom would be the result of a better economy, not the driver of it (an exception would be building necessary infrastructure or affordable housing as a stimulant).
What worries us is the possibility that the building industry is using the bad economy—and elected officials’ desperate need to look like they’re doing something about it—as a way to tip the playing field more in their favor and essentially bank entitlements for the future, should the economy ever improve. In the past, periods of reduced regulation have resulted in an abundance of so-called Huffman six-packs—named for the developer who built those horrid two-story apartment buildings all over communities like North Park and Normal Heights—and, more recently, conversions of such low-quality apartments to condos that were priced artificially high at the end of the housing bubble.
None of this is to say that there weren’t some good ideas presented this week, and if unnecessary, costly burdens are eliminated, great. But we agree with those who say that some of the genuine problems faced by developers—such as multiple regulatory overlays and parking requirements—should be addressed by updating the various community plans that, together, provide a blueprint for how San Diego will grow.
The mayor and City Council should do whatever they can to help grow the economy, and we applaud reasonable efforts to do so, but that must be balanced with protecting communities from bad development.
At this time, we’re not confident that Young, Zapf, Faulconer and Carl DeMaio will make decisions that strike the appropriate balance. We have more confidence in Councilmembers David Alvarez, Marti Emerald and Todd Gloria. That would leave enigmatic Councilmember Sherri Lightner in an important position as either a fifth vote for dangerous deregulation or a fourth vote to stop it.
In any case, we’ll be watching for a promised action plan based on the recommendations, scheduled to be released in two weeks.
What do you think? Write to editor@sdcitybeat.com.
