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The One About The Reverse Osmosis Plant in Escondido

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Escondido is considering placing a reverse osmosis filtration and treatment plant on a vacant lot. The lot sits next to a senior residential facility and low-income housing.

Monday, December 13, the Escondido Planning Commission continued its unbelievable policy of “Making Escondido the 50s Again” and approved a Reverse Osmosis/Membrane Filtration plant for the corner of Ash(Route 78) and Washington. How – you might ask – does adding something which is the future of water preservation make Escondido “the 50s” again? One of the major justification of putting this very industrial use in a very residential neighborhood was: this used to be the location of the water department.

Of course, back then, the water department was surrounded by fruit trees and mice. Now, the location sits smack dab in the middle of a highly residential area; a 100-unit Senior living facility adjacent to the east, a row of affordable housing directly to the north and commercial/retail on the remaining sides, along with the Escondido Creek adjacent to the south.

So why is this project bad?   [Read more…]

The San Jose Solution for Emergency Shelter

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A state law allowing emergency sleeping cabins could work for San Diego too.

San Diego County / City of San Diego are in the middle of a serious emergency shelter crisis. The Point in Time Count numbers for 2016 for the county counted 8,692 homeless persons, with an 18.9% increase in the number of unsheltered individuals. Numbers from the recent count will not be available until April, but are expected to be worse. San Diego has the unenviable distinction of having the 4th highest number of homeless people in the nation – more than Las Vegas, Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco. By comparison, Santa Clara County / San Jose reported 6,556 homeless persons in 2015, and came in 9th for number of homeless people.

The San Jose Solution – San Jose took bold action to address the human crisis.   [Read more…]

City Halts Coastal Mansions Through Affordable Housing Program

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The good news is that the City of San Diego has halted a decade’s old practice of allowing large single-family homes to be built in coastal areas expedited under the City’s affordable housing and sustainability program.

The bad news is that the City’s Development Services Department allowed single-family mansions to be built at all under a program that they were ineligible for – for a decade.

We reported in an earlier post about this program and how developers of single-family units had their projects expedited and how one big-time insider was able to take advantage of his connections:   [Read more…]

Developer – Insider Benefits from Affordable Housing Program By Building Coastal McMansions

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A developer and political insider – a former chairman of the San Diego Planning Commission – appears to have benefited big-time from a City of San Diego affordable and sustainability housing program – that he was ineligible for – by being allowed to construct single-family McMansions at the coast.

Tim Golba of Golba Architecture was given the green light by the City’s Development Services Department to obtain the permits for his single family home projects through the city’s “Affordable/In-Fill Housing and Sustainable Buildings Expedite Program.” We know this, thanks to the diligence of the Voice of San Diego.   [Read more…]

Ocean Beach’s Largest Landlord Adds 10 Units, Immediately Raises Rents

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Michael Mills Buys Complex of Studios on Voltaire – Notifies Tenants of 20% Rent Raise

The largest landowner – landlord in Ocean Beach, Michael Mills, just purchased a complex of 10 studios on Voltaire Street – and immediately notified the tenants of a rent raise.

Mills can now add this property to his OB empire – an empire that the OB Rag has been chronicling – which we calculate at 241 units within Ocean Beach – not including this most recent purchase.   [Read more…]

Land Use Planning in a ‘Post-Fact’ World? Looking Back on Measures B and C in Our Recent Election

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By Lawrence A. Herzog

One of the disturbing trends in this turbulent season of national electoral politics was the explosion of uncertainty about information and truth in reporting. The talking points and tweets often wandered so far from actual facts, they left behind an exhausted citizenry. We are still recovering.

This “post-fact” world has brought the nation to an odd juncture. Fake news stories, Internet hacking, and websites that pump out false information remain a point of contention.

Has this “post-fact” epidemic trickled down to our local elections?   [Read more…]

Reader’s Write: San Diego’s Unmet Housing Needs of 32,275 Units

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By Rev. Richard Lawrence

It is a huge mistake for the Union Tribune to throw rocks at the glass house in Sacramento, as it has recently done, while ignoring our local shrine of good government.

Somehow, the City of San Diego was able to dissolve the “State of Emergency due to a Severe Shortage of Affordable Housing” without having taken any substantial actions of any kind—most specifically ignoring the Affordable Housing Task Force (AHTF) Report of 2003. That Task Force, chaired by former City Manager Jack McGrory, was organized to address the housing crisis and recommended measures to address the unmet housing needs of 32,275 units and the additional annual need for 8,415 housing units.   [Read more…]

Hope on Wheels

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By Linda Hutchison / head wind journal

A few years ago, in between jobs, I started hanging out at nearby Mission Bay during the day when I needed a break from my computer. I’d take a beach chair or blanket, a sandwich, a notepad and pen and sit under a tree for an hour or two. Peaceful, balmy, fewer distractions than at the oceanfront beach (also nearby). If people came along, they kept a respectful distance, cycling or strolling by on the path, arranging a lunch picnic at one of the many tables. Kayakers glided by on the glistening water.

I began to notice that several large RVs ringed the outer edges of the parking lot. How cool, I thought. What a great idea. Roll on down for the day. Bring kids or grandkids and your own kitchen. Play ball, fix whatever you want to eat whenever. Memories of my in-laws parking their RV at Disneyland so we could duck in out of the heat and then head back into the maddening crowds.

Around that same time, I also began to notice an old green and rusty orange van parked on my street. Specifically, I noticed the owner, craggily dark and handsome, in a seedy-around-the -edges way. The exact type that made my heart leap 20 years earlier. What caught my eye one day was him dragging clothing and bedding from a neighboring house to his van. (Since I was out of work I had more time to look out my window.)   [Read more…]

San Diego Poised to Act on Short Term Vacation Rentals

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Two Important Meetings re: STVRs on Calendar

Residents of the coastal neighborhoods who have been fighting short term vacation rentals (STVRs) are happy right now – relatively speaking – as it appears that the City of San Diego is finally poised to act on them.

One of the key organizations in this fight is Save San Diego Neighborhoods, and they are trying to mobilize their supporters for two critical meetings coming up, October 25th and November 1st.   [Read more…]

Measure A: How SANDAG Undermines Transit, Environmental, and Social Goals

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By Murtaza H. Baxamusa / UrbDeZine

Nearly a third of all counties in California are proposing a sales tax increase to fund transportation on this November’s ballot. But one stands out with organized opposition from an unprecedented coalition of labor, environmental and community groups. It is perhaps the only transportation measure where both political parties, and the main newspaper opposes it.

Why? In one word, SANDAG.

The San Diego Association of Governments (or SANDAG) is a unique super-governmental agency with unparalleled power over a single county with over three million residents. It spent almost $670 million of taxpayer funds last year.[i] It collects a tax of half-cents on every dollar of taxable sales in the entire county. And it remains an enigma to most San Diegans.   [Read more…]

Make the Convention Center Better, Not Bigger

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By David McCullough / UrbDeZine

Earlier this year, a hosted panel of local decision makers was brought together to discuss future of San Diego. Much of the conversation was around the convention center expansion. If you’ve been following the local news, you’ve noticed much of the dialog is about the benefits of a larger meeting space.

The conversation is often about the need for more space to keep Comic-Con in San Diego or the heavy regional impact, the tax revenues, or the attention it all brings to our city. At the end of the panel discussion, a younger, seemingly naive gentleman stood up to ask a question. The question was, “Why do we need a larger convention center when it seems vacant for most of the year?”

I, like most, blew this question off as I thought this person couldn’t possibly understand all the economic benefits of this institution here in our city. The answering panelist rattled off the economic forecast numbers that we have all likely heard before and the discussion quickly moved on in another direction.   [Read more…]

Vista’s Mixed Use Zone: A Developer’s Dream

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Imagine a city where developers are able to choose from among 57 different business enterprises for a downtown site, either for a single use or any combination thereof.

Welcome to Vista, California, where the purpose of its Mixed Use Zone is “…to allow for a mix of residential and commercial, or just residential, or just commercial (standalone) land uses.”

It’s a developer’s wet dream.
  [Read more…]

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