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Readers Write: Stadium Sabotage — Mayor Faulconer Needs to Resign

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By George Mullen

Whether you loved or hated the San Diego Chargers isn’t important.

What’s important is the flagrant public and political breach of trust surrounding the team’s departure, as well as San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s push for the FS Investors/SoccerCity redevelopment to replace them.

This breach of trust is a major concern that all San Diego citizens and NFL fans nationwide should be paying close attention to. It could very well lead to the Mayor’s resignation or recall.   [Read more…]

Why Is City of San Diego Delaying Sale of the Truax House Property?

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By Charles Kaminski

San Diego architect and activist Charles Kaminski alerted SDFP to the current status of the Truax House property in his email below directed to Mayor Faulconer, the Planning Commission and various other elected officials and City staff.

I am writing to you because of the concerns I have over the delay in the sale of the City owned property known as the Truax House property at Union and Laurel streets in Uptown. I believe that this delay and possible sale are not in the best interests of the City and will explain why I believe that is the case.
  [Read more…]

San Diego Council Committee to Hear Proposals for Short-Term Rentals – Fri., Mar. 24th

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A San Diego City Council committee is posed to hear three different options for short-term vacation rentals being proposed by the Planning Department this coming Friday, March 25th.

The Smart Growth and Land Use Committee of the Council will meet in the morning at the Jacob Center and attempt – once again – to juggle the contentious issue of how to deal with these particular types of rentals, an issue that the Council and city staff have bounced around now for 2 years.

The issue of short-term rentals have roiled the beach areas and Ocean Beach in particular.   [Read more…]

Should We Pay the Rich to Build Infrastructure, Then Pay Them to Use It?

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By Dave Johnson / People’s Action Blog

It’s starting to look like President Trump’s promised $1-trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure will be as bad for us as his health care plan turned out to be.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has issued their 2017 Infrastructure Report Card. We didn’t do so well. Our “grade” is a miserable D+. Why? Go outside and look around at our out-of-date and crumbling roads, bridges, dams, airports, water systems, and electrical grid.   [Read more…]

Volunteers Raise High the Roof Beams for Emergency, Very Affordable Housing in San Diego

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Amikas Emergency Housing Expo

The super bloom of wild flowers in the most inhospitable of places–the Anza Borrego desert– has captured the attention of San Diegans, who are flocking to get a glimpse of this short lived phenomenon.

Closer to home, an equally remarkable blossoming takes the form of the cluster of cabins that has sprung up like wild flowers at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in North Park. San Diego has been the most inhospitable of places for enacting solutions to our growing humanitarian crisis of homelessness. Volunteer activists from Amikas have stepped into the leadership vacuum, displaying what can be done to address the immediate housing needs of the most vulnerable among us.

The demonstration project that volunteers designed and are building on the church site represent one low cost, practical approach to providing bridge housing by way of small communities with safe sleeping cabins.   [Read more…]

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…]

Reports of the Destruction of Experience and the Failure of Ecopsychology are Greatly Exaggerated

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This is a response to Will Falk’s article, The Destruction of Experience: How Ecopsychology Has Failed, written on Jan. 10, 2017.

By Thomas J. Doherty

I feel for the author of The Destruction of Experience: How Ecopsychology Has Failed who sounds as if he is truly suffering over the state of their world as he sees it. As a parent, I can identify with his profound feelings of attachment and protectiveness for his nephew. I also appreciate his recognition of some well-known ecopsychology thinkers, such as those represented in the 1995 Sierra Club Ecopsychology anthology. Books like this sit on my shelf as I write, and have been a central influence on my adult life and profession.

But, I fear that the author has drawn too narrow circle around one snapshot of ecopsychology thinking, indeed mainly one book, and one variation on psychologically informed environmentalism, to make such broad and sweeping conclusions as he does.   [Read more…]

Public Transit as a Social Justice Issue

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By Joseph Wagner / San Diego UrbDeZine

One crucial aspect of contemporary debates on spatial politics, socioeconomic stratification, and immigration is the issue of public transit.

Prior to the question of a person’s right to be in a city (or supposed lack thereof in the case of undocumented immigrants), there is the question of a city’s duty to provide feasible means for moving around in its space. Albeit mundane, it is a key factor determining a person’s economic and educational opportunities, to name only two.

And it hardly bears mentioning, but moving around in San Diego all but requires a car.   [Read more…]

The Destruction of Experience: How Ecopsychology Has Failed

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I do not remember the first time I saw my mother’s face, though I know she remembers the first time she saw mine. It was the very beginning of my life, my birth. I do not remember the first time I saw my mother’s face, but, I do remember the first time I saw my mother’s face at what would have been the end of my life after I tried to kill myself.

This is what I’m thinking about as I hold my fifteen-month-old baby nephew Thomas while he falls asleep.

A soft darkness blankets the room. The curtains are tied back on either side of the room’s only window and the night pours in. A wet snow falls with the starlight in a sprinkling of silver and gray. A few nights before full and the moon is strong. Shadows flicker on the floor below the window. A pine whispers outside where the wind brushes powder from her branches.   [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…]

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