Distribution of Low-Income Housing Falls Short of Policy : South San Diego Bears Much of the Burden

In 1972, as federally sponsored public housing programs boomed, the San Diego City Council concluded that future low-income housing should be evenly dispersed throughout the city.

In a formal policy, the council declared its intention “to effect the development of economically and racially balanced communities in newly developing peripheral areas of the city and in all city sponsored or approved redevelopment projects, and to do what is reasonably and practically possible in all parts of the city.”

The result has been quite the opposite.

Despite the 15-year-old commitment, market forces and political decisions have combined to create a low-income housing ghetto in southernmost San Diego, straining services and angering community leaders tired of the area’s stepchild status.

Even with the San Diego Housing Commission’s recent renewed interest in the so-called “balanced community” concept, it appears that the situation will not change significantly for many years because of the high cost of land in affluent communities and strong neighborhood sentiment against public housing in those areas. Some people question whether change is smart policy in an era of limited resources.

Land Costs Cited

“It’s going to be very, very difficult because of the price of land in some of the other communities, and because of the real public perception that public housing should not be” placed in some areas, said Judy McCarty, a housing commissioner and councilwoman from the 7th District.

“How can you provide public housing in La Jolla when everybody in San Diego would like to live in La Jolla?”

Such sentiment does not assuage the resentment of community leaders in South San Diego, where a disproportionate share of government-assisted housing has been located by the city, the state, the federal government and private developers drawn to the area by less expensive land.

“When San Diego didn’t want something and they had to have it, they put it down here,” said Ruth Schneider, chairman of the Otay Mesa-Nestor community planning group. “When HUD (the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development) said, ‘You have to have low-income housing,’ they put it down here.”

In some areas, the result has been a predictable strain on schools, roads and overall quality of life, said Doug Perry, chairman of the San Ysidro Community Planning and Development Group.

‘Saturation Point’

“The total impact on the community has reached the saturation point,” Perry said. “The schools, all of the infrastructure is taxed. But most of all, they concentrate people who are less fortunate in one area” where a shortage of jobs and inadequate transportation exists, he said.

Statistics paint a clear picture of the concentration of housing for the poor in the 8th District, most of it in South San Diego, the chunk of land on the Mexican border separated from the rest of the city by Chula Vista and National City.

The 8th District is home to 28.6% of all San Diego housing receiving government construction or rent assistance, according to the latest figures from the Housing Commission. District 4, which encompasses Southeast San Diego, has 20% of the assisted units, but two-thirds of the subsidies are in the form of government aid vouchers that allow residents to choose their own apartments.

In San Ysidro, 26% of all housing is restricted to low-income residents, a percentage that dwarfs the citywide total of 4.6% and any other neighborhood’s share, according to 1985-86 statistics from the city’s Planning Department. In Otay, 5.5% of the housing units are occupied by low-income residents and the figure in Nestor is 6.8%.

At the other end of the spectrum are communities with less than 1% low-income housing, including La Jolla, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, Mission Valley, Rancho Bernardo, Del Mar Heights, Mira Mesa and San Carlos.

Housing built or acquired by the Housing Commission conforms to the same pattern. Of the 1,181 public housing units owned by the San Diego Housing Commission, 511 are located in the 8th District. The 5th District in the city’s north-central section has the second-largest concentration with 285, but 241 of those are part of a single project that houses elderly residents.

In contrast, District 7, in the San Carlos area, has just eight commission-owned units; District 6, in the Pacific Beach-Mission Beach area, has just 12 units, and District 4, in Southeast San Diego, has just 37.

Housing Sites

In fact, the majority of the new public housing built citywide by the commission since it started constructing housing in 1980 is located on two streets in a small slice of San Ysidro tucked between Interstate 5 and the Mexican border, and a third road between Interstates 5 and 805. The three projects on Sycamore Road, and single projects on Calle Primera and Alaquinas Drive account for 225 public housing units. (The commission also acquires existing units).

None of this is lost on the residents of South San Diego, who lined up in March to testify before a panel of architects, economists and urban planners dispatched by the American Institute of Architects to study San Ysidro’s problems.

“Multifamily low-income housing built during the 1980s is seen as unplanned, aesthetically offensive and symbolic of the ‘dumping’ of low-income people displaced from elsewhere in San Diego County into a town that is incapable of absorbing them,” the Regional Urban Design Assistance Team concluded.

“The housing, both in terms of individual dwellings and overall settlement patterns, is also seen as culturally inappropriate,” the team’s report said.

South San Diego, Schneider said, “is nothing but a city barrio.”

More complicated are the reasons why public housing has been dumped in South San Diego. Underlying all multifamily housing construction are the market forces that control whether a developer can afford to build. To build low-income housing, developers--be they public agencies or private businessmen--will seek out low-cost land.

That’s why the balanced community plan “is a laugh,” said developer Jack Walsh, a partner in perhaps the most vilified of all recent San Ysidro housing projects, Parkhaven I and II, on Camino de la Plaza. The barracks-like dwellings are a combination of 80 units reserved for the poor and 320 market-rate apartments.

Development decisions are made on the basis of demand and costs, not social considerations, he said. “At that time (1984), there was a tremendous need for new housing stock,” Walsh said. “Because what was happening was that new housing stock was not being built in low-income areas. What was available was overpriced. People were paying high rents.”

In late 1981, the Housing Commission paid just $6,600 to $15,400 in land and acquisition costs in San Ysidro--substantially less than in other parts of the city. With HUD offering a fixed payment for each unit of public housing, the decision was essentially determined by prices, said Mike Brown, the commission’s project manager for housing finance and development.

Wide Variations

A 1982 study by the San Diego Assn. of Governments shows a huge variation in the land acquisition costs of selected parcels of land, from as low as $7,000 per apartment in Southeast San Diego and $8,000 in San Ysidro to as much as $109,000 per unit in Pacific Beach.

The Housing Commission’s role in the growth of low-income housing in South San Diego began after HUD discovered in the late 1970s that San Diego was one of the few major American cities without a single unit of municipally owned public housing, and began threatening to withhold other federal funds as a penalty.

Under former Executive Director Ben Montijo, the commission began to search for available low-cost land, and quickly found it in South San Diego. The commission built 286 units there between 1980 and 1985, and bought 36 more.

“I’m not denying that we didn’t contribute to it at one time,” Brown said. “We were under pressure to build low-income housing and that’s where the (affordable) land was.”

“At the time we were building public housing there was land available in San Ysidro, it was zoned properly so we didn’t have to go through any discretionary land-use requirements, and you had a councilman who believed that the low-income people in San Ysidro deserved a decent place to live,” said Elizabeth Morris, acting executive director of the commission.

The councilman was Uvaldo Martinez, who in the eyes of many community leaders did nothing to stop the tide of low-income housing crowding San Ysidro--and actually worked to attract some of it--while other council members worked hard to keep it out of their districts.

“It happened exactly during the time he was there,” said current District 8 Councilwoman Celia Ballesteros, who has led the call for dispersal of low-income housing across the city. “That’s when they dumped it in there.”

Martinez did not return three phone calls to his office.

In contrast, Southeast San Diego, another poor area of the city, has only 37 public housing units because council members like Leon Williams fought attempts to put them there.

“I resisted the concentration of low-income housing in southeast with the Housing Commission and with private developers,” said Williams, who is now a county supervisor. “If you have a disadvantaged community, you don’t want to give it more disadvantages.

While the Housing Commission takes considerable criticism for its role, the federal government’s efforts are much larger in comparison. Under HUD-sponsored programs alone, the government has built 7,115 units of low-income and elderly housing in San Diego. And, of course the lion’s share, 2,825 units, went into District 8.

Housing Projects

Of those, 1,400 were reserved for the poor. All of them were built in large, densely packed housing projects, and each project was placed in San Ysidro or Otay. Elderly housing units, which are generally less offensive to neighbors, were located in other areas.

Those projects were developed under the federal Model Cities program, a Johnson Administration effort to upgrade poor, underdeveloped regions, said Benjamin Bobo, manager of the Los Angeles HUD office.

“San Ysidro and Otay were both Model Cities areas,” Bobo said. “The policy at the time (in the early and mid-1970’s)) was to place projects in Model Cities areas.”

Ultimately, the building was stopped because of community objections over the concentration of housing for the poor in the area, he said. But a decade ago, HUD did not try to avoid such concentrations as it does now, he said.

Another program responsible for low-income housing units is the known as the “Density Bonus Program,” which Walsh used to include the 80 units of low-income housing in the Parkhaven projects in 1985 and 1986. The projects are located in the same San Ysidro neighborhood as the Housing Commission’s public housing.

Under the state law that governs the program, the developer automatically receives a bonus of 25% more units if he agrees to reserve 20% of the apartments for poor people. Citywide, 830 low-income apartments have been built under the density bonus program, the largest portion of them in South San Diego.

City Council decisions also figure into some projects, particularly when zoning amendments or conditional-use permits are needed. Perry and others in San Ysidro blamed the council three years ago for issuing $25 million in bonds to finance Parkhaven.

“We got absolutely no support from anyone on the City Council, even Uvaldo” to stop Parkhaven, Perry said. “We just didn’t stand a chance.”

Market forces and political decisions also combine to keep public housing out of middle-class and affluent areas. Housing commissioners earlier this year rejected possible public housing sites on Stanley Street and Clairemont Drive because land and acquisition costs drove the price to more than $140,000 per apartment. HUD offers the city just $74,000 per unit, and the city must pay the rest of the cost.

But a six-unit site on Grand Avenue was accepted at $132,000 per apartment, raising the question of how much to spend to place low-income housing in middle-class areas.

“I don’t think anybody can draw a line,” said Tim O’Connell, an aide to Mayor Maureen O’Connor. “If they find a site that is perfect for their need, if they find a site that at the time seems reasonably priced--and that may be a very high price-- . . . they will choose that site at that time.”

Development Killed

Political pressure from residents can scuttle even financially acceptable projects. In September, a five-unit project on Mt. Laurence Drive in Clairemont that had been approved by housing commissioners was turned down by a City Council committee after residents of the area complained that the five-unit dwelling did not fit into their single-family neighborhood and would lower their property values. Even Ballesteros, who issued a stern lecture about the need to disperse public housing across the city, agreed.

“It was not in keeping with the way the community had been allowed to develop by the city,” she said in an interview.

Housing activist Melvin Shapiro questions the wisdom of spending large amounts of money to place small numbers of low-income apartments in middle-class areas. Noting the recently approved expenditure of $150,000 per apartment for six units in Pacific Beach, Shapiro said “they could build elsewhere for approximately half of that.”

“I thought that was a terrific waste just so six poor families can live in Pacific Beach,” he said.

Efforts at creating balanced communities will automatically cause friction, because it threatens home values and undermines the “status” of certain neighborhoods, Shapiro believes.

“Anything that detracts from their status or detracts from the value of their home is something (homeowners) will oppose--and they should,” he said.

With acceptable sites becoming scarcer, San Diego may begin to look at alternatives that have been adopted by other cities. They include land banking--buying land and holding onto it until HUD subsidies rise--practiced in Philadelphia. Maryland’s Montgomery County has passed a zoning ordinance requiring any developer building more than 50 units to reserve 12.5% of them for the poor or donate land to the county.

A committee appointed by O’Connor is currently drafting guidelines on how to acquire sites for public housing and will present it to the City Council this month, O’Connell said.

Officials concede that in older parts of the city, the scarcity and cost of land will effectively prevent the building of significant amounts of public housing for the foreseeable future.

Subsidized Housing in San Diego

These figures, provided by the San Diego Planning Department, show the number of government subsidized housing units in the city during 1985-86. The city’s median household income is $16,408. Low-income families of four can make up to 80% of median; moderate-income families can make up to 120% of median.

Low-Income Units Neighborhood Total Housing Units (Pct. of All Housing Units) Citywide 393,684 18,213 (4.6%) Chollas Park 7,662 1,357 (17.7%) City Heights 10,181 884 (8.7%) Clairemont 34,247 789 (2.3%) Del Mar Heights 2,925 0 (0.0%) Downtown 7,314 920 (12.6%) Encanto 16,108 859 (5.3%) Golden Hill 5,131 150 (2.9%) Hillcrest 10,184 323 (3.2%) La Jolla 13,410 11 (0.0%) La Playa 4,018 10 (0.2%) Linda Vista 9,628 680 (7.1%) Loma Portal 5,400 49 (0.9%) Los Penasquitos 12,051 7 (0.0%) Middletown 5,943 409 (6.9%) Midway-Old Town 5,966 746 (12.5%) Miramar 211 92 (43.6%) Mira Mesa 16,281 14 (0.0%) Mission Beach 4,307 3 (0.0%) Mission Hills 4,658 161 (3.5%) Mission Valley 2,166 0 (0.0%) Navajo 14,236 14 (0.1%) Nestor 10,419 712 (6.8%) Normal Heights 20,839 719 (3.5%) North Park 18,268 513 (2.8%) Ocean Beach 11,079 38 (0.3%) Otay 6,517 360 (5.5%) Pacific Beach 21,822 479 (2.2%) Paradise Hills 10,289 880 (8.6%) Pomerado 4,706 120 (2.6%) Rancho Bernardo 11,103 2 (0.0%) Rolando-Redwood 16,391 905 (5.5%) San Carlos 8,028 9 (0.1%) San Pasqual Valley 75 0 (0.0%) San Ysidro 4,987 1,296 (26.0%) Serra Mesa 6,647 866 (13.3%) Southeast 10,022 1,088 (10.9%) South Park 7,551 173 (2.3%) State University 8,728 193 (2.2%) Tierrasanta 8,780 2,321 (26.4%) University City 14,920 54 (0.4%)

Moderate-Income Units Neighborhood (Pct. of All Housing Units) Citywide 6,508 (1.7%) Chollas Park 103 (1.3%) City Heights 86 (0.8%) Clairemont 391 (1.1%) Del Mar Heights 0 (0.0%) Downtown 0 (0.0%) Encanto 208 (1.3%) Golden Hill 2 (0.0%) Hillcrest 0 (0.0%) La Jolla 0 (0.0%) La Playa 0 (0.0%) Linda Vista 71 (0.7%) Loma Portal 0 (0.0%) Los Penasquitos 1,308 (10.9%) Middletown 0 (0.0%) Midway-Old Town 814 (13.6%) Miramar 0 (0.0%) Mira Mesa 355 (2.2%) Mission Beach 0 (0.0%) Mission Hills 0 (0.0%) Mission Valley 0 (0.0%) Navajo 0 (0.0%) Nestor 332 (3.2%) Normal Heights 61 (0.3%) North Park 140 (0.8%) Ocean Beach 5 (0.0%) Otay 191 (2.9%) Pacific Beach 4 (0.0%) Paradise Hills 0 (0.0%) Pomerado 0 (0.0%) Rancho Bernardo 0 (0.0%) Rolando-Redwood 458 (2.8%) San Carlos 0 (0.0%) San Pasqual Valley 0 (0.0 %) San Ysidro 412 (8.3%) Serra Mesa 0 (0.0%) Southeast 20 (0.2%) South Park 4 (0.0%) State University 11 (0.1%) Tierrasanta 448 (5.1%) University City 1,084 (7.3%)

Figures include 5, 727 units of military housing