Navy Finds Rough Sailing in Bid to Win Public Support for Off-Base Housing

Few things are as certain to stir San Diego homeowners to action as a hint that the Navy is eyeing vacant land in their neighborhood for military housing.

A specter emerges of sprawling barracks teeming with children, motorcycles and noise. That, in the minds of nearby residents, can only mean plummeting property values.

“The density is what concerns me,” said Tom McGeehan, who lives near a proposed Navy housing site in Southeast San Diego. “They have to cram in as many units as they can.”

Add to that increased traffic, overcrowding of schools and a rise in the local crime rate, McGeehan said, “and it’s just a bad situation.”

Others put it more bluntly. “These families have lower incomes, fathers overseas, working mothers and children with little to do but hang out,” wrote a couple who live in the area. “How will all these children entertain themselves? By loitering and vandalizing our neighborhood? . . . We are strongly requesting the Navy to reconsider.”

That complaint is among dozens of letters of protest sent to the San Diego Assn. of Governments over the last year, as the association tries to help the Navy find locations to build badly needed family housing. The search is taking on an air of urgency as land prices climb and open space dwindles.

From a list of about 100 possible locations, the Navy has settled on eight chunks of land scattered throughout the county as potential sites for about 1,100 new homes to be built by 1993.

Ironically, the Navy has learned, Navy personnel living near those sites are frequently among the most adamant about keeping Navy housing out of their neighborhoods.

Faced with a shortage of 6,000 units of family housing, strong neighborhood opposition and major public relations problems, the Navy says it has broken with past practices and is looking for diplomatic solutions.

“Once the Navy gets the land we can technically do anything we want with it, but politically, we’d never get away with it,” said Cmdr. Douglas Mann, the officer in charge of construction in the San Diego area. “We were anticipating some concern about any site we purchased.”

The Navy now tries to work with communities, seeking local support from the beginning of any building project, he said.

“It just makes our job easier,” he said. “If we’re eyeball to eyeball in the early stages, you can get what you want done that much faster. . . . We certainly don’t want any hard feelings and we don’t want our people ostracized.”

The change in tactics follows years of controversy over construction of the new Naval Hospital in Balboa Park, Mann said.

The new hospital opened in January after nearly a decade of acrimony between the Navy and various local officials and groups who objected to the use of the Florida Canyon site, considered to be one of the prime natural open spaces in the park.

So strong was the opposition that in 1979, during a mayoral election, the city’s voters were asked whether Florida Canyon should be leased to the Navy for the new hospital. More than 60% of the voters were against the plan. Years of political and legal fighting followed, but the Navy persisted and a land swap was worked out giving the city the old hospital site in exchange for the new one.

Now, Navy officials, including Mann, attend community meetings in areas under consideration as housing sites. Committees are formed early in the proceedings so that local residents can help draw up design specifications to ensure that the developments

blend in with the neighborhoods.

The Telegraph Point development under construction in Chula Vista is a case in point, Mann said. Nearby residents requested that the complex include enclosed garages--unusual for military housing--and the Navy agreed.

Telegraph Point, like all future off-base housing, was designed and built by a private contractor with experience in civilian housing, Mann said. While they lack swimming pools and tennis courts, the two-story townhouses at Telegraph Canyon and Otay Lakes roads blend in readily with nearby developments.

“There’s a change from a couple of years ago,” said Mike Stepner, assistant planning director for the City of San Diego. “The Navy would buy a site and build whatever they wanted on it. And the city encouraged this--just let the Navy go off and do its own thing. . . . The Navy hospital was just the capper,” Stepner said.

“The Navy realizes that times have changed and it’s best to work with the community and get support from the community,” he said.

The quality of Navy Housing has improved in recent years, Stepner said. “They’ve realized that if they want to keep people in the Navy, they can’t build glorified barracks.”

Jack Koerper, a military specialist for the Sandag, said high rental prices and the shortfall of Navy housing has resulted in thousands of “geographic bachelors,” enlisted men who leave their families behind in their home states and live in bachelor quarters.

The housing allowance for a low-ranking enlisted man or woman with dependents can be as little as $360, far too low an amount to cover the cost of a two-or three-bedroom apartment in the San Diego area.

“The greatest problem they face is the money situation,” said Lettie Rhoden who works in the Navy housing office. “They compete along with everyone else.” There is a wait of four months to 2 1/2 years for Navy housing, she said. The wait for a two-bedroom unit in Murphy Canyon, for example, can be more than two years, she said.

“There are some families that don’t move here because of the high cost of living,” Rhoden said.

Navy officials say it has never been the service’s intention to provide housing for all personnel, but concede that much more is needed in San Diego.

The Navy provides housing for all servicemen but is not required to provide housing for dependents. Single servicemen who choose to live outside Navy housing, as well as those with families for whom no housing is available, are given a housing allowance. Those with dependents get a higher amount. A petty officer, 3rd class, stationed in San Diego, for example, would receive $451 with dependents and $309 without.

The Navy aims to provide housing for at least one-third of service families, according to Chief Craig Huebler, a Navy spokesman. Some Navy families prefer to rent in civilian communities or buy their own homes to build equity, he said.

The discovery of lead contamination at a site near Chollas Lake has delayed for at least a year the construction of several hundred units of family housing scheduled to begin this year, officials said. Under the plan for future development, Sandag evaluates potential locations, assigning numerical scores for such things as commuting time to Naval bases, proximity to parks and capacity of nearby public schools.

Stepner and other planning officials review the sites to see if a housing development would conform to local community plans. “In some cases the sites were OK,” Stepner said. “In others they had been designated as parks or something else.”

Stepner said he thinks the Navy is finally approaching the problem in the proper way, but that communities remain concerned about Navy housing. “The Navy is torn,” Stepner said. “They need to provide housing for their personnel. They’re in a tough situation.”

The eight locations currently under consideration are:

Carmel Mountain, a privately owned 94-acre site in the Penasquitos community at the north edge of the City of San Diego.

North Edgemoor, three county-owned parcels totaling 34 acres in the City of Santee.

Tooma Street, a city-owned, 18-acre parcel in the Skyline-Paradise Hills area of San Diego.

New Salem, 10.8 acres owned by the City of San Diego in the Mira Mesa community.

Murray Hill, 90 acres of privately-owned land in the City of La Mesa.

Valencia Street, 11.5 acres of privately owned land in the unincorporated community of Spring Valley.

Saturn Boulevard, a privately owned 12-acre parcel in the Otay Mesa-Nestor community of San Diego.

Palm Avenue, 244 acres of privately-owned land near Chula Vista in the City of San Diego.

But there are problems with virtually all the sites. Many face strong neighborhood opposition. Others are out of step with with community development plans.

The New Salem site, for example, is a popular playing field for neighborhood children and a schools committee has recommended that it be retained for recreational use. Five playing fields have been set up there and the Mira Mesa Little League has been permitted to use the land without cost.

At the Palm Avenue site, surveyors have found San Diego Ambrosia, a species of plant listed as rare and endangered by the California Native Plant Society.

The strongest opposition seems to be at the Tooma Street site, where residents have gathered for boisterous public meetings over the last year and organized a letter-writing campaign to Sandag.

Some of the strongest language came from military families who own homes in the area.

“We are against this proposal,” one letter said. “We are a Navy family and we know how little the Navy supervises its family housing. The crime rates are usually high due to lack of security.”

Another resident wrote, “The U.S. Navy is my career. I love it. The housing shortage for enlisted Navy families is acute. I know it. But the proposed site for future high density housing on Tooma Street is so foolish an option.”

“We speak from personal experience of living in Navy housing and believe me we would never again live in housing or close to it,” wrote a third.

Navy officials say the community fears are based on false stereotypes and out-of-date notions about Navy housing. They point to a multimillion-dollar renovation project at the Gateway Gardens project, where new entryways and family rooms have been added in recent years and where all the units have been gutted and refitted with new appliances.

They are counting on the success of new developments such as Telegraph Point.

John D. Goss, the city manager of Chula Vista, said it is too early to tell whether that development will work out well. “People are on the sidelines viewing it,” he said. “We’ll know once it starts getting occupied and they start finishing off the fine points like landscaping.”

Some members of the city council toured the complex several weeks ago and were satisfied, he said. “I think there was a general feeling that it was meeting our expectations,” he said, adding, “It’s certainly not ideal for that part of the community.”

Nevertheless, he concedes that the Navy overcame considerable early opposition to the project. “I think they did a good job of trying to cooperate with the residents. . . . They followed through.”