Growth Cap on Housing Heads for Fall Ballot

A slow-growth measure that would severely restrict the number of housing units that can be built in San Diego each year will be on the November ballot, the San Diego city clerk’s office announced Friday.

Members of Citizens for Limited Growth, which conceived and collected signatures for the initiative, reacted jubilantly to the news, saying that a spot on the ballot is tantamount to voter approval in November.

But a representative for the construction industry called the initiative a “fraud” and warned that, if passed, it would not slow the migration of people to San Diego but only guarantee higher housing prices and rents.

Limit on New Housing

The initiative would limit the number of new houses, apartments and condominiums built within the city limits to 7,000 in the first year after it is passed. That number would be decreased to 4,000 units in the fourth year and hold steady at that figure each year until 2010.

Those caps could be adjusted upward, however, if local government meets five environmental criteria proposed by the measure. Those criteria are better air quality, an ample water supply, construction of a secondary sewage treatment plant, the opening of additional landfills and enough new roads to ensure that traffic congestion doesn’t get any worse than now.

If all of those measures are met, then the fourth-year cap would be raised to 6,000 new housing units a year.

Mikel Haas, assistant city elections officer, said Citizens for Limited Growth submitted its petitions on March 22 with nearly 86,000 signatures. A random sampling of 5% of the names showed the group had gathered nearly 66,000 valid signatures--more than the 54,500 needed to qualify on the ballot.

Proponents of the measure, who have been gathering signatures since October, said Friday that they were confident it would pass.

‘Practically a Done Deal’

“I’m overwhelmed and I think it’s practically a done deal,” said Linda Martin, co-chair of Citizens for Limited Growth. “I felt all along that getting it on the ballot would be the big push, and once that it was on the ballot, it would be a go.”

Martin characterized the measure as moderate and said that the people who signed petitions to put it on the ballot were actually hoping it would be more restrictive.

“They would say, ‘Why isn’t this a no-growth initiative?’ ” said Martin. “People want to shut it (growth) down. People are really tired of the traffic. They’re tired of seeing the hillsides disappear under tract housing.”

But Councilman Ron Roberts, along with Kim Kilkenny, legislative counsel for the Construction Industry Federation, said that the environmental criteria built into the initiative would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet.

For instance, Roberts said, improving the air quality hinges more on stopping the smog from traveling south from Los Angeles, rather than slowing residential construction in San Diego.

Kilkenny said the requirement to build a secondary sewage treatment plant is not only unrelated to growth, but also a politically difficult task that may take more than a decade to complete.

“They’ve established thresholds that can’t be met and don’t relate to growth, so it’s a fraud,” said Kilkenny.

Kilkenny said that the only time construction slowed to the 4,000 unit cap called for under the measure was in the early 1980s, when a recession hit the building industry. The current annual limit under the city’s interim development ordinance, enacted in June, is 8,000 units--half of what was constructed during 1986.

Kilkenny also said a study commissioned by the city and released last week concluded that limits on housing construction do not stop growth. People will still come to San Diego, but the housing supply will dwindle, thus driving up prices, he said.

Both Kilkenny and Roberts said a citizen advisory group appointed by the mayor last year to study growth is working on amendments to the 1979 Growth Management Plan, proposals that Mayor Maureen O’Connor said she wants to put on the November ballot. The men said they hoped voters will choose the advisory group’s plan over the one that qualified Friday.

“I think the (building) industry, the whole economic sector, takes the threat seriously,” Kilkenny said of the measure sponsored by Martin’s group.

“If given a choice of an intelligent, comprehensive program and this recessionary scheme, I think the public will reject the 4,000 cap,” said Kilkenny.

Martin disagreed. She said San Diegans will reject the advisory group’s plan, which will have to be approved first by the City Council, because “the voters don’t trust” how city officials handle growth.