Emergency Ban OKd to Protect Single Housing

The San Diego City Council, acting to protect single-family neighborhoods in the months before an electoral showdown on growth control, Tuesday banned the replacement of single-family homes with multi-unit buildings.

The emergency prohibition--which takes effect today and lasts until the city’s Planning Department studies and reclassifies every community in the city--is aimed at inner-city neighborhoods where residents have loudly denounced the replacement of single-family homes with small blocks of apartments or condominiums.

The measure is identical to one contained in the Growth Management Plan the city is submitting for voter approval Nov. 8, but council members argued strongly that developers might rush to tear down homes in the months before the plan, if approved, would take effect Jan. 1.

‘Can’t Wait 3 1/2 or 4 Months’

“We can’t wait another 3 1/2 or 4 months to do this,” said Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who voted with a 7-2 majority for the measure. “We should do it now.”

Assistant Planning Director Michael Stepner said that planners have no exact count of single-family homes scheduled to be demolished in the next five months but that the prohibition could affect “hundreds” of small developers.

In a separate vote, the council rejected 6-3 similar emergency protections for the city’s hillsides, canyons, flood plains and wetlands. Only O’Connor and council members Abbe Wolfsheimer and Bob Filner voted for the plan, offered by Filner.

Those protections are also contained in the Growth Management Plan, which will compete on the ballot with a similar but generally stricter package of growth-control measures drafted by a slow-growth, citizens’ group.

The neighborhood-protection plan had long been favored by council members sensitive to the complaints of middle-class, single-family homeowners. On Tuesday, council members were chilled to learn that there has been an increase in applications for demolition permits in recent days.

“There has been a greater number of demolition permits applied for in the last week than normal,” Stepner said. “And the feeling is that people were trying to beat council action.”

Small Guys, Homeowners Will Pay

Building industry representatives have said that small developers and private homeowners will bear the brunt of the emergency ban.

Exempted from the ban are builders who want to replace a single-family home with another single-family home; developers who want to put up multi-family housing for the poor; developers who want to replace a single-family home with a school, park or church, and developers who had received approval to go ahead with a replacement project before Tuesday’s vote.

Only council members Judy McCarty and Filner opposed the measure. McCarty questioned whether the city could prove that a true emergency exists, a point also made by development attorney Matt Peterson.

City planners this month will begin a citywide study that will ultimately place every city neighborhood into one of three categories.

In “protected” neighborhoods, single-family homes will remain permanently safeguarded from replacement by multi-unit dwellings, according to the Growth Management Plan.

In “transitional” neighborhoods, the plan calls for an “orderly transition” from single-family homes to multi-family housing through the issuance of special permits.

In “reinvestment neighborhoods,” the transition to multi-family housing will be encouraged.