Mayor Todd Gloria Thursday announced the makeup of his new Middle-Income Housing Working Group, a 22-member panel of volunteer experts intended to develop and evaluate ideas to produce more housing for residents who earn too much to qualify for affordable housing but too little to afford rising market-rate home costs.
"In 2020, the city of San Diego approved only three building permits for moderate-income housing projects. That's not close to good enough," Gloria said. "I have loaded our new Middle-Income Housing Working Group with diverse, bold, creative thinkers who will advise me on ways to fill in the missing middle — so that every San Diegan can have a roof over their head at a price they can afford."
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The Middle-Income Housing Working Group will be chaired by Bill Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and former director of San Diego's Planning Department.
"Nothing is more important to San Diego than assuring everyone has access to good housing at an affordable price," Fulton said. "I'm proud to assist Mayor Gloria in his effort to make housing more affordable to middle- income San Diegans."
San Diego suffers from a lack of housing built for families earning between 80% and 150% of the area median income — $97,000 to $142,650 for a family of four. Between 2010 and 2020, the state's Regional Housing Needs Assessment called on the city to plan for 15,462 housing units to meet the demand of families in this income range, but just 37 were constructed, according to Gloria's office.
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The Middle-Income Housing Working Group includes affordable housing advocates, developers, finance professionals and representatives from building trades and think tanks. The group will meet frequently from September through November 2021 to prepare policy and financing recommendations that can be acted upon quickly by the mayor and City Council. Additional stakeholder groups and experts will be invited to participate in the meetings.
Members of the group are Fulton, Gilman Bishop, Mike Burnett, Molly Chase, Charles Davis, Chi Elder, Marcela Escobar-Eck, Lara Gates, Doug Hicks, Lori Holt Pfeiler, Reginald Jones, Stath Karras, Carol Kim, Sarah Lyman, Andrew Malick, Arnulfo Manriquez, Lenny McNeill, Kelly Moden, Louie Nguyen, Satomi Rash-Zeigler, Deborah Ruane and Stephen Russell.
