The City Council voted Tuesday to expand the city’s vacant properties ordinance. Previously the city could only cite abandoned buildings that were boarded up. The ordinance now covers vacant lots, vacant foreclosures or pending foreclosures with code violations and vacant buildings that are not boarded up.
Councilman Todd Gloria backed the change. He said it will help everyone in the city.
"There are properties in my district, I think in every council district," he said, "where our offices receive calls wanting something to be done and when we turn to our professionals in code compliance, until today, if this passes, you did not have the tools to bring some of them into compliance because they did not occupy the one bubble that’s there on the top."
However, Gloria and other city leaders acknowledge San Diego needs more resources for code enforcement. The city’s neighborhood code compliance department lists four people in its staff directory as code compliance officers.
This year’s budget included money for a coordinator for the vacant properties program.
