San Diego City Council Approves Plan To Preserve Affordable Housing

Speaker 1: 00:00 The effort to increase affordable housing and rental units in San Diego has focused largely on construction. But last week, the San Diego city council took a different tack spurred by estimates that the city could lose more than half of its 70,000 affordable rental units. In the next 20 years, the council put plans in motion to preserve them. A proposed new law would require private owners of affordable units to alert the city. If they intend to sell, to allow designated non-profits the chance to buy the properties and keep rents low. Joining me a San Diego union Tribune, reporter David Garrick and David, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. It was the demolition of affordable rental units in Rancho Penasquitos that apparently got the city thinking about this kind of preservation. Can you tell us about that? Speaker 2: 00:47 Yeah. It was a 300 unit complex in Rancho Penasquitos and before the city even knew what was happening, the, uh, owner had sold it to a private developer to tear it down and build a 600 unit complex. And city officials were kind of frustrated. They felt like if they had known ahead of time that it was going to be sold and then redeveloped, and that they would lose those 300 subsidized units that low-income people really need, that they were able to do something about it. So this law is sort of a reaction to that frustration. The law basically would force someone if they're going to sell a project like that, to alert the city and alert nonprofit developers. So there may be some sort of deal could be worked out Speaker 1: 01:24 Right now. The city, when they have found out about Rancho Penasquitos subsequently, they commissioned a study on affordable housing preservation. And that came up with that estimate that more than half the city's affordable rental units might disappear soon. Why is the city in danger of losing so many affordable rental units? Speaker 2: 01:43 Yeah, it's, you know, it's a complicated thing that the average person doesn't understand, but when someone lives in a subsidized housing, typically the developer has made a deal with either the federal government or a state or local government to lower the rents for a certain number of years, either 40 years or 55 years. So those all sounded great in 1970, because it seems so far away, but now a lot of those are expiring. And so when a subsidized apartment complex, when the rules that it's called a deed restriction, when the deed restriction expires, then the developer has the ability to start charging market rate rents. So this solution also addresses that. And when, when some of these units are about to expire, the plan would be for the city to go in and talk to the developer and say, Hey, we understand you have a right in a few years to make these market rate. We would like to talk to you about giving you additional subsidies now so that you would keep them subsidized and low rent for longer. Speaker 1: 02:34 You've been talking about how this relates to subsidized rental housing, but the city council is also talking about other units that have been designated naturally occurring, affordable housing. What does that mean? Speaker 2: 02:48 Uh, that means that this is typically an older apartment complex, that they can't really charge high rents because it's so old and maybe it doesn't have amenities. Maybe it doesn't have skylights. It doesn't have some of the sort of modern things that people look for. And so, while it's not subsidized, the rents are actually low enough that they're similar to a unit that actually gets government subsidies and they call it naturally occurring, affordable housing. They have a new acronym called Noah. Uh, and basically that study that you mentioned earlier, the city has 70,000 units might go away in the next 20 years. That includes both subsidized affordable housing and NOAA housing, the naturally occurring, uh, units. Uh, so they're all in that one big kettle, because the theory is that even if it's not subsidized, this is what this is what helps the affordable housing crisis. Having these units, whether than subsidized or whether they're naturally occurring. Speaker 1: 03:37 What else is in this, uh, action plan that the city council agreed on, Speaker 2: 03:41 Um, money, uh, if, if the plan ends up, uh, getting all the money that's requested in it, it'll get 47 million over the next five years. And that will be used to do the kind of things that I was talking about to LinkedIn deed restrictions, and to try to keep some affordable housing existing that may go away. Um, problem is that the city is in a real budget crunch right now because of the COVID-19 pandemic has decreased tourism revenue was San Diego relies on heavily because of conventions and the zoo and bubble park and sea world. And so the council approved it, but they made the, that the money is not mandated that the city council each year will consider this money to preserve affordable housing as part of the overall budget process. But if they get everything they wish for it be 47 million over five years, which is a considerable chunk of money. Speaker 1: 04:27 Does the proposed law say this law, this new law that the city council is proposing, Speaker 2: 04:32 It basically says that if you have a deed restricted property, you are required, it's a property where the rents, you can only charge a certain level of rent, right? That you have to alert the city that you're about to sell. And then you have to give the city the first right of offer and the first right of refusal. And in addition to the city, that also includes nonprofit developers that the city would approve and put on a list. So it's a pretty thorough piece of legislation that the city passed. And now that law wasn't approved last week, though, they, they gave the sort of outlines of that law that will have to subsequently come back to the city council to be approved. Speaker 1: 05:06 Now, as part of it's a seven part action plan, there's something called a preservation collaborative. Speaker 2: 05:13 I have to say as a reporter, that seems a little vague, and I wish there was a little more meat on the bone on that one. But the idea is that there'll be a, a group of a local think tank where you'd have nonprofits and people focused on housing preservation and maybe even the regional task force on the homeless. I think they were included come together and just have a regular conversation about what the stats show the city is going to update this report on a regular basis now of how much affordable housing there is and how much we're at risk of losing as a city. Um, and so they have a group that's constantly talking and discussing these issues, keeping them out on the forefront. So people like me write stories about them and people like you devote some of your radio time to them. Speaker 1: 05:50 And this doesn't mean that the city council has taken its eye off the ball of actually creating new housing. Does it officials feel like they need to Speaker 2: 05:58 Be to doing two things at once. It makes no sense to keep building and then letting the other stuff that already exists, go away. You need to have a sort of a two front war. The city is choosing to fight a two front war because they think that makes more sense than fighting only a one front war and only building new ones. Speaker 1: 06:11 I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune, reporter David Garrick, and David. Thank you so much. Thanks.