The City Council’s November vote to hike up the affordable housing fee was by no means the end of the story.
Ever since, a group of business leaders – calling itself the Jobs Coalition – has been on a mission to collect 34,000 signatures to force the increase onto the June ballot.
They believe the bump in the fee charged to developers to help build affordable housing is way too high. In some cases, it’ll go up by as much as 500 percent. Qualcomm, for example, would have to pay $5 million more under the new scheme when the company dives into its planned expansion in Sorrento Valley.
We recently checked out a couple claims from former Mayor Jerry Sanders and interim mayor Todd Gloria about whether these business leaders had put forward any feasible alternatives to fund housing.
Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis chatted with NBC 7’s Catherine Garcia about the business community’s efforts in this edition of San Diego Explained.