On Friday, the L.A. Times wrote about the frequency with which well-off people are leaving expensive coastal cities.
One couple made $150,000 combined, for example, and moved to Phoenix so they could enjoy a large four-bedroom home.
But the majority of people leaving San Diego for more affordable places like Riverside County are not, in fact, wealthier residents who simply want bigger homes, writes VOSD contributor Alon Levy in a new analysis. More often, they’re low-income residents who are being pushed out.
People moving to San Diego tend to have higher incomes. “Today, many California suburbs have higher average incomes, but new exurbs like Riverside tend to be poor, as people move there because when they’ve been priced out of employment centers.”
There’s only one real solution, Levy writes: “for San Diego to create more affordable housing in the city and its inner suburbs, where commutes are shorter than in the Inland Empire.”
• During a press conference Monday, California Assembly Democrats announced that now that their transportation package has passed, their next priority will be to address the state’s housing crisis. There are roughly 130 housing-related bills on the table this session.
“We have a housing crisis and we need to act now,” said San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu, chair of the Housing and Community Development Committee.
San Diego Assemblyman Todd Gloria also drove home the importance in ensuring that middle-income families can afford homes. On Friday, Gloria announced a package of housing bills he wrote and co-wrote to help move the needle on housing.
“There is no silver bullet to the housing affordability crisis, but there are a number of solutions that we can and must take,” Gloria said.
Border Activist’s Disappearance Hits Close to Home
A prominent border activist is missing in Mexico under mysterious circumstances, and the whole ordeal hits close to home, writes Brooke Binkowski in this week’s Border Report.
Binkowski writes that Hugo Castro, who’s part of the group Border Angels and was traveling in Mexico as part of a refugee caravan, is a close friend of hers. Castro is from San Diego and lives in Tijuana. He sent out a message for help via a Facebook Live video just before he disappeared. KPBS reports that security camera footage might yield new clues in the case.
Also in the Border Report: Gov. Jerry Brown has pardoned three deported U.S. veterans, another journalist has been killed in Mexico and why baseball is better on the other side of the border.
• The L.A. Times wrote a story Monday focused on how some people don’t like the anti-border wall message within a new Barrio Logan mural. Strangely, the only critics who appear in the story are from Vista and have never even seen the mural in person, just in a photo.
Despite Recent Scare, Most SD Lead Cases Aren’t From Water
Elevated levels of lead found in the water at more than one San Diego County school has spooked parents and local officials.
But hundreds of local kids have been impacted by lead in the last year even if you disregard the water scare, according to health department records.
Last year, the health department found “91 [children] had what the county considers especially dangerous levels of lead in their blood. Another 680 had elevated levels that could still be high enough to cause intellectual impairments,” Ry Rivard reports.
Many of those cases were a result of exposure to lead paint.
• The San Ysidro school board OK’d a resolution Monday ensuring students and staff members “receive ‘free, clean and safe’ drinking water” following the discovery of tainted water at La Mirada Elementary in October.
“Staff and others in the district will continue drinking bottled water at its three oldest campuses,” reports the Union-Tribune.
Quick News Hits
• As a runner and Oregonian, I LOVE this description of San Diego’s Meb Keflezighi, who finished 13th in the Boston Marathon Monday: “the only runner since Steve Prefontaine to be known and loved by the first three letters of his name.” GO MEB! GO PRE! (Runners World)
• Cuts to arts funding in the city of San Diego’s new proposed budget is getting some pushback. (KPBS)
• The city has a new policy outlining when and how city assets can be named after a person or company. Backers of the plan to remake Balboa Park’s central plaza see publicly recognizing donors as key to funding the plan. (Union-Tribune)
• The leader of the San Diego Economic Development Corp. is not impressed with Trumponomics so far.
• My personal favorite story about Rep. Duncan Hunter’s questionable campaign expenditures, which are now under federal investigation, was this story about how he paid for rabbit airline travel. Now, the anti-Hunter “Bunny PAC” — is a thing that exists.
• The number of newborns in San Diego County impacted by drugs in their mothers’ systems is on the rise. (inewsource)