Building new homes is paramount. San Diego, and the state, desperately need more housing. A lot, lot more.
This week, the San Diego City Council approved changes to a housing plan it submitted to comply with a state housing law.
That law requires cities to show they can accommodate enough new housing. San Diego was the first city to go through the process this cycle, which is why it attracted interest across the state.
The approved plan shows the city could theoretically accommodate 174,678 new units by 2029. That’s a decent amount more than the required 108,036.
On the podcast this week, VOSD hosts Scott Lewis, Andrew Keatts and Sara Libby review what happened the last time the city went through this process and how those numbers actually shook out (spoiler: not great) and some other glaring issues with the plan.
In Other News
The latest at Lincoln: We’ve been following the drama at Lincoln High School over the last few weeks on the pod. This week, there was a major development in the form of a new hire at the school.
After weeks of public volleying over leadership issues at Lincoln, district leaders announced the school will add another principal focused on ninth graders. This happened just days after San Diego Unified Trustee Sharon Whitehurst-Payne wrote that the current leader was “exceptional” and that the district wouldn’t entertain the idea of holding public meetings to discuss the hiring of a new principal.
Redistricting is upon us! Though the next election is just about a year away, we don’t yet have a clear picture of how all the City Council districts will look. We’ve got a short video explainer on redistricting you should check out. And last year, we hosted a panel to discuss what the new boundaries could mean for the region. Watch that Politifest session here.
Ready to party: This is the last podcast before the “official” reopening of the state on June 15. What’s gonna happen? Your guess is as good as ours. We’ll shed business restrictions, lose mask mandates and start hanging out near strangers’ faces again. June 15 is also the last day of school for most of San Diego Unified and the state budget deadline. So if you hear a rager on the 15th, it’s probably for one of those reasons.