Gentrification Is Coming for South San Diego County

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that Michael Inzunza wants the same amenities in Chula Vista that are found in northern San Diego County cities. He does not seek parity in home values between Encinitas and Chula Vista.

A festive crowd gathered at Chula Vista City Hall on a recent Tuesday evening to watch two newly elected City Council members take their oaths of office and join fellow city leaders at the Council dais. 

There were multiple rounds of applause, hugs, photographs, plenty of schmoozing — and one noteworthy announcement from just-sworn-in Councilmember Michael Inzunza about what he called “a new vision of Chula Vista.” 

“(The amenities) they have in Encinitas and other well-to-do communities [in northern San Diego County]– why can’t we have that?” Inzunza asked during his inaugural speech. “Why do we have to travel for vacation? Why can’t we have that here?” 

Inzunza proceeded to detail his “new vision” for Chula Vista, where just two decades ago, nearly one in 10 families lived in poverty and residents such as the late Richard Burgos were lionized as pioneers of San Diego County’s lowrider scene. 

Pointing to lushly landscaped master-planned subdivisions recently built near the city’s eastern border, a 1,600-room luxury resort slated to open next year alongside a revamped waterfront and recent progress toward establishing a four-year university on land already set aside for that purpose, Inzunza said Chula Vista was poised to become a regional leader in San Diego County, a magnet for jobs, tourism and prosperity. 

“I am hopeful that our city will grow in the right direction,” he said. “I am hopeful we’re going to build this vision together.” 

Inzunza is not alone among South San Diego County leaders in wanting more for a region that has often felt dismissed or left behind by wealthier — and less ethnically diverse — parts of the county. 

No longer content to allow more prosperous regions to pass them by, leaders are recruiting development projects, seeking to expand educational opportunities and pushing back when they feel bullied by more powerful neighbors. 

In National City, one of San Diego County’s smallest and lowest income cities, leaders recently launched an effort to stop the Port of San Diego from, as City Councilmember Marcus Bush described it, “tak[ing] advantage” of vulnerable residents by siting unwanted industrial projects near their homes and underpaying for services the city provides on port property. (The port denies doing either of those things.) 

Imperial Beach City Councilmember Jack Fisher lamented at a recent Council meeting that his city historically has “been neglected by the county.” But he then pivoted and said that, due in part to city development efforts, “every home is [now] a million dollars.” (The median home price in the city is actually just shy of $900,000, but close enough.) 

Chula Vista Mayor John McCann put it succinctly during a short interview following his city’s inauguration festivities. 

“For decades, Chula Vista had always been considered a not so nice city near the border,” McCann said. “We’ve worked diligently to make it blossom…This is Chula Vista’s decade.” 

Statistics support McCann’s bullish outlook. Over the past two decades, the poverty rate in Chula Vista has fallen by nearly half to six percent, according to the U.S. Census. The city’s median household income of $106,623 is now higher than the statewide average. Since 2010, the city’s population has grown more than twice as fast as in surrounding San Diego County. 

Home values in the city have a long way to go to reach parity with Encinitas, where the $2.2 million median listing price is more than twice as high as in Chula Vista. But prices in the city’s more manicured eastern half now sometimes top $1 million, a startling figure in a city once regarded as a budget market. 

Even National City’s current real estate listings include a restored Craftsman-style bungalow offered for $895,000. The price per square foot of the 988-square-foot, two-bedroom house is nearly equal to the per-square-foot average in Encinitas. 

National City Mayor Ron Morrison said he sometimes meets with developers who swagger into his office thinking they can intimidate and low-ball him because his city isn’t wealthy. He has a strategy for that. He pointed to a saggy sofa against one wall of his office. 

“They sink into that sofa and then I’m higher than them here at my desk chair,” he said. “It’s psychological. I don’t let them take advantage of us.” 

On a driving tour of his city earlier this month, Morrison pointed proudly to a recently built Best Western hotel near the city’s marina and described plans for additional hotels nearby and an expansion of a beloved city waterfront park. 

“This whole area will be part of Pepper Park,” he said, gesturing toward what is now an asphalt lot where the automobile importer Pasha parks cars newly arrived from a nearby port berth. Pasha and the port agreed to convert part of the lot into an expanded park as part of a balanced-use plan negotiated by Morrison and other city officials. “It took a long time but we got it done,” Morrison said. 

In his City Council inauguration speech, Chula Vista’s Michael Inzunza took pains to include the entire city, not just his upper-income district, in his ambitious vision of the future. He said that during his campaign, he knocked on 12,000 doors and talked to 30,000 city residents. 

All of those residents, he said — “friends and neighbors, police officers, fire fighters, unionized construction workers” — shared a hope that their city could become a destination for high-paying jobs, high-quality educational opportunities and prosperous neighborhoods. 

“This isn’t about me or the mayor or the Council,” Inzunza said. “It’s about the residents of Chula Vista.” 

As such hopes increasingly become reality in South County, the challenge for area leaders now includes not just boosting their cities but following through on Inzunza’s inclusive aspirations and ensuring that growing development doesn’t leave existing residents behind or dilute the region’s distinctive culture. 

Just one week before Chula Vista’s festive inauguration ceremony, Imperial Beach residents packed their city’s Council chamber to beg for help after an out-of-town corporate investor bought an aging apartment complex and announced it planned to evict the complex’s residents to make way for a comprehensive remodeling project. 

The developer offered to let displaced residents rent units in the remodeled complex once work is complete. But most residents said they would not be able to afford the new rents, which they anticipated could rise by at least a third. 

“People like me are being forced out,” complex resident Joshua Lopez told Councilmembers. “Profits outweigh the welfare of the people.” 

Following more than an hour’s worth of such testimony from residents, Councilmembers wrestled openly with how to keep people housed in a gentrifying city without trampling on the rights of property owners. “The [housing] market in Imperial Beach is resetting,” said Councilmember Fisher. “A lot of people will have to move no matter what.” 

In his own inauguration speech, Inzunza’s fellow newly elected Councilmember Cesar Fernandez articulated a slightly different vision of his hometown. Ferndandez’s district, in Chula Vista’s more industrial southwestern corner, has the city’s highest percentage of Latino residents (more than 75 percent) and some of its lowest income neighborhoods. 

Fernandez looked back, not forward, to a beloved mother-in-law who died during the Covid-19 pandemic. She would have been proud to see him taking his place on the Council dais, Fernandez said. She also, he said, “would have had long list of things that need to be improved in the neighborhood.” 

Fernandez said he soon would announce a “100-day plan” for his first months in office that would include boosting public safety in a district with a large number of homeless residents, ensuring that businesses in Chula Vista prioritize hiring local workers and helping residents access City Hall by staging “community forums” to hear local concerns. 

“I start humbled and proud to have been elected,” Fernandez said. He described campaigning on a platform of ensuring that his district has a say in a fast-changing city. “Those campaign priorities need to become action items,” he said.