Politics Report: Oh Henry!

A City Hall source told me San Diego City Councilmember Henry Foster did not want to break up the City Council’s pro-housing majority Tuesday, before he broke up the Council’s pro-housing majority. He wanted the mayor and his colleagues to consider a pause on the bonus ADU housing program, the law that had made it easy to build multiple units behind an existing house.

He didn’t necessarily want to kill it.

But they either ignored him or called his bluff and then found out he wasn’t bluffing.

Whatever back room discussions did or did not happen, suddenly, unexpectedly, the Council found itself voting to kill the ADU program.

It is a program reviled by many neighborhood activists but championed by housing proponents and outside observers who had recognized the city for finding a way to get so many homes built so quickly.

The motion and the vote didn’t actually kill the program. They’ll have to officially do that. And some wondered whether it was even legal to vote on it at all. But Foster rang a bell that signaled a big change to the way the City Council has handled housing for the last 10 years and regardless of what happens now, there’s no way to un-ring it.

What happened: The City Council finally was set to deal with a nagging problem in Encanto. Residents and reporters, particularly KPBS‘s social justice and equity reporter, had been haranguing the city about the so-called Footnote 7. Footnote 7 was a subtle, 2020 fix to the Encanto Community Plan, passed originally in 2015. The note clarified that the minimum lot size in Encanto was no longer 20,000 square feet but 5,000 square feet.

A 20,000 square-foot lot is quite big in the middle of a city.

In theory, Footnote 7 meant that landowners and developers could take 20,000 square-foot existing lots and subdivide them without much hassle.

Both 20,000 square-foot lots and 5,000 square-foot lots, though, are inconsistent with the zoning for the neighborhood, which allows up to four units per acre (an acre is 43,560 square feet). So the city, in trying to fix an inconsistency, created another one.

The Council was being asked Monday to go back to the first inconsistency and get rid of Footnote 7.

There’s probably a fascinating story about the bureaucratic bumbling that led to this original mistake and the clumsy fix.

At the same time: Builders and landowners were exploiting the city’s decision to allow them to build one market-rate ADU for every affordable ADU they built – up to the allowed floor-area ratio of a lot. For example, this may be a bit sloppy but, if you had a 20,000 square foot lot, with an existing 1,500 square-foot existing home, at a floor-area ratio of 0.43, you could build 6,100 square-feet of more homes or maybe 15 small units. These aren’t granny flats as we knew them.

It was a quick way for the city to add a ton of housing. But many neighbors grew furious.

None more than neighbors in Encanto, who were upset not only by the ADUs but also the discovery of Footnote 7 and the change to the minimum lot size.

Encanto’s big lot sizes had proven attractive to developers and two of the most controversial projects going forward were not ADU projects at all. But the combo of Footnote 7 and the ADU explosion, along with city’s shameful history of pushing people of color to Encanto gave its outrage resonance other neighborhoods haven’t reached with their complaints.  

Foster’s bell: You could tell Councilmember Foster was conflicted. After an hour and a half of testimony from Encanto residents, Foster’s first comments were about program but how awful Footnote 7 was but how it kind of made sense. Big lot sizes are not good if you care about racism and segregation in the history of housing.

“Large minimum lots do not further fair housing and are discriminatory, as they were designed to keep specific individuals from moving to a community,” he said and then he quoted from this University of San Diego paper. “Studies consistently highlight how these types of rules hurt affordability, promote exclusion and waste land.”

Regardless, he said he still wanted to go back to the larger minimum lot sizes in Encanto. And then he said something people talked about the rest of the week: He also wanted to end the bonus ADUs. They were doing more harm than good, he said.

That’s big.

“The current ADU density bonus program as implemented was destroying community character, impacting for-sale opportunities and potentially creating unsafe conditions,” he said. He motioned to both throw out Footnote 7 and rescind completely the bonus ADU program.

Then the shock: Every member of the City Council voted with him. They weren’t going to oppose rescinding Footnote 7 or going against the residents of Encanto gathered in the Chamber. Whether they stick to killing ADUs is the big question now.

Suddenly, the group fighting these for years in places like Talmadge had a powerful new ally: People in the Council Chambers hollered in joy as he read his statement and it progressed to a vote. Geoff Hueter, the chair of Neighbors for a Better San Diego, cheered the move, even though it is unclear what will happen now.

“It’d be hard to have nothing happen at this point,” Hueter said. “There is going to be change to the bonus ADU program after this. It was never thought through — the impacts it would have or what limitations it had or how and where it would get exploited most.”

The response: The mayor and staff seemed shocked and speechless. There were murmurs about the decision’s legality as the discussion of ADUs was not on the Council docket. But the vote merely demanded it come back as an official proposal.

Will the mayor do that? Or just ignore it?

And ADUs were arguably linked. If Foster had merely returned the minimum lot sizes to 20,000 square feet, those large lots would be a lot easier to build more ADUs on. If he didn’t want that to happen, he had to do something about ADUs.

Met Water Boss Is Officially Out; What It Means for SD

I wrote several months ago about San Diego’s role in the sudden downfall of the Metropolitan Water District’s general manager, Adel Hagekhalil. A workplace discrimination complaint brought him down and, among many other points, that complaint, from the then CFO, referenced his deference to San Diego board members as fiscally reckless.

Hagekhalil had pushed the CFO to assume a complex water deal would soon infuse it with cash and allow it to pass along lower water rate increases to its agencies – agencies including the San Diego County Water Authority. San Diego representatives had insisted on this and Hagekhalil was listening. Water rates are soaring with no end in sight and this decision kept them from soaring even more.

Now he’s gone: This week, the board of the MWD decided to push him out officially after months of suspension. He appears ready to fight back but the interim general manager, Deven Upadhya, is now the actual general manager.

What about that water deal: The water deal on which MWD built its budget and rate structure was a complex transfer of water that San Diego had rights to. The federal government was going to subsidize the transfer resulting in millions to Met.

It’s the first baby step toward the future San Diego has been trying to build where all the Southern California water agencies form a market allowing them to sell water to each other. The agencies that have claim over more water than they need would be able to sell it to agencies that need water.

However, you may have heard, there’s a new president. And he has paused all sorts of federal funding efforts. Word is that the LA-San Diego-Imperial Valley water transfer deal may still go through, it just could take a while.

And about the legal fights: Hagekhalil, in his brief stint as one of the most powerful men in water in the world, was known for nothing more than his openness and willingness to work with San Diego water officials. We memorably hosted the moment where Hagekhalil and Daniel Denham, the general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority did a fist bump at Politifest in 2023.

Their hope was a quick resolution to the massive and complex litigation between the agencies most notably the dispute about how much MWD charged to move San Diego water.

So is Hagekhalil’s demise bad for a deal?

Denham told me not at all. It’s coming, he said, both boards have authorized him and Upadhya to make a deal.

“I’m very hopeful we can get a settlement within the next six months if not sooner,” Denham said.

La Jolla Turns in the Signatures; Now What?

The Association for the City of La Jolla turned in 8,000 signatures to the San Diego Local Area Formation Commission, or LAFCO, Wednesday, officially starting the process that could lead to La Jolla seceding from the city of San Diego.

What happens now: I talked to Priscilla Mumpower, the assistant executive officer of San Diego LAFCO. She said they need 6,800 valid signatures from La Jolla voters so LAFCO contracts with the County Registrar of Voters to verify that enough of the signatures belong to legitimate La Jolla voters.

This can be tricky: Library and parks supporters and the San Diego Municipal Employees Association are still in court challenging the Registrar of Voters after it determined that they had not gathered sufficient signatures to put a parcel tax on the ballot. Signatures can be thrown out for pretty minor discrepancies for things like street names in addresses not matching perfectly.

If they have insufficient signatures: They can ask for 15 more days to make up the difference.

If they have sufficient signatures: Then a long process starts. LAFCO will hire a consultant, for whom the La Jollans will have to pay. The consultant will do a fiscal analysis of all the potential revenue the La Jollans will be able to come up with, the cost of the services they will have to deliver and how much they’ll owe the city of San Diego from the sort of alimony they’d have to pay after the divorce.

The city and the La Jollans would begin a long negotiation about that alimony and about various services the city would or would not provide La Jolla.

Then, finally, San Diego LAFCO board would vote on approving the deal they came up with.

If approved: La Jolla would vote.

If La Jolla voted yes: Then the city of San Diego (including La Jolla) would vote.

There’s very little chance this all could get on the 2026 ballot.

Notes

Afghan Evac panic: San Diego’s Shawn Van Diver was on the Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, the podcast, this week to discuss his cause to help Afghans who had helped the American war effort and were on the path to flee the Taliban and get to the United States.

President Trump immediate ceased the U.S. refugee program, throwing the Afghanistan evacuation cause into chaos.

“We think this was an oversight. We think they didn’t mean to do this,” Van Diver said.

Chamber update: Chris Howard, the president and CEO of Sharp HealthCare told me that contrary to my prior reporting, Jessica Anderson, the current interim CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, was not necessarily the favorite to become the permanent CEO. She was a candidate on equal footing as them all.

If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.