‘Housing You Matters” aims to mediate growth debate

A new coalition of builders, employers, environmentalists and community planners has launched a campaign to solve San Diego’s affordable-housing problem once and for all.

Called “Housing You Matters,” the organization has raised tens of thousands of dollars to hire a staff and map out an ambitious agenda for 2017.

“I would say it’s the year of reckoning,” said Borre Winckel, president and CEO of the Building Industry Association of San Diego County. “We can’t go on like this anymore.”

The most recent evidence demonstrates the crisis that some observers believe San Diego is experiencing.

The median price of a home in October topped the $500,000-plus mark for the first since the housing crash began in 2006.

But in spite of low apartment vacancy rates and inventories among for-sale homes, production is half what it was a decade ago.

Housing You Matters, unlike previous task forces, ad hoc committees and endeavors, currently counts 51 members from 39 organizations drawn from a variety of interests, ranging from grassroots organizations to big corporations like Qualcomm. It is run by an eight-member executive committee, chaired by Lori Holt Pfeiler, former Escondido mayor and currently head of the local Habitat for Humanity housing group.

Mary Lydon, the former executive director of the local Urban Land Institute chapter, has been hired as the group’s consultant with the job to coordinate research projects, public events and outreach efforts. She said the group grew out of a report by economist Lynn Reaser at Point Loma Nazarene University that estimated that 40 percent of new housing costs was due to regulation and fees. Only a slight reduction in housing regulations could increase the current annual housing input by about two-thirds, the study said.

“We can all agree that housing affordability will impact each of our organizations that represent thousands of residents and businesses in our region,” Lydon said.

But she said the group will focus on policy, not on individual project battles.

Such was the case last month with two land-use decisions in which the organization played differing roles.

Pfeiler, in her capacity at Habitat for Humanity, pleaded on Nov. 15 with the Poway City Council to approve a 22-unit for-sale affordable housing project aimed at veterans. The council voted 3-2 to deny approval on a variety of grounds.

By contrast the day before, the San Diego City Council voted to approve a new Uptown Community Plan, after Housing You Matters as well other advocates argued for retaining the current zoning rather than reducing the total by 1,900 homes.

A third project — a $40 million, 41-unit apartment, grocery and park-and-ride lot — is scheduled to be voted on a second time by the San Diego Association of Governments next week. It represents a compromise from earlier plans by SANDAG and a previous developer for the 3.6-acre site at Clairemont Drive and Morena Boulevard.

James LaMattery, an area real estate agent who formed a group called “Raise the Balloon” to fight the previous 60-foot-high proposal, said the new plan represents the best form of compromise.

“What we found was if the community is listened to, things do change,” LaMattery said. “You can mitigate how you do provide housing.”

Housing You Matters leaders hope to add military, church groups and organized labor to the coalition.

Murtaza Baxamusa, director of planning and development for the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council Family Housing Corp., said the coalition’s focus would be better narrowed to dealing with the most vulnerable — the homeless and people trying to get their first apartment or buy their first home.

“People are already well aware of the housing crisis and they don’t need to be convinced there is a crisis of affordability in housing,” Baxamusa said. “The question is what do we do about it.”

Lydon said the immediate plans for the coalition are to launch a countywide educational campaign and research effort to convince the public and elected officials that action is needed to build more housing. Members speak of publishing a scorecard that highlights what projects cities and county are or are not approving in line with their general land-use plans.

“Instead of us against them, it is all of us and we need to have a conversation,” Lydon said. “We can build housing, give developers certainty and be more sensitive to neighborhoods they’re building in.”

Among the initiatives planned next year:

• Design workshops organized by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects to sketch what San Diego neighborhoods with more housing might look like in 2050.
• A day-long session on innovative housing concepts presented by the San Diego Architectural Foundation.
• Best practices in housing regulation, production and finance as compiled by the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center and presented by the local ULI chapter.
• A workshop by the coalition to analyze the impediments to housing production regionally and how to overcome them.

Nicole Capretz, executive director of the Climate Action Campaign and a member of the steering committee, said she joined the coalition because it dovetails with other issues — climate change, transportation bottlenecks, homelessness and housing shortage.

“I feel, literally, all these issues are so critically important to the future of our city and the quality of life,” Capretz said, “and we’ve seen, for once, agreement among all these diverse stakeholders.”

But LaMattery, the activist in Clairemont who successfully battled against a large housing project at the midcoast trolley stop, echoed grassroots concerns that San Diego can’t grow forever.

As long as everyone in the whole country wants to move here, “there’s never going to be enough housing in Southern California,” he said.

roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley