San Diego Needs Affordable Housing Where it Does the Most Good

Ricardo Flores is the executive director of the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) San Diego – a nonprofit community development corporation that funds affordable housing projects. Ricardo and his wife live in Kensington.

The San Diego region – and California in general – has been in the throes of a severe housing crisis for years.

The scarcity of housing has driven home prices through the roof and driven many families and young professionals out of state to places like Texas where housing is much more affordable. And the lack of housing has certainly contributed to the growth in homelessness across the county.  

Fortunately, there is much greater focus today on housing production, especially much-needed affordable housing. Lawmakers are passing pro-housing laws at a much more rapid clip in Sacramento and in cities across California, and the state has also stepped up its efforts to crack down on cities that refuse to be part of the solution. 

While building more affordable housing is certainly critical, it’s becoming increasingly important where housing is built. In San Diego, affordable housing units tend to be sited south of Interstate 8 in disadvantaged communities where less opportunity and fewer resources exist. 

But growing research shows that there are enormous benefits to placing affordable housing in wealthier communities, and that children who grow up in these communities will be much better off as adults – they will be healthier, wealthier and live longer. And, as a result, the need to provide subsidies to those who would otherwise grow up in less affluent areas is minimized. 

For example, let’s compare the community of Otay Mesa in the South County with the more affluent community of Del Mar.

Looking at income levels, we’ll use the Opportunity Atlas, a data tool from the U.S. Census Bureau and Harvard University’s research institute Opportunity Insights. It uses census and Internal Revenue Service data to track the outcomes children have as adults based on where they grew up. It is based on a study of 20 million Americans from childhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s to their mid-thirties. 

According to the Opportunity Atlas, income levels from these two communities couldn’t be any further apart – a child who grew up in a low-income household in Del Mar earns nearly four times more at age 35 than someone who grew up in Otay Mesa.

With respect to life expectancy, a baby from Del Mar will live much longer than a baby from Otay Mesa. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a baby born in Del Mar in 2023 will live 10 years longer than a baby born in Otay Mesa (82 and 72 years respectively).

Despite the many benefits of creating mixed-income communities and putting affordable housing in wealthier cities, some like Del Mar and Coronado have long resisted the idea. In fact, Del Mar doesn’t have a single designated unit of affordable housing within its borders despite a state mandate to provide for 113 such units.

While Del Mar is in talks with the agency that runs the Del Mar Fairgrounds to potentially build 61 units on the fairgrounds property, any decision on that is still a couple years away and completion of the project several more years beyond that.  

Meanwhile, the city has unfortunately been openly opposed to a ready-to-go affordable housing project known as Seaside Ridge that would provide 85 affordable units along with nearly 200 market-rate units, creating the ideal mixed-income community.

As we work to solve our housing shortage, let’s do so intelligently. Let’s resist the temptation to cluster affordable housing in low-resourced areas of our county where opportunity lags behind other areas. And let’s give more people the opportunity to prosper financially, to contribute to our tax base, to be healthier and live longer by putting more affordable housing in communities like Del Mar – and Coronado and La Jolla – where the chances of life-long success and happiness are much greater. 

Our region will be much better off because of it.    

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