Ouch. voiceofsandiego.org/2026/01/14/t...

It didn’t seem to make the news, but Preserve Greater Golden Hill suffered a big loss last week in their lawsuit to stop the project at 30th and A Street. A judge denied their request for a permanent injunction, finding they were not likely to prevail.

Perfectly reasonable to not like the outcome, but no one should get their hopes up that the Supreme Court will choose to review this decision.

Can UCSD get to work on one of these? I’d sign up, this sounds like a great retirement www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/r...

Nearly the same end result could be achieved entirely without CEQA: the mayor could go stencil “bus only lane” on Sports Arena Blvd tomorrow and convince MTS to slightly increase frequency of one bus route, and this would all be upzoned under SB 79. Or just get that idea added to the SANDAG plan.

This will definitely get the kids off the social media! If only someone had thought before to tell them it might be bad for them…

Has anyone made the list of all the bus lines in San Diego with dedicated lanes? Park, ECB, University, the 15 BRT lanes…somewhat weirdly, I’m not sure this will apply to Coaster stations given all the late changes

This already happened in City of San Diego but no one is talking about it. 🤷🏻‍♂️ It takes effect August 22 outside the coastal zone

This thread is a common feature of development applications in San Diego: even if a building is not historically designated when a developer wants to demolish and build something new, the city makes them do the whole historical report and process. Seems illegal but no one challenges 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’ll be interesting to see how this applies in San Diego, specifically on historic designation. But it depends on developers just submitting applications rather than the current practice of asking for pre-submittal review.

👀

One notable change in the ADU regulations that I believe survived is the new ability to sell ADUs. It will be interesting to see how often that is used.

Just got back from NYC and it was a bit shocking how much cleaner the (admittedly touristy parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn) city is than San Diego. The streets, the parks, the public transportation: far far better maintained than our city.

Another relevant appellate court decision, this time from the Ninth Circuit: the City’s ban on yoga classes at public beaches and shoreline parks is unconstitutional: cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/op...

That San Diego neighborhood that stood up to ICE officers last week is also fighting new housing that could make things affordable for people like the restaurant worker they stormed the streets to defend. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/arti...

I’ll willingly concede this is my own weird niche issue, but all these reforms are still premised on the city attorney’s weird idea that parking meter charges are special and the revenue can only be spent for limited uses. No other city does this!

New opinion from the Court of Appeal on the parks and library ballot initiative case: the Court agrees the Registrar erred in disqualifying some signatures. BUT it’s not a win, the Court also concludes the San Diego Municipal Code prohibits the initiative from going on a future ballot so it’s moot

I’m getting quotes to replace an AC and furnace with an all-electric heat pump, which qualifies for huge federal IRA tax credits and rebates. I’ve had multiple contractors told me they won’t do the rebate because it’s too much hassle and I should just keep the gas furnace. Seems like a problem.

As the city grapples with a tough budget, it would be interesting (but probably impossible) to add up the cost of all the money spent on consultants for plans that are basically ignored by everyone the minute they are published.

Tired: La Jolla trying to secede from the City of San Diego to avoid new housing Wired: Encinitas trying to secede from County of San Diego to avoid new housing

I have a distinct recollection that at the hearing where the City Council passed the NP CPU in 2016, Todd Gloria made a big deal about how fixing this intersection needed to a top priority and done quickly. That obviously never happened. Gonna have to go dig the video up…

These numbers are blowing my mind. I get D3 having a lot of visitors to Balboa Park, but for every one visitor from D4, there are ~31 visitors from D2. That is a huge difference.

Earthquake Bluesky exists!

Is there clear guidance yet about how all the tariff changes affect buying products in Mexico and bringing them across the border? Have the duties and exemptions changed on declared purchases?

As I keep seeing huge new additions to single family homes in my neighborhood, I think an interesting legislative idea would be to try to stop discrimination on the basis of units…

Every time one of these new plans comes out that largely maintains the status quo, it becomes clearer the city has no plan to meet the Climate Action Plan targets. Eventually that’s going to cause real problems.

I really hope this goes well so it can expand beyond the pilot cities.

This looks like a big one. Just looking quickly at North Park, this would allow a minimum of 55 foot buildings at 2.5 FAR everywhere between about Adams and Upas.

-A law to prohibit housing: we need it in 90 days. -A law to allow housing: staff needs two years to draft, two years for an EIR, then a year of community outreach, then hearings before commissions and committees, and then maybe it gets to the council.

Daniel Horton, chief of staff for Councilmember Henry Foster III, said projects built under the program "resemble slave quarters or camps."

This is a brilliant way to report this. Love it

I get not being happy with the current mayor, but I don’t see how getting rid of the strong mayor government would help. If anything, I think a problem is the strong mayor hasn’t also seen a strong city council. Instead, we see councilmembers ask the mayor to bring them legislation.

VOSD podcast discussion of parking meters is driving me crazy…

Anyone remember the “Quickway Proposal” from over a decade ago? It was kind of kooky but makes more and more sense as time goes on. www.slideshare.net/slideshow/th...

I might have this wrong, but I think the ADU bonus program is a part of the housing element. To the extent it’s repealed, it could potentially lead to decertification of the housing element by HCD, which could cause all sorts of problems for the city.

Not fun.

An in the weeds question: does anyone know if someone has tried to sell an ADU under a tenancy in common agreement? Or know who would know the answer to that question?

Mayor mentioned a new initiative for adding density in single family neighborhoods…why didn’t we push this through over a year ago? If it didn’t have political support then, what is going to be different this time? www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/c...

My response today’s State of the City Address:

San Diego doesn’t have Manhattan level traffic to warrant a congestion charge; the local parallel is parking. And the same benefits apply: if done correctly, pricing street parking results in an open spot on every block for someone that actually needs it rather than being used for long-term storage

A not entirely unreasonable conclusion is that we can hold off on major new transit investments until we add more density…

A wonky question I posed to a friend when discussing this: if the rule is that the UC is exempt from local zoning when it owns a property, then could a developer gift a 10% share in a property to UC to escape local zoning? And then have the UC “approve” the project under its own standards?

This matches what I’ve seen of the local data: people just not voting for Dems. There’s no big shift to the right, just dissatisfaction with the left.

The University of California is (1) good at quickly building quality housing and (2) already exempt from local zoning. Can we let UC build non-student, campus-adjacent housing to subsidize higher education?

I saw a few posts about how AB 1893 results in automatic upzonings in SF and LA, so I was curious if this applied in SD. If I am getting it right, it has to do with sites identified in the housing element for rezoning. 🧵

I wrote a commentary for the New Year. voiceofsandiego.org/2025/01/01/i...

I still don’t understand why this shelter is actually closing.

Love this. San Diego wanted to live in the middle, which does not exist. Residents just voted down the Low Density/Stable Services segment. So the choice for the next few years: what do we want, more density or service cuts? Gotta pick one.

I was glad to hear Scott Lewis push back some, but the discussion of the gentrification of the South Bay on the latest VOSD podcast was maddening. There’s definitely a problem when economic investment and new “luxury” restaurants is framed as a problem.

Today is my last day at my downtown office job before becoming a full time remote worker in the new year. Anyone have recommendations for the best San Diego coffee shops or other spots for remote work when I need to get out of the house? I’m not so sure I can handle 100% work from home.