REPORT · AUGUST 2026
Where San Diego allows homes to be built decides who can reach the opportunity that comes with living there. This report examines Coastal San Diego, sixty census tracts running from Torrey Pines south to the Peninsula and extending east beyond Interstate 5, from the western ridgelines of Uptown north to University. About a fifth of the city.
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THE FINDING IN FOUR NUMBERS
55 of 60
coastal census tracts rated High or Highest Resource by the State, against 170 of 311 citywide
36.5
homes permitted per 1,000 existing this cycle, against 62.4 citywide. Pacific Beach 22.6, La Jolla 22.3
None
net households the coast added since 2000, while the city added 81,746, from 442,094 to 523,840
Three
homes affordable to households earning below the regional median income that Pacific Beach has completed this cycle. It was permitted 81.
WHAT THE REPORT FINDS
Every one of Pacific Beach’s thirteen census tracts and every one of La Jolla’s eight is rated High or Highest Resource by the State of California. Both permit new housing at about a third of the citywide rate. Over twenty-five years the city added 81,746 households and Coastal San Diego added none that can be distinguished from zero, while its housing stock grew about a sixth as fast as the city’s. That demand did not go away. It moved to where households could find a home they could afford, and in much of the city there was no new housing waiting for it, so it landed on the housing already standing.
The report documents a geographic separation between where opportunity is concentrated and where measurable neighborhood change is occurring. It does not trace a household-by-household path from one to the other, and it does not claim the coastal height limit caused this record. Every figure names its source and, where one exists, its margin of error.
DOCUMENTS
Everything this report is built on
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