Fair Housing and the Mid-City Plan Update
The first draft Mid-City Communities Plan covers City Heights, Eastern Area, Kensington-Talmadge and Normal Heights: 30 census tracts, about 141,840 residents, and room for roughly 30,000 homes over thirty years. It is the first comprehensive update since 2016 to cover a part of the city that is almost entirely outside the State's high-opportunity areas.
Our Reports
The City's Plan Documents
THE PLAN AREA IN SIX NUMBERS
1 of 30
tracts in the plan area is High Resource. None are Highest. Twenty-three are in the State’s lowest tier.
21 of 30
tracts have no High or Highest Resource neighborhood on any border. For eleven, every neighbor is lowest tier too.
9 of 30
tracts carry a State neighborhood change designation, a rate of 30 percent against 14 percent citywide.
−15,350
residents under 18 lost since 2000, down 34 percent against 12 percent citywide.
32.9
homes permitted per 1,000 existing homes against 62.4 citywide. Seven in ten of those permits are accessory dwelling units.
15.7%
of City Heights households are overcrowded, against 5.8 percent citywide.
INSIDE THE BOUNDARY
Four communities, four different challenges
Tracts
Population since 2000
Children since 2000
Over-crowded
Rent growth vs State threshold
Lowest opportunity tier
Change areas
City Heights
15
−8.0%
−42%
15.7%
73.7% above
15 of 15
4
Eastern Area
7
+15.4%
−2%
7.7%
61.8% below
7 of 7
0
Kensington-Talmadge
4
+2.9%
−21%
2.3%
65.2% above
1 of 4
1
Normal Heights
4
−4.4%
−55%
2.8%
83.1% above
0 of 4
4
City of San Diego
311
+14.1%
−12%
5.8%
64.8%
95 of 311
44
Scale and depth
Half the plan area’s population and the largest need. All fifteen tracts in the lowest opportunity tier, overcrowding at nearly three times the citywide rate, 12,878 children gone, and roughly one household in nine still there from 2000. It added housing and lost 8 percent of its people.
80% of Mid-City below-moderate production
74.0 CalEnviroScreen percentile
Changing, and undetected
The only Mid-City community that grew, by 15 percent, and the only one where people arrived faster than housing did. Its population of color grew 42 percent. All seven tracts are in the lowest opportunity tier, all seven have no higher-opportunity neighborhood on any border, and not one carries a State change designation.
99% of permits are ADUs
0 permitted units in buildings of 5+
One plan, two markets
Two tracts at about $182,000 median household income with a quarter renters, and two at about $79,000 with over eighty percent renters. Its household income sits 4.3 percent above the citywide figure, so it is not unusually wealthy on income. Where it separates is opportunity classification, home value and environmental burden.
District 9’s only RCAA-concentrated tract
4.9 below-moderate per 1,000
Changing fastest
All four tracts carry a State change designation, the highest rate anywhere in the plan area, with rent growth of 83.1 percent since 2013. It has lost more than half its children. Fewer than one household in twelve has been there since 2000. It holds the plan area’s only High Resource tract, and its Black non-Hispanic population fell 76.6 percent.
2.6 below-moderate per 1,000, city 11.8
0 projects in the City’s park inventory
OUR POSITION
What we are asking the City to do
1
Attach anti-displacement tools and affordability targets to every priority corridor
Named corridor by corridor, not plan-wide. City Heights and Normal Heights both show population loss alongside rent growth above the State’s own threshold.
2
Do not use the State’s change designations alone to decide where to look
Eastern Area carries none, and has had substantial change in who lives there. Add population, crowding, rent and racial composition to the screen, or the plan will miss the communities that are not changing on the State’s instruments.
3
Say what will make Kensington-Talmadge reachable at a wider range of incomes
It holds District 9’s only Racially Concentrated Area of Affluence and the plan area’s highest home values, and Policy 2.15’s preference for onsite affordable homes over in-lieu fees matters most in exactly this geography.
4
Complete the air and noise assessment the City already committed to
Promised in the August 2025 Ideas Report for this geography, and not yet done. It should be finished before the highest-density designations are finalized, not after.
5
Match intensity to measured conditions, not one treatment everywhere
The designated corridors range from 4,400 to 44,400 vehicles a day, a tenfold spread receiving one designation. Two of the four transit villages sit where measured transit demand is weakest. And 316 pedestrian injury collisions fall on the corridors receiving the most new capacity.
6
Answer community by community, not as one “Mid-City”
State which of these conditions the plan’s own fair housing analysis accounts for, and which it does not, in four separate answers.