Building Bridges in High-Opportunity Neighborhoods
High-opportunity neighborhood engagement.
PROBLEM
San Diego's highest-resource neighborhoods resist new housing through procedural tools—design review, environmental appeals, and zoning challenges that are often race-neutral but functionally exclusionary. The neighborhoods that added just 5.3% to their housing stock since 2000 are the same ones that benefit most from this procedural gatekeeping.
IMPACT
Families locked out of high-opportunity neighborhoods lose access to the schools, parks, transit, and environmental quality those neighborhoods offer. The gap between Highest and Low Resource tracts: 71% math proficiency vs. 28.4%. Zip code matters.
OPPORTUNITY
Neighborhood-level engagement that starts with listening, not lobbying. Build relationships with residents, faith communities, and local institutions in high-opportunity areas before any specific project arrives. Shift the conversation from 'what are we losing' to 'who are we welcoming.'
Organizing Across Communities of Shared Experience
Citywide coalition organizing.
PROBLEM
Housing advocacy in San Diego is fragmented by geography, issue area, and funding source. Environmental justice organizations, tenant unions, civil rights groups, and planning reform advocates often work in parallel without coordination, reducing collective leverage at City Hall and in Sacramento.
IMPACT
Without a unified coalition, the communities most affected by housing scarcity—renters, families of color, lower-income households—remain underrepresented in the planning decisions that shape their neighborhoods. The 273,989 renter households outnumber the 249,851 owner households, yet owner voices dominate public meetings.
OPPORTUNITY
A citywide coalition organized around shared experience rather than shared geography. Connect communities across San Diego who face the same barriers—displacement pressure, exclusionary zoning, permitting delays—regardless of neighborhood. Build durable political power that outlasts any single campaign.
Making Ownership Possible Again
Starter homes + shared equity.
PROBLEM
San Diego's Black homeownership rate fell from 33.9% to 27.7% between 2000 and 2024—the only major demographic group to lose ground while every other group gained. The starter home has effectively disappeared from San Diego's housing market, replaced by luxury product and investor purchases.
IMPACT
Homeownership remains the primary wealth-building mechanism for working families. When ownership is structurally unavailable to entire communities, the racial wealth gap compounds across generations. Families who rent in Low Resource neighborhoods have no equity pathway and no buffer against displacement.
OPPORTUNITY
Shared-equity models—community land trusts, deed-restricted starter homes, cooperative ownership—that create permanently affordable homeownership pathways. Not subsidized luxury, but modest homes designed to stay affordable across resales. Partner with Community Development Financial Institutions to build financing pipelines.
Clearing the Path to Build
Permitting and delivery.
PROBLEM
Even when housing is approved and funded, San Diego's permitting and inspection process adds months or years of delay and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost. Small and nonprofit developers are disproportionately affected—they cannot absorb carrying costs the way institutional developers can.
IMPACT
Every month of delay adds cost that gets passed to renters and buyers. Affordable housing projects that pencil out at approval may no longer pencil out after 18 months of permitting. The city's own housing targets under the Regional Housing Needs Assessment cannot be met at current delivery speeds.
OPPORTUNITY
Streamlined permitting for mission-aligned housing. Advocate for by-right approval of permanently affordable projects in high-resource areas, reduced fees for nonprofit developers, and a dedicated affordable housing permitting track. Measure and publish average permit timelines by project type.
Measuring What Matters
Public scorecard + accountability.
PROBLEM
San Diego produces housing data across multiple agencies—the Housing Commission, Planning Department, SANDAG, and HCD—but no single public dashboard tracks whether new housing is actually reaching high-opportunity neighborhoods or reducing segregation. Without measurement, there is no accountability.
IMPACT
The Baker Settlement requires 70% of new affordable housing in moderate-to-highest-resource neighborhoods by 2028, but the public has no easy way to track progress. Policymakers can claim success with citywide totals that mask continued concentration of affordable housing in low-resource areas.
OPPORTUNITY
A public scorecard that tracks housing production, affordability, and integration at the neighborhood level. Publish quarterly updates. Make the data accessible to journalists, advocates, and residents—not just planners. Hold the city accountable to its own commitments, starting with Baker.