Group has plan to lower housing costs and build more homes San Diegans can afford.
A growing coalition of land-use leaders and housing advocates are refining a concept to lower the cost of homeownership by building more homes San Diegans can afford. The “small-lot house” is both a traditional approach and a novel idea, more compatible with many of San Diego’s existing communities, and more sustainable and fiscally efficient.
The purpose of the initiative is simple: If you can build a home on a smaller lot, it will be cheaper. And San Diego needs more homes. A lot of them.
“Buy less land, build a home and it will be cheaper – because you’re buying less land,” says nonprofit leader and housing advocate Ricardo Flores. “It’s that simple.”
Homeownership Opportunities for SD (HOSD) was launched last year and is co-chaired by Flores of LISC San Diego and economist Gary London of London Moeder Advisors. More recently, the initiative began receiving guidance by an impressive group of leaders from the local housing industry. See partial list below.
HOSD’s plan is straightforward. We are asking San Diego city officials to consider creating a ministerial or over-the-counter process to allow for the subdivision of residential lots that are at least 5,000 square feet in compatible locations consistent with community plans or through targeted plan amendments – clearing the way for the development of up to 5 homes, each with 2 or 3 bedrooms and a garage, on the smaller subdivided lots.
In San Diego, a large majority of residential land is zoned for single-family housing, a legacy of our region’s suburban growth.
Flores said: “Single-family zoning is antiquated and has made our housing crisis worse. Single family zoning was passed by the San Diego City Council over 100 years ago when the city was home to just 74,000 residents. Today, San Diego is home to more than 1.3 million residents and 81 percent of the residential land within the city is still zoned for single-family homes only.”
He added: “We have a plan to fix that, to redraw the map if you will, and create more attainable housing that has been out of reach for most San Diegans. It also would bolster property rights and generate more tax revenue for city services – all while providing San Diegans with housing options they can afford by addressing our region’s ‘missing middle’ housing gap.”
London added: “Despite good intentions, we have unfortunately not seen a lot of progress on the housing front, especially when it comes to filling the sizeable missing middle gap. We have been underbuilt for two decades and that has created a range of economic, environmental, and social problems. While there are numerous reasons behind this, it’s now clearer than ever that we need to create a path to building thousands of attainable homes annually.”
London added: “Our plan is simple. It will work. Will it solve our housing crisis? Not on its own, but it will help, especially for family housing, first-time homebuyers, seniors looking to buy smaller, affordable homes to age-in-place, and others who have been priced out of the San Diego housing market for decades.”
London stressed there are no subsidies or mandates to the proposal. The market can deliver this type of housing in several San Diego communities where the market is supportive, he said.
Prices would vary by community, but the new homes are expected to cost significantly less than the home that was on that lot before it was subdivided, according to a preliminary financial analysis by London Moeder, who are currently conducting a study in various San Diego communities to determine an accurate range of probable cost reductions.
A March memo from London and his partner Nathan Moeder to Mayor Todd Gloria and city council members says: “The combination of smaller lot sizes and lower construction costs per unit would result in substantially more homes at attainable price points.…This is the very recipe to address the absence of housing directed at the missing middle, and the potential long-term negative economic impacts on our region if we continue to fail to deliver housing to this vital market segment.”
In addition to HOSD’s coalition partners, who include the Urban League of San Diego County and the San Diego County Building Industry Association (BIA), HOSD recently created a Working Group to help refine its proposal and generate support.
“We believe strongly that this proposal has tremendous potential to help solve our region’s housing crisis,” said Lori Pfeiler, CEO of the BIA and a member of the HOSD Working Group. “It’s not a panacea, but it’s a significant step. We’re urging city leaders and communities to support the idea and bring our vision to reality where it makes sense. All of us want the same thing: more housing San Diegans can afford. This proposal would create some of that housing.”
HOSD Working Group (to be expanded)
1 .Lori Pfeiler, BIA CEO
2. Chris Cate, Business Coalition/BIA Policy Consultant
3. Doug Austin, AIA Board Member, former San Diego Planning Commissioner, YIGBY San Diego Chair, AVRP Studios Founder and CEO
4. Kevin deFreitas, AIA Board Member and founder of Kevin deFreitas Architects
5. Kent Aden, President of HomeFed Communities
6. Rick Gentry, Former Head of the San Diego Housing Commission
7. Alex Alemany, Principal at Hub & Spoke Communities
8. Tony Pauker, Past Chair Urban Land Institute San Diego/Tijuana District Council
9. Daniel Shkolnik, CEO of Atlas West Group
10. Amanda Noeldechen, co-founder, Rise Up Residential
11. Nicole Lillie, Executive Director, Our Time To Act
About HOSD: Homeownership Opportunities for SD (HOSD) is a growing coalition of housing leaders and advocates with a plan that would generate more housing San Diegans can afford. Our plan is straightforward: we are asking the city officials in San Diego to create a ministerial or over-the-counter process to allow for the subdivision of residential lots that are at least 5,000 square feet in appropriate locations – clearing the way for the development of up to 4 or 5 rowhomes, each with at least two bedrooms and a garage, on the smaller lots. More: www.homeownershipforsd.org
