FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021

CONTACT:
MayorPress@sandiego.gov

SAN DIEGO As part of his continuing commitment to create housing opportunities for all San Diegans, Mayor Todd Gloria today announced that a major piece of his Homes for All of Us housing initiative is moving forward with the San Diego Planning Commission set to take up the first of two Housing Action Packages on Thursday, Dec. 16.

It is our legal obligation to plan for our citys true housing needs, and it is our moral obligation to follow through and create new homes that San Diegans can afford to keep families together, retain the young people we educate and make sure our businesses can attract the highest-quality workers, Mayor Todd Gloria said. I am pleased to see my package of proposals moving forward, and I thank our City staff for their excellent work developing programs that are going to substantially and more quickly add to our housing supply.

Homes for All of Us, which Mayor Gloria announced in July, features two Housing Action Packages, each consisting of a suite of amendments to City development regulations and property use that streamline housing production. The items in the Housing Action Package under consideration Thursday by the Planning Commission include:

• Housing at City facilities: Streamlines the process for building affordable and middle-income homes on city-owned sites.
• Affordable housing in all communities: Encourages affordable housing construction in communities with little to no affordable housing. To meet the citys climate and equity goals, the homes must be built near transit and in high resource areas areas close to good-paying jobs that have low levels of air and water pollution and a high student achievement.
• Employee Housing Incentive Program: Provides incentives for non-residential developments to build homes or pay into a San Diego Housing Commission fund used to develop affordable homes.
• Live/work flexibility: Currently, the City allows for the development of live/work units that function as both a home and place of business. This proposal would further ease requirements for live/work units to allow for more work-from-home and telework opportunities.
• Housing Accessibility Program: Provides incentives to housing developments that include more accessible housing, including housing for seniors and people who have disabilities.
• Housing for families: Provides incentives for multifamily housing developments to build homes with three or more bedrooms to ensure that families of all sizes have opportunities for housing. Additional incentives are awarded if the three-or-more-bedroom units are reserved for middle-income families.

The Housing Action Package also will include new elements added since the Mayor announced his Homes For All of Us initiative in July. These updates would help implement SB 9 state legislation signed into law in September that allows property owners to divide their lots to build more housing and would align the Citys accessory dwelling unit (ADU) regulations with this new law.

Local agencies can also customize some aspects of SB 9s implementation, including setback requirements, parking, urban tree canopy and development-impact fees.

SB 9 is an important step in addressing our housing crisis and encouraging the building of more naturally affordable homes, said Mike Hansen, the Citys Planning Director. We are happy we can take this new law and not only tailor it to our needs in San Diego but to also improve our ADU regulations at the same time.

The Homes For All of Us initiative also includes Blueprint SD, which is a new approach for the City of San Diegos community planning process that will align with climate and housing goals, as well as the formation of the Middle-Income Housing Working Group.

The City Council is expected to consider the first Housing Action Package early in 2022. After that, a second Housing Action Package will be prepared to potentially include additional statewide measures, recommendations from the Middle-Income Housing Working Group, and additional amendments to the Citys Land Development Code related to the production of more housing.

###