Opinion |

A defunct Ritz-Carlton proposal, Father Joe’s and the rise of affordable housing

As symbolism goes, this is pretty good.

City-owned property downtown that not long ago was targeted for a new Ritz-Carlton hotel and other luxury amenities is now proposed for more than 400 rent-restricted housing units for lower-income residents.

Should this come to fruition, it would be the latest in a string of affordable housing projects intended to provide thousands of units across the region — hundreds of which have opened in recent years with hundreds more in the pipeline.

That can only have a positive impact on rising homelessness and a housing market fewer people can afford, but there’s no telling how much of a dent in either problem these projects will make. For one thing, several are still a long way from the finish line.

Optimism requires a lot of caution in this area these days.

Still, it would be nice to someday look back and conclude this was a watershed moment in reversing the housing and homelessness trajectory. Several government agencies, nonprofits and corporations have built or are pursuing rent-restricted housing projects. Among them: the city and county of San Diego, the Metropolitan Transit District, the North County Transit District, Father Joe’s Villages, Chelsea Investment Corp. and more.

There’s a bit of rich irony, if you will, that the new focus for the city property at Seventh Avenue and Market Street is no longer a five-star hotel, luxury condos, a gourmet store and the like for upscale folks, but instead housing for people of lesser means.

That goes in the opposite direction of a policy years ago that is widely blamed for exacerbating homelessness in San Diego.

Surveys in 2016 calculated that the city’s stock of single-room occupancy hotel units had dropped by about 10,000 units since the late 1980s. As of December 2022, the San Diego Housing Commission listed 4,754 SRO units. Some of the SROs that disappeared were replaced with hotels and office buildings.

For sure, some of those SROs were dilapidated, but they often were seen as the lowest rung of housing available for people who had nowhere else to live. The widely-held notion that other affordable housing would emerge never fully lived up to the promise.

There were other factors, of course. The shuttering of redevelopment agencies by Gov. Jerry Brown over a decade ago dried up revenue not only aimed at revitalizing — and the resulting gentrification — of downtown areas, but did away with a source of housing funds. Meanwhile, many neighborhoods opposed new housing, low-income or not.

Despite policies giving developers greater density in projects in return for a percentage of rent-restricted housing, the market housing economy hasn’t filled the need, at least not so far.

Last year, the city of San Diego issued permits for 2,362 deed-restricted units for residents with low or very low incomes, and another 214 were set aside for households with moderate incomes. That’s nearly four times the number — 675 permits — for both in 2022.

On Wednesday, the San Diego City Council’s Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations Committee approved a proposal that the city enter into formal negotiations with Carlsbad-based Chelsea to redevelop the city’s East Village property.

Chelsea is proposing to make all 402 units affordable to lower-income households earning from 30 percent to 80 percent of area median income in San Diego County, which is $119,500 for a family of four, according to Lori Weisberg of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Cisterra Development, which sought to build the Ritz-Carlton project, was required to include a minimum of 15 percent affordable housing, or 34 rent-restricted units, according to the city.

Chelsea, which specializes in housing for lower-income residents, says it has developed more than 100 affordable communities costing more than $2 billion and says it currently has as many as a dozen projects under construction throughout California.

Chelsea is part of the Midway Rising team that is negotiating with the city to redevelop the publicly-owned sports arena land and nearby properties. Key to Midway Rising’s selection is its pledge to build 2,000 affordable homes, along with more than 2,000 market-rate units, commercial areas parks, and a new sports/entertainment arena.

Father Joe’s Villages has opened some 500 affordable housing units in recent years, including the 407-unit St. Teresa of Calcutta Villa in East Village, more than half of which provide supportive services for formerly homeless people.

Father Joe’s has a handful of other projects on the drawing board — from East Village to Oceanside — that total about 600 more rent-restricted units, again, many with supportive services.

They include a proposed high-rise with 176 units built on top of a former indoor skydiving facility on Imperial Avenue near Father Joe’s East Village campus. The city bought the facility and used it as a homeless service center.

The proposal is part of Father Joe’s “Turning the Key” program, which aims to produce 2,000 affordable housing units. The ambitious plan continues to move forward, but shows the difficulty in producing affordable housing.

“Turning the Key” did not reach its goal within five years as announced in 2017. Like market-rate development, affordable housing projects have run into the same problems stemming from the pandemic, regulations, escalating costs and limited funding availability, among other things. Even under better circumstances, it can be difficult to make such developments pencil out.

The locations of the affordable housing developments are generally convenient for access to social services, beyond those that may be provided on-site. They are typically near public transportation — almost right on it, in some cases.

A 420-unit apartment building is proposed at NCTD’s Sprinter station on Melrose Drive in Oceanside. The district board last week agreed to enter into negotiations for the project with a partnership of USA Properties Fund Inc. and Waterford Property Co., according to the Union-Tribune’s Phil Diehl.

The board also approved negotiations with Father Joe’s for a 98-unit apartment building at the Rancho del Oro Station in Oceanside.

Meanwhile, the 126-unit ShoreLINE complex, which fully meets affordable housing guidelines, was formally inaugurated by Affirmed Housing and MTS at the Grantville Trolley Station late last month.

There’s more out there.

Individually, these efforts can be dismissed as a drop in the bucket in the context of daunting homelessness and rising housing prices. But collectively — eventually — maybe they’ll move the needle.

That’s the optimistic view, anyway.

These projects may change as details are negotiated — that’s already happened with Midway Rising.

But whatever gets built at Seventh and Market, it won’t be a Ritz-Carlton hotel.