Create Homes for All of Us
Every San Diegan deserves to have a safe place they call home. The City’s strategic plan prioritizes the creation of diverse types of affordable and accessible housing for all.
To create homes for all of us, we envision:
- San Diegans benefit from a diversity of different housing types, with homes that are affordable to everyone in all communities.
- The City helps San Diegans find ways to build housing cheaper, faster, and easier.
- San Diegans live in vibrant communities with healthy homes and access to opportunity.
- San Diegans experiencing homelessness have access to long-term housing with supportive services.
- San Diego’s unsheltered residents are quickly placed in stable housing options.
The City has developed a series of strategies to help realize these outcomes.
Creating homes for us all is both about developing affordable housing and developing connected communities where San Diegans can afford to live, and also enjoy living. This focus area includes figuring out where more homes are needed across the city and updating City code to allow for more affordable homes in areas close to transit, job centers, schools, and parks.
- Review where more homes are needed across the city to meet our housing, mobility, and sustainability goals.
- Achieve 2020-30 Regional Housing Needs Assessment Housing Units target.
- Allow development on vacant or underutilized City-owned sites to increase housing supply with greater affordability requirements.
- Adopt commercial parking reform in Transit Priority Areas (TPAs), allowing alternative land uses to provide more housing.
- Supporting the building of additional entry level-housing.
- Focus on the missing ‘middle’ by encouraging the development of new housing that is affordable to middle income residents (80-150% of area median income).
- Update City code to allow for more affordable homes in areas close to job centers, schools, parks, and opportunities.
- Support programming for healthy homes that are safe and sustainable, including building decarbonization through retrofit and appliance swap programs.
San Diego Snapshot
Incentivizing Affordable Development
The City has created a number of programs increase housing affordability and supply. The Bridge to Home Program provides gap financing to qualified developers to make affordable housing projects a reality.
Other programs in this area award a density bonus and incentives for developments in exchange for designating some or all of the development as affordable dwelling units. This includes the Affordable Housing Density Bonus, the Accessory Dwelling Bonus, and the Complete Communities Housing Solutions Program.
Housing Action Packages
In 2021, the City launched an initiative called Homes for All of Us to help produce more homes that San Diegans of all income levels can afford. The initiative includes three components:
- a new community plan update framework called Blueprint San Diego
- the creation of a Middle-Income Housing Working Group
- the Housing Action Package 1.0 and 2.0
Neighborhood Developments
As new walkable, live-work-play neighborhoods emerge across the city, Mayor Gloria's housing policies and actions are helping more San Diegans have a place to call home.
- Midway Rising: new affordable housing, event arena, and park space in the Midway District.
- Civic Center: revitalization of the six City-owned blocks in and adjacent to the Civic Center Core.
- Tailgate Park: 1,800 residential (180 affordable and 90 middle-income) units, 50,000 square feet of retail space, and a public park on the four-block next to Petco Park.
To create homes for all of us, we are working collaboratively with developers to facilitate the permitting process, making it easier, faster and cheaper to construct new homes. In addition, we are working to streamline the process to add certainty and predictability to the process and encourage mixed-use development.
- Improve the permitting process to enhance customer service and make it easier, faster, and cheaper to construct housing, without compromising safety or quality of life.
- Eliminate non-value-add discretionary approval hurdles.
- Encourage life/work flexibility that allows for co-benefits and multi-use.
San Diego Snapshot
Community Plan Updates
Community plans connect general citywide policies with specific plans at the neighborhood level, helping set the stage for communities’ future growth and development.
Land Development Code Update
The Planning Department monitors and continually updates the Land Development Code to simplify and streamline the permitting processes, assure compliance with state and federal regulations, and eliminate unnecessary barriers, redundancies and contradictions.
An important element of creating homes for us all is preserving our stock of single room housing – a vital housing option for people experiencing financial hardship or transitioning from shelter or other temporary living situations. The plan calls for preserving and expanding these options, along with subsidizing affordable rental units and increasing the number of long-term rental units available in the city.
- Preserve and expand single-room-occupancy housing stock.
- Increase rental subsidy utilization.
- Support actions that compliment and return short-term rentals into long-term rentals.
San Diego Snapshot
Improving Oversight of Short Term Rentals
In April 2021, short term rental regulations were signed into law. The Short-Term Residential Occupancy (STRO) ordinance limits whole-home, short-term vacation rentals to 1% of the city's overall housing stock. To learn more about STRO licensing, visit sandiego.gov/treasurer/short-term-residential-occupancy.
As a city, we value people, and believe every San Diegan deserves to have a place to call home. Our strategic plan outlines ways to reduce the population experiencing homelessness with person-centered, compassionate services. We are focused on placement in housing that provides supportive services, along with prevention strategies, and interim solutions for a comprehensive approach to addressing this most basic need for our community.
- Enhance homelessness prevention and diversion programs.
- Increase placements to permanent housing destinations.
- Promote wrap-around service options alongside housing placements.
- Increase access to shelters, safe havens, and interim housing.
- Promote and achieve equity in service access for historically underserved communities, including minority groups, transitioned-aged youth, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
- Promote person-centered, compassionate outreach and service engagement.
- Track retention rate in housing intervention and returns to homelessness.
- Increase stock of permanent supportive housing.
- Use data to determine the effectiveness and return-on-investment for funding programs and contracts.
San Diego Snapshot
Housing Stability Assistance Program
To protect vulnerable San Diegans from the impacts of the pandemic, the city launched the Housing Stability Assistance Program to help qualifying low-income residential renters who live in the city of San Diego and are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic pay past-due rent, utilities, and internet service.
San Diego Housing Commission
Pandemic Protections
In January 2021, the Council approved the Mayor's eviction moratorium to protect residents and businesses struggling due to COVID-19 impacts. In October 2021, a $5 million legal defense fund was established to help struggling tenants potentially facing eviction due to non-payment of rent during the COIVD-19 pandemic. The funding will provide eviction-prevention and legal assistance.
Project Homekey
In August 2021, the State awarded $11.8 million to help finance PATH Villas in El Cerrito, which will create 40 new homes for people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.
experiencing homelessness
or at risk of homelessness.
Helpful Links & Resources
Download the original Strategic Plan PDF
Performance and Analytics Department (PandA)
Visit the City of San Diego website
View the budget key performance indicators