CCDC to Spend $100 Million on Affordable-Housing Downtown

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 14, 2007 at 12:42 PM PDT

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

San Diego's Centre City Development Corporation has voted to make a record amount of money available for affordable housing downtown. The city's redevelopment arm says it will spend more than $100 mil

CCDC to Spend $100 Million on Affordable-Housing Downtown

San Diego's Centre City Development Corporation has voted to make a record amount of money available for affordable housing downtown. The city's redevelopment arm says it will spend more than $100 million on housing for median and low-income residents. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

San Diego’s downtown has boomed during the era of rising house prices -- but many seniors and low-income renters have been forced out. Now that land prices and construction costs are falling, the CCDC believes the time is right to invest in affordable housing.

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Chairwoman Jennifer Le Sar says redevelopment tax dollars are a powerful tool to create incentives for developers to build houses that working San Diegans can afford.

Le Sar : The city and housing commission and the county spend about $50 million on housing -- we would be spending double that to really help abate the housing crisis.

Le Sar says she hopes some of the money can be spent in neighborhoods outside the boundaries of downtown -- like Barrio Logan and Sherman Heights -- where property values have risen, but incomes are still low. The city council will have to sign off on the proposal. Alison St John, KPBS News.

(Photo: Downtown San Diego. iStockPhoto )

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.