El Cajon — one of the most racially and economically diverse cities in San Diego — lags far behind the rest of the county in home building.
It is the only city in San Diego County that permitted less than 10 new homes per thousand residents in recent years, according to new state data analyzed by Voice of San Diego and KPBS. The analysis counted all permits issued between 2018 and 2024.
Chula Vista, which has built the most new homes, permitted nearly four times as many per person as El Cajon.
San Diego and California are in a crippling housing shortage. The supply of houses does not meet the heavy demand, which has driven costs far outside working class people’s budgets — and forced families out of the state. The extreme cost of housing has also played a central role in San Diego’s homeless crisis. Research shows the size of homeless populations correlates with the cost and availability of housing far more than weather, drug addiction or mental illness.
Multiple factors have led to El Cajon’s housing drought. The city has very little vacant land and is already the second-most densely populated countywide. There are a lot of shopping malls that would make for great building opportunities, but so far owners have been holding onto them. The city’s mayor Bill Wells says that he is pro-development — but he also thinks parts of the city with larger lot sizes shouldn’t be forced into building denser housing.
Wells said the numbers aren’t a fault of city government. The main problem is a lack of vacant land.
El Cajon “is all built out,” he said. “It's really a matter of what the market will bear.”
Wells also pointed out that El Cajon doesn’t charge builders development fees on new projects, like most other cities. That, in theory, should incentivize developers.
But city governments — even those with little vacant land and no development fees — can pull all kinds of levers to encourage or discourage building.
Cities can ease regulations and requirements or change zoning rules to allow developers to build more densely. Height limits, minimum lot sizes, the number of housing “units” allowed on a lot and the number of parking spaces required for new homes are just a few of the regulations cities control.
Wells said he doesn’t currently have plans to open up El Cajon’s zoning laws beyond where they are now. If anything, he said, the state’s laws (which in many cases supersede local zoning laws) already allow too much.
Take, for instance, parking space requirements. The state of California has made laws that allow builders to bypass cities' parking requirements when they are building near public transit lines.
“It’s a fantasy to think that you’re gonna buy a condo and not have a car and your roommate is not gonna have a car, and you don’t need any parking spaces, because you’ve got a trolley that 3% of the entire population of San Diego has ever ridden,” Wells said. “People drive cars. But (Sacramento lives) in this fantasy that we don’t need cars.”
Wells said there is also a three-story height limit that he has no plans of changing.
I asked Wells if he might consider changing minimum lot sizes or rezoning parts of the city for townhome-style housing, rather than single-family houses.
He said only a relatively small part of the city has large lots with single-family homes — and that those neighborhoods should be allowed to stay that way.
“I don’t think it’s fair to go to the people that bought properties in the '30s, '40s, and '50s and they had their whole life there. And suddenly their neighbor can build three-story apartment complexes in their backyard.”
He added: “I’m a big believer in property rights.”
Though Wells didn’t put it this way, his belief in property rights seems to favor homeowners who want to keep single-family zoning, over those who would like to add multiple casitas, or granny flats, to their property.
Besides space and zoning, another major factor is the real estate market. Developers want to build where they can make the most money.
El Cajon presents an interesting case study. It is, like all of San Diego County, highly desirable. But it’s less in demand than some other parts of the county. It’s far from the coast and subject to intense summer heat. Job-wise, El Cajon ranks in the middle. Out of four tiers, the city is ranked as a second-tier job center.
However, there are places in El Cajon that builders would like to develop, said Paul Barnes, president of Shea Homes San Diego.
El Cajon has a lot of commercial, single-story strip malls. Many of them are older and not pulling in maximum rent, Barnes said. They’d be ideal to redevelop.
But in many cases, the buildings' owners paid them off long ago — meaning they no longer have mortgage payments. Their property taxes are also locked in at low rates because of California’s Proposition 13.
For now, it’s easy for owners to sit on their commercial property and collect rent — even if it’s at a below-market rate.
But eventually the market conditions will change, Barnes said. The buildings will fall further into disrepair, prices will (presumably) go up and it will make more financial sense for commercial owners to sell to developers.
The many factors that determine home building in different parts of the county make it hard to compare between cities. But one interesting comparison does jump out: National City.
National City and El Cajon are, respectively, the two most densely populated cities in the county. (The city of San Diego is eighth.) Neither have very much vacant land. Both are economically diverse, with lower median incomes than many other parts of the county.
And yet National City permitted more than twice as many homes per capita as El Cajon between 2018 and 2024. National City permitted 21.6 homes per thousand residents, while El Cajon permitted just 9.9.
It’s unclear why. National City is next to Naval Base San Diego, a major source of jobs and people who need housing, as well as the city of San Diego. Developers may be finding better profit margins in National City.
National City Mayor Ron Morrison had a slightly more hilarious take: “Would you rather have bay breezes in your house in National City or live in the heat bowl otherwise known as El Cajon?”
But, according to Morrison, National City has invested in some of the housing it has permitted. He mentioned a housing development for seniors built on city land that would create 145 apartments. Morrison, however, also agreed with Wells, saying that the state’s housing laws are sometimes fantasy and take a one-size-fits-all approach.
Wells said that if county officials were really serious about getting out of the housing crisis, they would open up the more rural, backcountry of San Diego County for development, rather than rely on built-out cities like El Cajon. (Development in rural areas and the backcountry, where fire risk is higher, is heavily curtailed by county regulations.)
“We could have more houses than anybody could ever live in,” Wells said.
Still, Wells said he is not hostile to development and that he sees it as a way to reinvigorate blighted parts of El Cajon.
“You bring me somebody who wants to tear down an old strip mall and build a nice condo project and we’ll treat 'em really well,” he said.
