In 2021, National City set a goal to add a specific number of homes across different income levels by the end of the decade to meet targets set by state and regional planning agencies.
Four years later, the city is seeing slow but consistent progress towards its goals for more affordable homes, according to a new report presented at the City Council meeting Tuesday.
City housing officials said developers have built over 300 new homes that are affordable for low-income households — more than half of their original goal. In San Diego County, a person is currently considered low-income if they make between $57,000 and $92,000 per year.
National City is still thousands of homes behind its goals for the highest income level.
Every eight years, cities across California set new goals for the amount of homes they need to add. Those targets are decided by state housing authorities and regional planning agencies.
At stake is the statewide housing shortage, which continues to strain household budgets, inflaming wealth inequality and pushing more people into homelessness. Housing goals are meant to ensure that cities continue to support more homebuilding to ease the crisis.
Meeting any of these housing targets would be a milestone for National City, which failed to meet its targets for adding new homes across income levels last decade. The city still has to add thousands more homes by 2030.
“We’ve still got some work to do,” Martin Reeder, the city’s acting community development director, told the City Council on Tuesday.
During the last eight-year-planning cycle, which ended in 2020, National City failed to add enough homes to meet its goals for any income category.
Those goals are a challenge for the small, densely populated city to meet. National City is home to just over 56,000 people, and most of the land within its boundaries is already developed with a mix of residential neighborhoods and industrial businesses.
National City Mayor Ron Morrison grumbled about the size of those housing targets Tuesday, arguing that the city faces an unfairly-high bar because of its strong access to public transit and jobs.
“Because we did smart growth, we get the huge numbers,” Morrison said. “And the cities that did dumb growth, they get rewarded for it.”
National City is among several cities across San Diego County that failed to meet any of their housing goals in the last cycle, including Oceanside, Solana Beach and El Cajon. Cities that met at least some of their goals usually did so with homes geared toward high-income households.
Only one, Lemon Grove, succeeded in meeting its goals for all income levels.
Saad Asad, the communications and advocacy chair for the pro-housing advocacy group YIMBY Democrats of San Diego, said small cities face greater logistical challenges when it comes to adding more homes.
“I don't want to completely absolve the legislative leaders and the mayor of National City,” he said. “But I'm also recognizing that they do have, quite literally, less staff and less tax dollars to spend on some of these things.”
In National City, the new construction so far has included a variety of different kinds of units — including 35 ADUs, or small backyard homes, which developers completed last year.
One of the largest contributors was the Kimball Highland project, a pair of multi-family apartment buildings in central National City. The project added just over 140 affordable units that are reserved for low-income households.
Reeder said developers appear to be continuing to build at around the same pace. Between July 2024 and June 2025, the city issued building permits for over 100 more homes, including dozens of new ADUs.
