We finally know which party will take control of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which could have big implications for how much new housing is built.
This week, voters in South Bay elected Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre to sit on the Board, giving the Democrats a 3-2 majority.
Builders, unions, realtors, police and many others spent more than $2 million on the race. They supported Aguirre and opposed her rival, Chula Vista Mayor John McCann. There was a lot at stake.
And the issue with the most at stake may be housing. Aguirre’s election will have a big impact on how many homes can be built in San Diego County and where. It will have consequences far beyond Aguirre’s home in Imperial Beach and South County.
It’s because of a simple concept called Vehicle Miles Traveled.
To explain: The county is a vast area of land, and most county land is not part of cities. There are 1,200 square miles of land in what’s called unincorporated areas. A lot of that is federal land, forests, parks and more.
The county gets to decide what can be built on the rest. And it did decide: In 2011, county supervisors approved the General Plan.
That was just the zoning and rules for San Diego County. But then California passed a law meant to curb climate change. It said the county had to evaluate how many miles someone living in a new housing development would drive. And if they had to drive far, the county had to mitigate for it — add bus lines, preserve land, or otherwise balance its impact on the climate.
That means a fee. Housing developers became so worried about how much those fees would be they stopped building. Even in areas where housing was allowed by the General Plan.
Everyone has been waiting for this election. If McCann had been elected, the county would have made it much easier to approve that housing with minimal fees.
But Aguirre thinks that would just lead to unaffordable McMansions in rural areas, hurting the environment.
She wants housing concentrated in areas much closer to existing cities and villages. Now that her election has created a Democratic majority on the board, it seems more likely her vision will happen.
There was a lot of rhetoric in the race about the president, immigration, the border sewage crisis and public safety. But the most significant impact of the race will be on what housing can be built in the county and where.
