S1: Hey , San Diego. It's time for KPBS roundtable. I'm Scott Rod. A new reporting series through our Public Matters partnership looks at where new homes are being built in the region.
S2: The greatest growth is of San Diego is happening in the urban core. We are becoming more of a city.
S1: We'll also discuss why some development efforts are facing pushback. Plus our roundup of other stories from the week. That's all ahead on KPBS roundtable. San Diego is consistently ranked as one of the most expensive cities to live in America. One proposed solution is building more housing , especially affordable housing. But why and how cities permit new homes depends on many factors. A new KPBS and Voice of San Diego investigation digs into housing data to find out where new homes are being built. It's a series through our Public Matters partnership. The reporters behind the series joined me now to talk about all of it. Andrew Bowen is KPBS Metro reporter. Jake Gatta is the social media host and reporter for KPBS. And Will Hansberry is senior investigative reporter at Voice of San Diego. Welcome to you all.
S2: Hey , Scott. Thanks.
S3: What's up ? Thanks for having us.
S1: All right , Andrew , I want to start with you. Your piece looked at growth of housing and housing permits in San Diego's urban core.
S2: Maybe not per capita. As we'll discuss , I'm sure. But , you know , we're really where the bulk of new housing stock is , is is being constructed in the county. And we worked with our web developer here at KPBS to take a data set that we got from the state of California with really , really detailed information around permits for housing. And we laid that onto a map that basically shows you , uh , with incredible detail , um , exactly where homes are being permitted. And so really , the stories just kind of flowed from there. We we developed this , um , you know , working version of this map. And I spent a lot of time just exploring it with my mouse , zooming in on different parts of different neighborhoods , you know , and making some observations and trying to figure out , all right , where is a story here ? And I think one of the biggest things that will jump out to you when you look at this map , is that the greatest concentration of growth is happening in the urban core of San Diego. So I'm defining that as downtown , Bankers Hill , Hillcrest , and North Park. These are all contiguous neighborhoods right next to each other. And where there's , you know , the greatest density of bus lines of bike lanes. It's really where the greatest density of housing already exists today. And yet it is also where we're building the most housing. And so that to me , is is interesting and newsworthy because the city has been making this a goal for many , many years. We've adopted policies that try and encourage more home building in walkable neighborhoods , in areas served well by public transit. And so , you know , really , the story was all of those policies that the city has adopted over the years , updating community plans , allowing more density and taller buildings in exchange for affordable housing and projects. All of those things are actually producing results and we can actually see it on the map. So , you know , it's a really fantastic visualization of where growth is occurring. And people can actually type in an address and see , you know , where a home was permitted in that area. Or you could look at your own neighborhood and see where the construction is happening and when it was permitted and what type of housing it was , whether it's a detached house or apartments or a duplex. So yeah , it's just , you know , ultimately the headline of the story was that the greatest growth is of San Diego is happening in the urban core. We are becoming more of a city. And I think that's interesting. And , and , you know , worthy to reflect on. Absolutely.
S1: Absolutely. And that's one of the first things I did when I pulled up that tool was typing my own address and see , okay , what is development look like in my neck of the woods ? And again , I encourage any listener to go check it out. Very cool tool. Um , definitely worth spending some time kind of poking around on it. Jake , you looked at a situation that's a little bit different , almost sort of a mismatch in terms of where housing is being permitted or built and then where people need to go for work and for other things.
S3: But it's a place where there's lots of jobs , where there's the new Blue Line extension north. And of course , this is the UTC Sorrento Valley area. Um , and I was just looking at that , looking at the map and thinking , wow , there's not that many units being permitted in this area that I know has a lot of jobs just from , you know , sort of living in San Diego. And I went to sandbags website and they have information on all the employment centers in the county. And so they have stats on the number of employees , the number of housing units , the number of people who are living in these different areas , and the number one job center in San Diego County with the most employees is that Sorrento Valley area. Um , people would usually think that would be the downtown area. Maybe 20 years ago it probably was. But a lot of the jobs in like biotech around the medical field and obviously UCSD , they've created this new central cluster of employment in the Sorrento Valley area. Um , but there's not that many homes there. There's 169,000 employees in the area , but there's only 20,000 homes. And so that's a big mismatch.
S4: And what's the population like ? It's eight times bigger during the day essentially. Right.
S3: Right. And it would take so it would take essentially eight people per unit to fit all of those employees in that. And that's not even counting off campus people from UCSD , because students who live at UCSD and the UCSD housing situation isn't factored into this , these numbers , but we know that there's a lot of students who live off campus. There's a lot of people who live in the area and have a job in La Jolla , or have a job maybe outside of that center. So it's really just a huge mismatch between how many people work there , how many people go to school there , how many people live there , or and how many people can actually live there. And so one of the things that this creates is a big traffic jam on the 805 every day. And so I talked to someone who sits in traffic on the 805. And she her name is Ashley. She works at University City High School. She's a teacher.
S1: And you didn't just talk to her. You were on the front lines of this.
S3: I rode in the traffic with her. She was nice enough to , during her summer vacation , go up and drive through that traffic to show me what it's like. And it's even worse when schools and session and stuff and driving down that stretch of freeway , I'm just , you know , thinking the same way I always do. It really is a shame that all these people just are forced to sit in their cars all day. And it , you know , it's not fun for them. It's not healthy for people to just sit in a car all day. It's a bunch of time that they're losing. It's a lot of pollution for the environment and for the local communities that live next to these freeways and that whole that whole locus of jobs , housing , transportation. It all combines in front of Valley to show you what happens when there's a place that has a lot of jobs , not enough housing , and unfortunately , not a good enough transit system region wide to support that number of commuters coming from places where there are lots of homes.
S4: So fascinating , because I actually came across a place that is kind of like the antidote to that. I was not really familiar with it , but , you know , as Andrew mentioned , I looked at how much building cities were doing per capita in one place that's doing really well is San Marcos , and they've essentially , like created a whole new part of town called North City around CSU San Marcos , a place that people flood into during the day exactly like you're talking about. And , um , they have set aside , like 200 acres there for this development that will eventually create over 3400 new homes. And the mayor there is a Republican , um , and , you know , the politics of housing breaks in very funny ways. It does not break across Republican Democratic lines in the same way. Uh , other things do. But , you know , her whole thing is like , we want to get people off the road in this part of town. And they started planning for that area in North City in 2009. And that's her thing. She's like , you can do this. But it takes a lot of planning and you know that that's one little pocket where they're actually doing it.
S1: In UTC , that there is a plan right where they're looking at , okay , how can we try to address some of these issues. What does that plan look to do.
S3: Well , so it it was passed last year. The city approved this new university community plan update. It hadn't been updated for probably 10 or 15 years , I think maybe even longer. And it changed the zoning in that area to allow for more homes. The reason why there aren't enough homes in that place isn't because no one wants to build them. It's because there are laws in place that the city had on the books that restricted the number of new homes that were allowed in the area. There's single family zoning for a big portion of the region , or there used to be , and there's a bunch of other places that were only zoned for commercial , only zoned for industrial , things like that. And so they've updated a lot of that zoning to allow for more homes , allow for mixed use homes and the shopping centers , and allow for apartments and more density in some of the residential neighborhoods. And those updates are going to change the way that that part of the city feels. It's going to make it more of like the village type of neighborhood , where there's people who can live and work and shop and do all the things they need to do in their own neighborhood instead of having to go somewhere else or come from somewhere else. And so like there's places like that that have everything we need except for enough homes , it seems like. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. I did some reporting on the university community plan that was passed last year. And , um , it's such an interesting neighborhood because you have really incredible density in University City. You see skyscrapers there where you don't really see many skyscrapers in San Diego outside of downtown. So you have this huge concentration of jobs and workplace. But if you walk around the neighborhood , it's not a very inviting pedestrian environment. You know , it was really a neighborhood that was designed to have a lot of commuters coming in and out. And that kind of transportation infrastructure is also really hard to change , and it takes a long time. So it'll be really interesting , I think , to watch University City develop over the next , I don't know , ten , 20 years to see how the street network changes , how , you know , people adjust their own behaviors based on how much traffic is in the neighborhood. And , you know , whether or not we'll see a flood of home building in University City that can actually , you know , absorb some of those , uh , commuters that that are otherwise driving from Chula Vista or even Riverside. Um , and , and the other interesting sort of thread in the University City , uh , story is that there's really two parts of the neighborhood , there's Northern University City , where you have the , um , a lot of that density , a lot of these big office parks , the mall. And then there's South University City , which is part of the neighborhood. It's separated by a canyon. Um , but it's it's really a bedroom community where it's the lowest density part of the neighborhood. And , uh , the city initially put forward an idea to identify some of those. Uh , Southern University City , allow more townhomes. Um , you know , still fairly low density housing when you compare it to what's happening in North Park or Banker's Hill or whatever. But , um , you know , a modest increase in housing and the community He absolutely went wild over this. They were really unhappy with the idea of , you know , townhomes in what is currently a single family detached house neighborhood , and the city scaled it back significantly. There are still a couple of shopping centers , I believe that they've that they've up zoned to allow for more housing. You know , they're trying to work around the edges and , and get some additional housing in that southern part of the neighborhood. But by and large , that neighborhood was mostly untouched with this plan update. And , you know , that's you know , I spoke to a grad student , I remember who who was like , he has to have , you know , 3 or 4 different roommates in one house , because that's the type of housing that he can afford and is in reasonable commuting distance to UCSD. So , um , University City , definitely a place to watch in the next coming years.
S1: You had mentioned up zoning. That brings me to the area that I want to talk about next , Will , what's going on in Encinitas And how does. Well , first give us a definition of up zoning.
S4: As we've been talking about. And generally speaking , up , zoning would be something where you allow for more housing in a place rather than just those single family homes.
S1:
S4: It could be what Andrew is talking about. It could be modest. You could just allow for townhomes instead of single family homes , or it could be more like what you find in North Park in East Village. It could be , uh , you know , apartments with five or more units , 12 story buildings. You know , there are all these kind of zoning you could , I think , you know , up zoning can be anything that changes the zoning to be more liberal for housing. So that could be getting rid of height limits. It could be allowing more density on a lot. Anything like that. And the state's housing laws have really tried to encourage that in recent years and kind of , um , you know , overtake , uh , cities , uh , laws , you know , so that the cities kind of essentially have to follow the state's program on housing. Encinitas , of course , is one place that is extremely unhappy about that. Yeah.
S1: Yeah.
S4: As Andrew said , San Diego obviously builds the most. But you know , um , where how much is everywhere else building per capita. Chula Vista is building the most. And that's because they have the most open land left. Uh , and so in those areas with no open land , for one , there's no neighbors to fight against that housing going there. Um , but also , it's just much easier to develop , obviously. Um , San Diego built the second most per capita , but number three in the four on the list , I think super fascinating. Ating um del Mar and Encinitas , kind of the places with the most hardcore reputations for being anti housing. Um , in not just the county , but the state. Really. Um , and , you know , I talked to the mayor of Encinitas , uh , and , and he said , you know , there are thousands and thousands of units going up. And , um , you know , the residents straight up hate it. And and that's what he was elected on. Bruce Elder's The mayor , him and two city council members. Their whole thing was past. City officials didn't fight hard enough against steady state housing laws. We're going to fight even harder , you know , because you know , what elders is saying is people are now seeing the the fruits of the state housing laws kind of coming to be in Encinitas. Um , and they're not happy about it. But yeah , I think that was certainly a very big surprise to see those places towards the top.
S1: Well , there's a bit of a mismatch , it seems like , between you're saying folks in these , in these communities don't want to see more housing production , and yet there is more housing production there.
S4: What affects warehousing goes is so complex. One big thing is zoning laws , which Jake was just talking about. But then there's also is there open space there ? Then there's also the question of desirability. You know , the place that's building the least per capita countywide is El Cajon , and that's a place where you could easily see more building. It's they don't necessarily have the most restrictive zoning laws. The state's laws have opened it up for development a lot , but people still aren't building there that much yet. And that's probably because it's one of the slightly more low rent areas of the county , whereas Del Mar and Encinitas are not low rent at all. So , you know , developers there can get a better margin on their profit. So I think as the state opens up zoning laws , um , the development tends to happen first in the most high rent areas. And builders told me we will start to see development in El Cajon too. You know , there's a lot of old shopping centers there that are ripe for being converted to housing. But , you know , obviously , um , developers are going to go where they see the biggest dollar signs first , I think.
S2: And just to elaborate on something we'll touched on , you know , in the past we've seen a lot of conversations around housing , as he mentioned , like housing really creates some strange bedfellows , some weird alliances. And and one of those alliances , I haven't seen it as much in San Diego , but in a lot of other parts of California , you see an alliance between , uh , low income communities and groups that are , you know , representing them and trying to make sure that they're taken care of with public investment and things like that , and these really wealthy communities , both of them can come together and agree that they don't want housing in their community. And we've seen a little bit of this in Encanto , where there's been a big backlash. There's been a big backlash against the accessory dwelling units there and a couple projects. One of them , I believe , was never actually approved. And yet it created this huge backlash against , you know , a large projects in this low income neighborhood. And I think one of the reasons that a lot of developers have tried to build in these low income neighborhoods is not because they think they can get the greatest return there on their investment , but because , first of all , sometimes it is easier to build there because you might have a , you know , neighborhoods that are less empowered , that are less organized. And so , you know , there's less that opposition isn't quite as strong or isn't as well connected as the opposition in wealthy communities. But I think what now that the state has , has , you know , adopted this Seca reform , so trying to make it much easier to build.
S1: Sequence the California Environmental Quality Act that prevents a lot of well , it prevents a lot of things or I shouldn't say prevent , but it can slow down a lot of things when environmental review is required.
S4: It's been weaponized.
S1: And it can be weaponized. I'm sorry.
S2: That's all right. That's all right. So , so exactly. So , you know , the state has has finally cracked some of those nuts that have not been cracked for a really long time. They're actually moving on some policy areas that have been really untouchable for a really long time. And it'll be really interesting to see going forward how much of this development that has been previously pushed into low income neighborhoods will now start shifting into high income neighborhoods ? Because , of course , if you can build an apartment building and charge $3,000 a month on average for each unit in Encinitas or Del Mar , and you could build that exact same apartment with all the same inputs , that the labor costs are the same , the building materials are the same , and you build that in Encanto , where maybe you can charge , I don't know , $2,000. The the economic incentive to build in wealthy communities is now there. And the disincentive or , you know , the it's just sort of like I think people will see this , you know , development in a low income community and think these developers are just evil. They're gentrifying our neighborhood there. And it's not necessarily that that's the first place a developer wants to build. The developers want to build where there's the highest demand. And and you know that this data coming out of Encinitas and Del Mar , I think is fascinating , and it'll be interesting to see if that's a trend that continues.
S4: Especially since Encinitas and Del Mar now want to try to claw local power back into their own hands. They're currently working on a ballot measure that would make a constitutional amendment where cities have the right to control their zoning , and the state can't usurp it. If that were to happen. Impossible to overstate the impact it would have.
S1: Coming up on roundtable , we continue our discussion about housing production in the San Diego region. Stay tuned. Welcome back to roundtable. I'm Scott Rod. We are discussing housing permitting and housing production in the San Diego region. In talking about where it's happening and where it's not. I want to pick up this conversation and talk about affordable housing , because this this project , uh , through KPBS and , uh , Voice of San Diego and its public Matters partnership really unearthed a lot of interesting data. And some of that had to do with affordable housing.
S2: It distinguishes between that and market rate housing , which is the vast majority of housing that is produced. It's the vast majority of housing that everybody lives in. Even people who are low income. And so , you know , that level of detail we did not put in the map because we didn't want to , first of all , overwhelm our web developer. But also , you know , it's worthwhile to see all types of housing in one place. I don't know the exact numbers of how and Will does , I guess , but but I will just say that , you know , I think the biggest , one of the biggest , um , shortcomings or the challenges to building deed restricted affordable housing is that it requires public subsidy. And , uh , and we don't have a lot of public funding for affordable housing in San Diego. There was a ballot measure that , um , that San Diego voted on several years ago. It needed a two thirds majority , and it got very close to that , but not enough. Um , And so , you know , the types of affordable housing that we are producing. Um , sometimes it's , you know , maybe 5 or 10 units out of a building that's 100 units or , uh , you know , projects that are , uh , you know , require that public subsidy. Um , but it's it's definitely a level of analysis that I'm interested in. And perhaps we can create a whole new map to show exactly where the affordable homes are being permitted.
S1: Our web developer will be thrilled about that.
S4: Very well. Sorry , Michael. Um , yeah. So I did , um , crunch those numbers countywide. And so over the six year window , we looked at 78% of what was built , was considered above market rate. Uh , 22% was considered either to be for moderate income folks , low income folks , or very low income folks. Um , as Andrew kind of alluded to , some of that was deed restricted. Some of it wasn't. The cities are also forced to keep track of affordable non deed restricted housing. So you had a lot of ADUs for instance that are considered. Affordable to folks with moderate income that aren't deed restricted that were built. So 22 is certainly not nothing when you think. About.
S1: About. 22%.
S4: 22%. Yeah. Um , uh , you know , of many tens of thousands of units of housing over this period. And , you know , of course , what housing advocates also say is that the above market rate housing is moderate. Above.
S2: Above moderate income.
S4: Above moderate income.
S2: Is market rate. It's. Yeah.
S4: Yeah. Above. Above moderate income. Excuse me. Yeah. The above moderate rate um , housing affects the housing market as well. Right. Because that's more units being created that don't push demand harder on the naturally occurring affordable places that we have. We have all this naturally occurring affordable housing. And if we're not building market rate housing , the pressure to eat up that affordable stuff is just insanely great. Yeah.
S3: Yeah. And I , I did look at , um , over the county. I compared , uh , zip codes , level data with , um , rent growth versus the number of units that were permitted. So this wasn't looking at affordable versus market rate or whatever. It was just units permitted total. And the places that permitted the most units saw the slowest rent growth. There was a direct connection between how many homes were allowed to be built and how slow a rent rents went up in that area. The places that permitted the least homes saw the highest rent growth by a lot. And so there's a direct connection between this concept of affordability and just building homes at all , whether they're affordable , whether they're deed restricted , whether they're luxury market rate homes. I mean , downtown is building a lot of luxury housing. There's a ton of these really fancy towers going up that are like , they say , luxury building and stuff on the side. But it saw the low down. The downtown zip code saw the lowest level of rent growth over the past six years because they've been adding a lot of units. And so , as Will said , that pressure on all the other homes in the area is relieved by these new buildings.
S4: Which is a funny thing about the politics and the way politics break , right , because this is a clear supply and demand issue. But you have a lot of conservatives who are really resistant to building , who are also just kind of ignoring this supply and demand aspect.
S1: I want to go to Jake with this question. Um , you have folks who are NIMBYs. Yes , in my backyard. They want to see a lot more growth. And then you have folks who are what some would describe as NIMBYs , not in my backyard. Maybe the more diplomatic , uh , way to describe them is they want to see slower growth or more responsible growth.
S3: That's smart. Growth.
S1: Growth. Smart growth.
S4: That's another way that that neighborhood character baby. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And so you spoke to someone who was part of a responsible or smart slow growth group. What's their argument ? Why do they say look ? Yeah , we're up for some for some more housing , but we need to place some limits on it.
S3: They say a lot and there's a lot of different arguments , if we're being honest here. But the one that it usually boils down to is parking and then traffic , which is another combination of that issue and most of what these people are concerned about , usually from what I've found , is that they're not going to have free on street parking anymore. That's just open and available for anybody. There's going to be too many other cars parking on their street , and they don't like that. And then there's going to be , you know , roadway traffic in their neighborhood. There's going to be people driving to the store , and the Trader Joe's lot is going to be full. And like , that's going to be a hassle for these people who are really used to this low density , quiet little neighborhood lifestyle. And that's great for some people who want to live like that. I totally respect the fact that there's a lot of people out there who don't want to live in like a bustling city.
S4: And the eighth largest city in the country.
S3: That's okay. But so that's what I'm saying. If if you don't want to live in a bustling city , you know , maybe the city of San Diego isn't the place. But that's rough to say to people who have just been living here for a long time. And there's homeowners who are seeing the neighborhood change around them , and that's what they don't like. And there's a lot of reasoning that sort of back fills those two chief arguments , which is just I don't like the change that's happening , and I don't want my parking spots and my roadways to be fill up with other cars. And I'm sympathetic to those concerns , but I'm more sympathetic to the people who just want a place to live. And I'm more sympathetic to the concerns of people who are driving for an hour on the freeway who because they can't live near their jobs. And so there's , you know , a lot of people who have different reasoning for why they don't want a new apartment complex next door to their home , and they have every right to have those arguments. But at the end of the day , the city and the state have come in and said , listen , we need more housing and these are the places that we're going to be adding it because it's near jobs , it's near transit , stuff like that. And that's the way the cities have grown for all of history. And we , you know , are trying to get in the way of that is creating a lot of problems. Chief among them the affordability crisis , homelessness , the fact that parents , kids have to move out of state because they can't afford to live here anymore , like these are all consequences of trying to set these neighborhoods in stone and never let them change over 40 , 50 years.
S4: I heard two mayors say this to me this week. Uh , Alison Snow , the mayor of Lemon Grove , a Democrat , and Rebecca Jones , the mayor of San Marcos , a Republican. They're more or less working class people , you know , who are mayors of their cities , who have kids. Um , and they they're what they're saying to people is like , don't you want your kids to be able to live here ? Like , that's the the kind of pressure point argument they're trying to make back. You know , this that's going across cutting across party lines again. You know , as a Republican and a Democrat saying this. And I think that unless you have generational wealth where your kid is just going to inherit your home , which is true in some of these places like Encinitas and Del Mar , then you do have to ask yourself this. This question is , do you want your kids to be able to live here or do you not ? Mhm.
S1: Has there been any monitoring or reporting or digging into. Well when density increases in certain areas , um , does the infrastructure keep up with it , does it catch up with it or are there some examples where it's like , oh , actually the infrastructure hasn't um , kept pace with it and that's created a challenge. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. I mean , generally speaking Leaking infrastructure is bad. So we we don't put. The.
S1: The.
S2: Potholes right. We fix them all. We don't we , we , uh , you know , largely due to prop 13 and the limits on property tax revenue that cities need in order to maintain that infrastructure and just sort of the way that we've built our cities and financed public infrastructure , it's pretty much bad almost everywhere. Um , and it's maybe worse in some places than others. But , um , the , the interesting thing. So I interviewed a city council member , Kent Lee , who represents district six. That includes Mira mesa. Um , you know , much of the north of the city , Kearny Mesa. And we met at this new development called Three routes. It's 1800 homes. It's actually right next to Sorrento Valley. So filling some of that need , uh , for housing near that job center. Um , and it's it's a master planned community , so really , really big. It used to be a rock quarry , actually. And , uh , what Councilmember Lee told me was he was actually on the community planning group when this development was under consideration. And he heard a lot of people saying , well , what about our infrastructure ? Our roads are already filled with potholes. Our library already needs repairs. You know , we need all of these , uh , better amenities for our , you know , kids to go and play at the park and everything. And I think all of those things are real. I mean , we do need better parks. We do need better roads in San Diego , where he's where where he saw the , um , sort of breakdown in logic was this development of three routes actually paid for those improvements in Mira mesa. So developers have to pay development impact fees which fund the infrastructure. It's meant to be sort of a nexus between , you know , the added strain on a neighborhood and the need that that creates for better infrastructure. And part of that funding falls on the backs of those new housing , you know , consumers , the homebuyers , the renters in that area. All of those fees are worked into the baseline cost of what it means , what it will cost to buy or rent a home there. And so he said , it wasn't until after this development of three routes was approved , and after those developers paid their fees , that the Mira mesa Community Center actually got funding for their improvements. So there was they're building a new aquatics center. They're building a new playground. You know , this neighborhood had been waiting for this infrastructure for 18 years. And the new housing in the neighborhood was what actually made it happen. So and this , you know , development impact fees fund some of our infrastructure. But it's it's kind of a it's not the best way to fund infrastructure because ultimately that cost is is on the new housing. And we don't want to make new housing more expensive. The other thing that's true with this new development of three routes is that those 1800 homes are going to be filled with human beings who are earning salaries , who are paying taxes , paying property taxes , they're paying sales taxes , which is where we get most of our transportation funding in San Diego. They're paying water bills. You know , we have some of the most expensive , uh , water in the in the state because we've chosen to invest in these things to create more reliable water sources like water recycling and desalination. And all of that is paid by the ratepayers. And so the more ratepayers that we have that are paying those water bills , the lower cost it's going to be for everybody. And I think that's where , you know , we need a smarter discussion around the nexus between infrastructure and housing because , uh , the cost of infrastructure improvements should not fall entirely on the backs of new residents. And we also need to recognize that those new residents are not , you know , ticks that are sucking the blood from the rest of the community. They are contributing to the community.
S3: And I just wanted to jump in and say that a lot of the people who are going to raise concerns about the infrastructure , the the main infrastructure they're talking about is the roads again. And Andrews reported on how investing so much of our taxpayer money into fixing the roads and then fixing the roads when there's inevitably more potholes , means that there's less money for the other types of infrastructure that go into a cycle of not needing to fix the roads. If you build better sidewalks , if you build bike lanes , if you build walkable neighborhoods with housing near jobs , the there's going to be fewer cars on the road which create fewer potholes , which means you spend less money fixing the roads. All of that is cyclical , and a lot of times with people who are concerned about infrastructure are really concerned about the roads. They don't see how that other infrastructure that gets paid for by the impact fees is going to help this whole problem.
S1: We've been discussing the In Who's Backyard project , which is a partnership between KPBS and Voice of San Diego through the Public Matters Partnership. A fascinating conversation , but we'll have to leave it there. I've been speaking with Andrew Bowen , KPBS Metro reporter Jake Gatta , social media host and reporter for KPBS and Will Hunt Berry , senior investigative reporter at Voice of San Diego. Thanks again to all of you for joining us. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. Thanks , Scott.
S3: Thanks for having me.
S1: Coming up , we discuss some other stories from the week on the roundup. That's ahead on roundtable. Don't touch the dial. Welcome back to roundtable. I'm Scott Rod. It's time now for our roundup where we'll discuss a few other stories from this week. Joining me now is KPBS producer Ashley Rush. Hey , Ashley.
S5: Hey , Scott.
S1: What's up ? Not much. This is the first time we've done the roundup. Yeah.
S5: Yeah. It is.
S1: Yeah , that's pretty exciting.
S5: Welcome back to the hosting chair.
S1: It feels great. It feels great. Uh , you know what ? I'll let you kick things off this week. Cool.
S5: Cool. Well , this first story , um , has to do with the world of music. Um , Spotify is the target of a boycott from some artists that are , you know , really upset about some things that the CEO Daniel Ek is doing. He just handed dollars to Hellsing. That's a company that's making AI weapons. So a lot of artists are upset about that taking their music off Spotify. Um , but this piece that we're looking at is by the LA times reporter August Brown. It really starts off with the band Deerhoof. They pulled their catalog from Spotify , and they were saying , you know , it's not that big of a sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. If Ek wants to go harder on AI warfare , we don't have to put our music on this platform.
S1:
S5: That's Hellsing. Um , so it seems like it's kind of a personal investment into this company from the CEO of Spotify. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. That's interesting. Um , I got a story for this week which also looks at AI , and this is from the New York Times. The headline is AI researchers are negotiating $250 million pay packages , just like NBA stars in the story opens up with Mark Zuckerberg negotiating with a 24 year old artificial intelligence researcher , and Zuckerberg's trying to lure him away from a competing company. And he offers him $125 million in cash and stock over the next four years. Like four year contract , like it's a sports contract. And this 24 year old says , no , I don't think so. I'd like some more money. So Mark Zuckerberg offers $250 million over the next over four years , with up to $100 million of that paid in the first year. And so the headline is spot on. Like , these are the types of , well , $1 figures that we see for sports stars. But also these are the types of negotiations and contract terms that we see for sports stars. The times makes an interesting observation that at least in the case of sports stars , you have salary caps. There are no salary.
S5: Caps with nothing. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. With these AI Researchers. I thought it was an interesting framing. Pretty wild just how much money that these folks are making.
S5: Yeah , a couple things in this. I mean , I'm 24 and I cannot even begin to imagine that kind of money , um , or just having that kind of power to say no to Mark Zuckerberg. But also in the story , I checked it out. And this idea of the list of , you know , the top AI people kind of like trading insider info about what these deals are so that they can , you know , make sure that they're requesting more money. Um , is kind of crazy to it feels like a whole different class. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And extending the sports metaphor as well there , I guess , is this thing called TB , which stands for the Technology Business Programming Network. I had never heard of it , but apparently it's like the sports center for like trades and acquisitions in the tech sector. So like literally there are like breaking banners where some random people from DeepMind get poached by Microsoft. And I thought that that was kind of mind boggling. I didn't realize that that was a thing. Um , I'd be curious if that network had a top ten players of the week segment. So anyways , uh , the last story that I had for this week is one from Politico. This is about Kamala Harris dropping out of the California governor's race and how this has basically opened things. It's made things wide open for the governor's race coming up in 2028. You have a bunch of big names that sort of were just waiting to see what Kamala Harris was going to do , and now you have folks like Katie Porter and Tony Thurmond and a number of other folks who are now , I should say , uh , Tony Atkins as well , uh , from San Diego , who are now seeing a much clearer path to jump into the race for California governor. And I used to report up in Sacramento. So this kind of brought me back to those days of keeping an eye on the political horse race.
S5:
S1: Um , if you have someone who just lost a presidential election , uh , versus folks who are coming from statewide offices or congressional offices , it's probably going to change the messaging. But , you know , I think the biggest impact is on the Democratic field now. The Politico headline calls this a , quote , Democrat bloodbath coming up , which is like we're talking about a gubernatorial primary. Yeah , exactly. Let's all cool off a little bit. But it is really interesting just from a political perspective. Right.
S5: Right. And of course , the news of Kamala Harris saying she's not going to run for governor opens up the question of whether she'll try to get the presidential seat again in 2028. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. For sure. So something to keep an eye on. Well , I've been speaking with Ashley Rush for our roundup segment. Thanks again. Ashley.
S5: Thanks , Scott.
S1: Thanks for listening to KPBS roundtable. You can listen to the show anytime as a podcast. KPBS roundtable airs on KPBS FM at noon on Fridays and Sundays at 6 a.m.. If you have any thoughts on today's show , you can email us at roundtable at KPBS. You can also leave us a message at (619) 452-0228. Roundtables technical producer this week is Brandon Truffaut. The show was produced by Ashley Rush. Brooke Ruth is roundtables senior producer. And I'm Scott rod in for your host , Andrew Bracken. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend.
