Housing reforms are starting to pay off
Good Morning, I’m Lawrence K. Jackson….it’s Monday, July 28th >>>>
Housing Reforms put in place a decade ago are now starting to pay off…
More on that next. But first... the headlines….####### PARAMOUNT AND/OR + COMIC-CON WEEKEND REFRESH UPDATE
COMIC-CON 2025 HAS NOW COME TO A CLOSE AND SOMEHOW EACH AND EVERY YEAR THERE SEEMS TO BE ONE COSPLAY THAT TOWERS ABOVE THE REST
GALACTUS COULD BE SEEN STOMPING AROUND AND STANDING A CASUAL TEN FEET TALL ON THE CONVENTION FLOOR
THE SUIT WAS CREATED BY THOMAS DEPETRILLO, (FIND PRONUN) THE SAME PERSON WHO MADE THE NINE AND A HALF FOOT HULKBUSTER ALMOST A DECADE AGO
ANOTHER ONE OF THE BIGGEST TOPICS OF CONVERSATION TO COME OUT OF THE WEEKEND WAS ALL THE TALK AROUND SOUTH PARK
THE LONG-TIME SHOW INKED A NEW DEAL VALUED AT 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS ACROSS FIVE YEARS TO BRING THE ENTIRE SOUTH PARK LIBRARY PLUS FIFTY NEW EPISODES TO PARAMOUNT
WHEN SPEAKING ON A PANEL THIS WEEKEND AT COMIC-CON SOUTH PARK CO-CREATOR TREY PARKER SMUGLY OFFERED AN APOLOGY FOR ALL THE HYSTERIA SURROUNDING THEIR SEASON PREMIERE EPISODE SAYING QUOTE “WE’RE TERRIBLY SORRY”
####### TJ MICHELIN STAR TACO SHOP
I DEFINITELY DID NOT MOVE TO SAN DIEGO BECAUSE OF TACOS, THAT’S MY STORY AND I’M STICKING TO IT
NOW, YOU MIGHT THINK THAT WITH TACOS BEING SUCH A STAPLE HERE THAT THEY’RE ALL CREATED EQUAL
WELL THE VERY CULTURED FOLKS AT MICHELIN MIGHT DISAGREE
TACOS EL FRANC (PRONUN), A TJ STANDOUT MADE THE MICHELIN GUIDE LAST YEAR AND THIS YEAR.
BUT IT’S THIS YEAR THAT THEY MADE THEIR WAY INTO THE U-S, LANDING IN NATIONAL CITY AT WESTFIELD’S PLAZA BONITA
THE SPOT STARTED AS A HUMBLE TACO STAND ON A STREET CORNER IN TIJUANA IN 1974 AND THEN BECAME A STOREFRONT IN 96’
######## SPRECKLES ORGAN SOCIETY
ALRIGHT FRIAR FAITHFUL, START YOUR … ORGANS?!
THE SPRECKLES ORGAN SOCIETY CONTINUES ITS ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL SUMMER ORGAN FESTIVAL HAPPENING WHERE ELSE BUT THE SPRECKLES ORGAN PAVILION IN BALBOA PARK
TONIGHTS SOUNDS WILL PROVIDED BY ORGANIST ARHEUM (AH-ROOM CHECK PROUN) HAN WHO HAS PERFORMED ACROSS THE U-S, ASIA AND EUROPE
THE MONDAY EVENING CONCERTS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH SEPTEMBER 1ST
AND FUN FACT, THE SPRECKLES ORGAN IS THE LARGEST OPEN-AIR MUSICAL INSTRUMENT IN THE WORLD
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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
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########## HOUSINGPT1
SAN DIEGO HAS ADOPTED A HOST OF REFORMS OVER THE PAST DECADE MEANT TO INCREASE THE HOUSING SUPPLY AND THEY'RE STARTING TO SHOW RESULTS. A KPBS ANALYSIS OF HOME DATA HAS FOUND THE CITY'S BIGGEST CONCENTRATION OF GROWTH IS IN THE CITY'S URBAN CORE. METRO REPORTER ANDREW BOWEN HAS THAT STORY.
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HOUSINGPT2 (ab) 4:39 soq
TG: We love to be somewhere where we can walk to coffee, walk to dinner, and just have things going on in the neighborhood.
AB: Todd Goodall has been a San Diegan for two years. The Ohio native works a remote job. After trying out a few different cities in the U.S. and abroad, he and his wife decided San Diego feels most like home. They like the weather, of course, and the pace of living.
TG: Places like LA and New York are much more career-driven and career-focused. People are always talking about what they do for work, and that's where they get their identity from. I feel like here people are much more defined by their hobbies, what they do outside of work, and we love that as well.
AB: Goodall is one of the thousands of locals who lives in a brand new apartment building in North Park. His building, the Nash, has some nice amenities… though the units themselves aren't very big.
TG: We could get more space than we do for our money here. But the other things about the building we love. So the first floor is an office space that I can work in or my wife can work in. The pool is amazing.
AB: The Nash is part of a cluster of development activity that happened between 2018 and 2024. Housing permit data analyzed by KPBS show the highest concentration of new homebuilding has been in downtown, Bankers Hill, Hillcrest and North Park. And the vast majority of new housing is coming in the form of apartment buildings with 5 or more units. And yet that type of denser development is limited to just a few areas. Most of San Diego is still zoned for single-family homes. In those areas, accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, are the only type of housing getting built in significant numbers. While Goodall's neighborhood of North Park is growing fast, he still sees plenty of room to keep growing. Most of the big new apartment buildings are major streets.
TG: If you drive down El Cajon Boulevard, it feels like everything's a five-story, newer apartment building. But if you get west of here into University Heights a little bit, it's still mostly single family homes. And there's not a lot of density spread around. It's very concentrated in certain areas.
KL: Really, I think it's about choices and how we utilize the space that we've got.
AB: Kent Lee chairs the San Diego City Council's Land Use and Housing Committee. He says even the densest neighborhoods aren't exactly full.
KL: Downtown, as built out as it might look, you drive around and you can still find almost every other block empty plots of land.
AB: Lee often hears constituents oppose new housing, saying they want better infrastructure first. Better roads, parks, libraries and public transit.
KL: And then at the same time, we don't plan for those things because we don't think we have enough people in the area to utilize them. People always get into this argument of, why don't we have one first before the other? And the true answer is we actually just — we need to plan for both, and both at the same time.
AB: I meet Lee at 3Roots, a new development of 1,800 homes in his neighborhood of Mira Mesa. He recalls neighbors talking about this project as a burden on the community. Lee doesn't see housing as a burden but as an opportunity. It brings in more residents who pay the taxes and water bills that fund city infrastructure and services. Developers also pay fees that have helped upgrade the parks in Mira Mesa.
KL: 2005 is when the community was basically told, Hey, we're planning for a new pool, skate park, updates to the recreational facilities. And then it sat for 18 years. And the one trigger point that made it possible for that project to move forward was 3Roots, because the development impact fees from 3Roots were what was going into the local fund that allowed for that project.
TG: We don't need a ton of space. We don't need a massive yard. The things we value are the walkability of a neighborhood, the liveliness.
AB: Two years into his life in San Diego, Todd Goodall is happy with his housing situation. But as he and his wife consider having kids, the only family-sized housing options they see in North Park are out of their price range.
TG: I mean, in an ideal world, there would be lots of options at that 2-3 bedroom size that wer en't just single family homes built in the '70s that need work.
AB: For now, though, those family-sized housing options are in short supply — especially in San Diego's walkable neighborhoods. Most of the new apartments here are studios and one-bedrooms. Andrew Bowen, KPBS news
TAG: TO EXPLORE A MAP OF WHERE HOUSING IS BEING BUILT, YOU CAN GO TO KPBS DOT ORG SLASH WHOSE BACK YARD.
########## WHALES
FISHING GEAR IS A HAZARD TO WHALES… IT'S CALLED ENTANGLEMENT WHEN THEY GET CAUGHT IN IT. SCI-TECH REPORTER THOMAS FUDGE SAYS THE FEDERAL AGENCY THAT TRACKS THOSE EVENTS HAS A NEW REPORT.
WHALES 1 (tf) :51 …soq.
NOAA Fisheries’ latest numbers are from 2023, when there were 64 confirmed large whale entanglements in US waters. Twenty-six percent of them were off the California coast. Twenty-three percent off the coast of Massachusetts.
Ben Grundy with the center for biological diversity says when whales are caught in fishing gear the result can be death from drowning.
“And if it’s not death itself it can result in se
rious injury. We’ve seen whales with amputated fins and amputated flukes.”
Grundy says for every confirmed entanglement there are about ten that go undetected.
He says in California whales often get caught in the vertical lines connecting a buoy to a sea-bottom trap, used for catching dungeness (dun-juh-ness) crab. He says new pop-up gear, which eliminates the line, is much safer. SOQ.
########## CCCLEANUP
CREWS ARE OUT IN FULL FORCE THIS MORNING, CLEANING UP FOLLOWING COMIC-CON. REPORTER JOHN CARROLL SAYS SANITATION WORKERS HAVE DEVELOPED A METHOD TO GET RID OF A LOT OF TRASH, AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
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CCCLEANUP 1 :50 SOQ
COMIC-CON ENDED YESTERDAY AFTERNOON… AND WITHIN MOMENTS CLEANING CREWS WERE OUT PICKING UP TRASH AND SCRUBBING THINGS DOWN. FRANKLIN COOPERSMITH IS WITH THE CITY SANITATION DEPARTMENT. HE SAYS THE CREWS HAVE A STRATEGY WHEN IT COMES TO GETTING THE STREETS AND SIDEWALKS OF THE GASLAMP QUARTER - BACK TO BEING CLEAN!
“What we do is we go see exactly what areas need the most cleaning. Then our crews on Monday and Tuesday will do power washing throughout those to get it back. We just need to see what the after damage looks like before we're able to get in there.”
COOPERSMITH SAYS LAST YEAR, CREWS PICKED UP FOUR TONS OF TRASH. HE SAYS CREWS FROM THE DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO PARTNERSHIP AND THE BALLPARK DISTRICT ACTUALLY DO MOST OF THE CLEANING UP, WITH CITY CREWS HELPING WHERE NEEDED. HE SAYS EVERYTHING SHOULD BE BACK TO NORMAL BY TUESDAY. JC, KPBS NEWS.
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That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Lawrence K. Jackson. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
