By Julie Thunder
Grow the San Diego Way, a non-partisan low-income housing advocacy group, recently published a white paper detailing the faulty method used by SANDAG to allocate future housing needs across the county, which resulted in a 56% increase in housing assignments for Encinitas.
Since the 1970’s, SD County has been using a proven method to predict future population growth. The method uses a complex model that takes into account many predictions from the State of California as well as local data. The old model has proven fairly accurate for almost 50 years.
But, SANDAG assigned two building industry insiders to the committee charged with predicting our housing needs for 2021 through 2030. Although the State of California predicts a slow down in San Diego’s population growth, the new committee made their own projection of population growth and came up with a number that is 56% higher.
Realizing a 56% increase in what the housing allotments should have been, it’s easy to extrapolate what Encinitas would have been assigned using the older proven method, which is a mere 1,013. That’s an extra 568 housing units for Encinitas alone because they changed the methodology. 568 units is the equivalent of ten 55-unit apartment buildings for Encinitas.
Encinitas Mayor Catherine Blakespear is the Vice-chair of SANDAG and has shown support for the new numbers issued to local cities, She is expected to become the Chairman of SANDAG next year.
Also see Sacramento’s Housing War on SoCal.