San Diego’s Housing Refugee Crisis

You read about and see on the TV news the Syrian refugee crisis, but San Diego is experiencing its own quiet refugee crisis.  It is not caused by civil war, but is caused by crushing rents and crazy sale prices. Who are these refugees?  They are the people we care about the most, our children.

Dan McSwain’s recent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune explores this new family problem.  He attributes this to high government housing fees and limits on new construction.  Our children have become “distant housing refugees” moving to other states like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas to find affordable housing.

McSwain points out, if you doubt that local government fees are a problem.  Lynn Reaser, Chief Economist of the Fermanian Business & Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University, who in 2014, led a research team that found local regulations accounted for an astounding 40 percent of the cost a new house, condo or apartment in San Diego County.  Reaser’s team can demonstrate how $180,000 of that $450,000 house or apartment owes to local regulations.

Now you might think that these regulations protect the environment from dirty hordes of new residents. In fact, the opposite is often true, as Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has argued persuasively in a series of papers.

“In California’s case, preventing local construction for environmental reasons only ends up increasing  carbon emissions by pushing building to less salubrious climes,” Glaeser wrote.

In San Diego’s case, anti-growth policies in the 1990’s and 2000’s contributed to a historic construction boom in Southwest Riverside County.  Those people who moved to Temecula, got in their cars and commuted back to their jobs in San Diego over an hour down Interstate 15 causing immense traffic problems and increased carbon emissions.

I encourage you to read the entire McSwain article as it furthers breaks down other California regulations such as the expanded California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 that limited public projects.

I don’t expect any of our regulations and fees to change especially since the homeowners are benefiting from these high prices.  However by reducing local government regulations and fees, we can make housing more affordable thereby keeping our children here in San Diego.