Two years ago, a few weeks before Election Day, San Diegans were mostly worried about two big issues: the cost of housing, and the city’s homelessness crisis.
That’s according to an internal poll from a consultant who was working on a campaign at the time. Twenty percent of the respondents said housing costs were the biggest issue in the city, and another 16 percent said homelessness was most important. Nothing else really came close – though COVID came in at seven percent, as did reopening the economy. Combine those into a single COVID concern, and you’ve got a third major concern.
A new poll from the same pollster this week shows the housing and homelessness have only become a more intense concern for city residents.
Homelessness is now the top concern, with 26 percent of respondents saying it’s the city’s biggest issue. Concern over housing costs grew too, with it now topping concerns for 23 percent of respondents.
Not only do housing and homelessness now rank as the biggest problem for nearly 60 percent of the city, according to this poll, but virtually every other concern has faded from view.
No single issue gets more than five percent of people’s attention.
Crime might be up, but that doesn’t seem to be a chief concern of many residents. Just three percent of respondents said “crime, gangs and drugs” was their top concern. The federal government just passed a massive infrastructure bill, and city leaders were in DC this week in part to get our piece of it, but just four percent of respondents ranked infrastructure as their top concern. Still, that’s four times more than both climate change and public transit, which each top concerns for just one percent of respondents. COVID is now the top concern of just two percent of residents.
The hairy old James Carville cliché needs a refresh for San Diego in 2022. It’s the housing, stupid.
The Craziest One Paseo Take
Ten yeas ago, one of the most heated topics in local politics was One Paseo, a housing and retail project proposed on a vacant lot in Carmel Valley.
The City Council finally approved it in 2015, and then approved a smaller version of it a year later to avoid a referendum. Nowadays, it’s just a popular destination in a desirable neighborhood, not a topic of political debate.
But, boy, back in 2013, people had takes.
Like this one, from Mike Aguirre, the former city attorney then running to replace disgraced former Mayor Bob Filner, who agreed with a community planning group member who said the traffic it would cause would mean fire engines wouldn’t be able to reach emergencies, and people would die.
“What’s going to happen is, if they build this thing, someone’s going to — exactly like you said — some kind of loss of life, there’s going to be some kind of incredible cost to people because of the enormous traffic, it’ll have an effect on the economy, it’ll have an effect on getting back and forth, it’s going to become a much worse situation, and that’s why they have the original zoning there to begin with,” Aguirre said.
I don’t mean to pick on Aguirre. My coverage of One Paseo from the time hasn’t aged all that well either. I once framed it as an attempt at “retrofitting suburbia.” Take it easy.
While the promised transformative elements of One Paseo were oversold, it’s still fair to reflect on the fight over the project and chalk it up as a win for the basic YIMBY argument, that warnings of severe effects of new development never seem to pan out. Carmel Valley residents used to fill my inbox with concerns about One Paseo. I’ve never fielded a complaint since it finished.
Help us Pay the Bills
Unrelated but not unimportant: We’re in the final days of our spring campaign and are still a bit short of our goal.
If you’re reading this, you’re already a member — thank you for that, by the way — but if you have the ability to make an additional gift this year, we’d really appreciate it.
It’s Election Day, Again
Voters in the old 80th Assembly district will choose a representative to complete former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s term Tuesday, assuming they haven’t already voted by mail.
A winner could be declared Tuesday night, though there’s a sense of confidence within the political world that no one will get over 50 percent of the vote – Republican Lincoln Pickard joins Democratic former San Diego councilmembers Georgette Gomez and David Alvarez on the ballot – meaning the top two will proceed to a June runoff. The professional political world has been wrong from time to time in recent local history, though.
Remembering Bob Nelson
From time to time, I used to get emails from Bob Nelson, the former Port Commissioner and public relations maven, late on a Friday, typically commending me on an insult levied against Scott on the podcast that week.
Nelson later told me I got those emails because his Friday routine – when he wasn’t hosting a party – included unwinding with a cigar and a drink in his hot tub while he listened to our show.
One night, for instance, he was happy to hear me use one of my SAT words.
“You said, ‘grok,’” Nelson wrote. “This verb arrived with Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” which I borrowed from the Whittier Public Library at age 12. I read it about ten times in the following 40 years and only recently became aware how homophobic it is. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. But I still grok grok, so both surprised and pleased to hear it ‘on the air.’”
Funny, esoteric, conscientious – it’s a very Bob Nelson email.
I thought of these small, pleasant exchanges when I learned Nelson died at his home last weekend, at 70 years old. He was a Voice of San Diego supporter since 2006, shortly after our little shop opened. But I especially liked the way he signed off his emails, because of the implicit challenge to keep getting better.
“All y’all are doing more good than bad,” he wrote. “Please keep it up.”
We’ll keep trying.
