Families in Bay Park say they had no notice or input after the city approved a four-story housing development next door. NBC 7 investigative reporter Alexis Rivas explains.
Finding a parking spot near Chicago Street in Bay Park is about to get much more difficult. It’s because the city of San Diego gave a property owner the green light to transform a lot with a single-family home into a 12-unit, four-story apartment building. The lot will also have a detached ADU.
Kyley Crittenden lives a few houses down the street.
“Would you want your neighbor’s house torn down and turned into 13 units with no parking?” Crittenden asked. “Nobody wants that, because it just doesn’t make sense.”
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The neighbor’s lot is only zoned for up to seven units. However, city codes designed to increase multi-family housing development, referred to as a Housing Density Bonus, allow builders to double the number of maximum units per lot if they meet certain conditions.
Typically, no residential building in that part of Bay Park can exceed 30 feet tall, but the city also granted the builder a height waiver to go beyond that.
Housing incentives create a spike in development and public outcry
The project at 2019 Chicago Street is one of hundreds of new housing developments made possible by several of the city’s relatively new construction incentives; the city council passed most of those incentives in the last five years.
While at the time of their passage, they didn’t draw a lot of media attention, the construction those programs fueled has now prompted local news coverage, protests, lawsuits and raucous public comments at city council meetings.
“We are against the corporate takeover of our communities,” Encanto resident Becka Bautista said at Tuesday’s marathon city council meeting.
After more than 150 public commenters, the council voted 6-3 to move forward with a plan to roll back its ADU Bonus program for some sections of the city. In about 90 days, the council could make that official, which would keep the program from being used in lower-density single-family neighborhoods.
“Most people agree that the ADU Bonus Program has been abused,” Councilmember Stephen Whitburn said. “Nobody wants a gigantic building overlooking their backyard.”
Tuesday’s vote would eliminate the program for homes in these zoning areas: RS-1-1, RS-1-2, RS-1-3, RS-1-4, RS-1-8, RS-1-9, RS-1-10 and RS-1-11. The program would keep running in RS-1-5, RS-1-6 and RS-1-7. You can find out what zone you live in by visiting the city’s zoning map.
The city planning department also told council members it would be making adjustments to the program for all residential zones during the yearly land development code update, which gets input from community planning boards. That process wouldn’t begin until this summer.
Mayor Todd Gloria has been vocal about his support for housing development and has defended the ADU Bonus program. He expressed disappointment with efforts to repeal it earlier this year but indicated a willingness to tweak it within a social media post on Tuesday evening.
San Diego’s housing crisis is driving up rents and fueling homelessness. The solution? #BuildMoreHousing. Our ADU Density Bonus program has created hundreds of affordable homes, and my administration is refining it with community input to keep delivering results. pic.twitter.com/S20lEBjpH3
— San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria (@MayorToddGloria) March 5, 2025
Under the ADU bonus program, the city allowed developers to build two ADUs if they rented one out at a market rate price. They could increase the total number of ADU units by an unlimited amount if they kept that one-to-one pricing ratio, regardless of the size of the lot. In several cases, the city granted permits for multi-story complexes on plots of land zoned for a single-family home.
Numbers from the city show the deal is too good to pass up for dozens of developers. In its first year, the planning department approved just 34 ADUs. Over the next three years, it grew by leaps and bounds. Last year, projects cleared under the program really took off, increasing to 1,033 ADUs, according to San Diego Housing Commission records obtained by NBC 7 Investigates.
NBC 7 Investigates also obtained records showing where bonus ADU projects have been approved. Almost two-thirds of them are south of Interstate 8 – in less affluent neighborhoods that already have higher population density.
But the bonus ADU program is just one out of a laundry list of sweeping incentives and exemptions the city planning department put into motion back in 2021. In fact, many of these projects might not have been as tempting to build until 2023, when the city of San Diego made another big change.
It said housing projects within one mile of a major public transit stop, like a trolley or bus stop, don’t need to build any parking accommodations. That is true, even if a future project is slated to go up on a single-family residential plot on a street surrounded by other single-family homes.
Development approved without public notice or input
Crittenden and her neighbors told NBC 7 Investigates they feel left in the dark about what’s happening on Chicago Street in Bay Park.
“It’s impossible as a neighbor to know what’s going on,” Crittenden said.
Crittenden has a real estate license, but she said she didn’t know anything about the construction project next door until renters moved out and a green-tarp covered fence went up.
“Which is still blowing my mind that this house might be knocked down, like any day now, and nobody is even required to give me a heads up!" Crittenden said. "My house is like 20 feet away!”
The city told NBC 7 Investigates its development services department reviewed the project, which didn’t require any public notice or additional review by the Clairemont Mesa Community Planning Group.
“That is really upsetting to me,” Crittenden said. “And I still don’t know how to find out why, or who said yes, or if there is anything I can say or do to argue with it.”
The city also confirmed that it waived the height limit.
“Nothing we can do about it,” said Alyssa Cowan, who also lives near the Bay Park project. “It’s like parking roulette. People circling around continually trying to find parking.”
NBC 7 Investigates spoke with the property owner who’s developing the lot to offer him the chance to respond to his neighbor’s criticisms. He declined to comment.
Not everyone is opposed to the city’s housing development programs, however.
Professor Jake Wegmann studies housing at the University of Texas in Austin. For years now, he’s had an eye on San Diego.
“For the longest time, single-family zoning was the third rail,” Wegmann said. “San Diego is now one of a few big cities pushing that. It’s one of the ones that’s gone the furthest, which is part of the reason that I’ve been paying attention to San Diego: It’s a very interesting story to me.”
Wegmann said San Diego isn’t really trying to build out, it’s building up – to the point where it’s intentionally encouraging taller buildings in single-family residential zones.
“That’s the thing that’s new," Wegmann said. "The leadership of the city was pretty low-key about it,. And yet the reform has turned out to be quite consequential.”
The state of California mandated housing changes back in 2016, but Wegmann thinks it’s how each of San Diego’s incentive programs work together that’s made it too irresistible to not build big in San Diego.
“For better or for worse, the majority of housing is going to be built by private developers, by profit-motivated developers,” said Wegmann, who personally believes it’s for the better.
“A place like San Diego just desperately needs more housing,” Wegmann said. “It's just in a critical housing shortage. If we're going to catch up and build more housing that people really need, yeah, people are going to be making a living from doing it. ”
The professor noted that it was not just developers who stand to make a profit.
“I think the city has a real interest in thickening up some of its neighborhoods and getting more property tax revenue from them,” Wegmann said.
Wegmann hopes San Diego leaves its housing programs as is.
“San Diego I think, has just long had a more pro-growth political culture than the other coastal California cities – more than LA, more than San Francisco, more than Oakland, more than San Jose,” said Wegmann. “Mayor Gloria is very vocally pro-housing development. And I don’t know that every city council member is that way, but enough of them are that there’s just a solid pro-housing growth majority, and they’re willing to do these pretty bold things. And they understand that there will be consequences, and people will be upset, but they’ve forged ahead with them nonetheless.”
But back in Bay Park, neighbors question whether the city’s housing programs foster truly affordable housing. They point to the fact the city’s incentive programs reward developers for deed-restricted units within 110 percent of the area median income. That’s $2,300 for a studio or $2,629 for a one-bedroom unit.
“I don’t really think it’s solving a problem,” Cowan said. “It’s just adding to this loophole that’s just creating a bigger problem.”
Cowan and Crittenden said they’re not NIMBYs, but they do wish San Diegans — and not just a city worker —bhad a chance to weigh in on big housing projects, something they didn’t get a chance to do on Chicago Street.
“I would like to know if that person even visited this street,” Crittenden said. “Did they come here and consider what 36 bedrooms of people living there will do to the street? It’s devastating, honestly.”
