The San Diego City Council's housing committee pushed a plan forward to bring more high-rises and housing to Hillcrest. It would allow developers to build higher, and it could more than double the population of the area by 2050.
“The need is extraordinary,” Will Moore, policy counsel at Circulate San Diego, told NBC 7.
While the city council's housing committee favored the blueprint growth, not all San Diegans are on board with the density plan.
“We did sit before the city officials and talk to them about the blueprint plan, and we talked about these density issues, but it says this. Our voices just don't matter,” Patty Ducey-Brooks, a small business owner, said.
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Moore said the population growth may sound drastic as a lump sum but that it breaks down into 2.4% growth each year over the 30-year plan.
Ducey-Brooks is concerned about changes to traffic and parking. The proposal could make University Avenue, one of Hillcrest's main arteries, a one-way street.
“Small businesses — we can't afford to continue to operate if, in fact, we can't get the public to come to us,” said Ducey-Brooks, who does not live in Hillcrest but is worried about ripple effects across Uptown.
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However, Moore said increasing housing density is paramount to quell rising rent costs.
“San Diego and the state of California generally have made some mistakes as far as planning for the future," Moore said. "We need to do some aggressive work to make up for those mistakes. The reason those folks don't have grandkids living in town, sometimes, and they don't realize it is because they opposed all the housing.”
