Neighbors in Encanto, Chollas Valley and surrounding areas are frustrated about a zoning code they're calling modern day redlining. San Diego planning commissioners on Thursday made a recommendation to repeal the policy.
People in yellow shirts scattered throughout council chambers on Thursday morning to show solidarity. Eyes were on a footnote buried in the city’s municipal code: "Footnote 7."
“The footnote is illegal,” one neighbor said. “It targeted only one community. Us.”
Five years ago, the city council added Footnote 7 to its zoning code. It reduced single-family lot sizes by 75% but only in southeastern neighborhoods.
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Commissioners said Footnote 7 was meant to provide more affordable housing, but a community activist countered that it’s actually concentrating poverty in an already low-income, minority community, rather than spreading this housing around the city into wealthier neighborhoods.
"Every second that this footnote is on the books, this Jim Crow footnote is on the books, you're complicit,” Encanto resident Kenny Key said while addressing commissioners. “It should never have been there. The way we felt in the 60s, you sent dogs on us. Now, you’re sending developers on us."
Planning commissioners voted on a motion to rescind the footnote, but neighbors said that's not good enough.
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Even if Footnote 7 goes, that still leaves two projects in progress in Emerald Hills and Encanto. People feel that if these projects continue, it'll disintegrate their quality of life. They want the projects already in the works canceled, too.
"Once they take that hill, we're just going to be hemmed in,” said Andrea Hetheru, chair of the Chollas Valley Community Planning Group. “There's no way we're going to be able to develop our community and have the things that all the other communities have, which is retail, very nice parks, have nice street scaping, all of that. It will just be a slum.”
By the end of the meeting, some commissioners said they were open to amending their recommendation to include construction be stopped.
"There is a process, and it is very frustrating,” Planning Commissioner Dennis Otsuji said. “I get frustrated, and we all do. The city staff does.”
“I don't like the process that occurred here,” Planning Commissioner Ted Miyahara said. “I've been compelled to think about this a different way.”
Now that the recommendation to rescind Footnote 7 has passed, it’s on to the city council next month.
In a statement response, the city wrote: "The City Planning Department fully supports the removal of the footnote, since we do not believe it is good planning practice to rezone a property through a footnote in the regulations."
