Candidates seeking to represent San Diego’s urban core on the City Council clashed this week over high-rise housing, the city’s camping ban, bike lanes and mass transit.
Speaking at a candidate forum, challengers to incumbent Councilmember Stephen Whitburn criticized his support for new housing policies that allow more high-rise housing in Hillcrest, North Park and other parts of District 3.
“District 3 is suffering from a saturation of density, and we don’t have the infrastructure to support it,” said Kate Callen, a North Park community activist. “Our streets are clogged, our air is dirty — it’s a mess.”
Callen was particularly critical of Whitburn for supporting the city’s Complete Communities program, which allows developers in some neighborhoods to build much larger projects than existing zoning would allow.
“Complete Communities has sent a message to corporate builders far and wide: ‘Come to San Diego, and you can build whatever you want wherever you want,’” she said. “It says, ‘You can treat us like an ATM — and don’t worry about the surrounding community, because we don’t listen to them.’”
Challenger Coleen Cusack was less critical of the plans for high-rise housing, instead criticizing Whitburn for saying that such housing can help solve the city’s homelessness problem.
“I support the general idea we need to encourage more development and more housing because that will increase supply, but realistically this supply isn’t going to be housing homeless individuals,” said Cusack, an attorney and advocate for the homeless.
Challenger Ellis California Jones made a similar point, criticizing city officials for touting high-rise housing as a solution for many people when it’s really only affordable to a limited few.
Whitburn said he’s been a strong supporter of all the new housing incentives and looser regulations coming from City Hall in recent years, because those policies aim to solve what he called the city’s two biggest problems: homelessness and a lack of affordable housing.
He mostly disagreed with concerns his challengers raised about the city allowing high-rise housing before infrastructure is in place to support it.
“I think we should have the infrastructure in place before we add density, but I also think we need to keep adding housing and not expect to wait until we have perfect infrastructure — because we’re years away from getting there,” he said.
On the city encampment ban spearheaded last summer by Whitburn, Cusack said it’s wrong to criminalize homelessness. She also criticized the city’s official designated camping sites, contending actual housing is necessary.
“We need roofs over their heads, not tents,” she said. “We need to allow them to go into shelters voluntarily, not under threat of police.”
Whitburn agreed that permanent housing must be the long-term solution, but he said short-term answers are also crucial.
“I’ve seen far too many body bags of people who had been experiencing homelessness and overdosed,” he said. “The status quo is simply not OK.”
Jones, who said he dealt with harassment from homeless people when he owned a small business downtown, agreed with Whitburn. Callen said she wants a detailed audit of the millions San Diego already spends on homelessness.
Whitburn’s challengers also attacked his support for protected bike lanes.
Jones said bike commuting is impractical and that he strongly opposes removing street parking spaces to create bike lanes. Callen said the money spent on bike lanes could have helped address bigger problems, like the clogged and failing flood control channels whose failures led to damaging flooding with the Jan. 22 storm.
Cusack said she supports the concept of bike lanes and trying to shift commuters out of their cars, but she said local planning of such lanes has been haphazard.
The challengers also criticized Whitburn for supporting large housing projects near the trolley and major bus lines, contending the residents in those developments will use cars, not transit.
“Who’s going to walk a mile to the bus when there’s somebody sitting on the bus acting crazy?” Jones said. Callen said she doubted that many people who work at City Hall use transit and that it would therefore be hypocritical to expect that of other people.
Cusack said San Diego’s transit system isn’t yet developed enough for it to be a factor in where housing is built.
Whitburn, who chairs the Metropolitan Transit System board of directors, agreed that local transit needs to improve but said the answer is to focus on it instead of giving up. “It has a vital role in our community, and we need to improve it,” he said.
Whitburn, Cusack and Callen are Democrats, while Jones is a Republican. Whitburn and Jones live downtown, while Cusack and Callen live in North Park.
The top two finishers in the March 5 primary will advance to a November runoff. That’s true even if one of the candidates gets more than 50 percent of the vote in March.
The Wednesday forum, held at the First Unitarian Church in Hillcrest, was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Neighbors for a Better San Diego.
