Posts Tagged San Diego

Potential parking reduction boxes in San Diego

Published: June 26, 2010 | Comments (4)


By Megan Burks

San Diego is stuck in a tight spot when it comes to parking. As the city gears up to change its parking requirements for new construction, debate has centered on whether to house people or to house cars.

Increasingly, state grants that subsidize affordable housing for low-income people are being awarded to “smart-growth” projects that encourage the use of public transit. One way to do that is to reduce the number of parking spaces in residential complexes, a strategy favored by cost-conscious developers and transit advocates.

Info from stock.xchng and the City of San Diego.

But residents in dense and growing neighborhoods take the opposite view: they want to require more parking, not less. Many say space for cars is already limited and that current transit offerings couldn’t shoulder a new wave of car-less riders.

A recent case in Lincoln Park, a low-income and predominantly Latino community in southeastern San Diego, illustrates the problem. The Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, a local non-profit, wanted to build 200 affordable housing units in the community but needed a grant from a state housing bond for the project to pencil out.

The Jacobs Center scored 328 on an application for funding from Prop 1C. The qualifying score is 330. Chip Buttner, the group’s president and CEO, said most of the deductions were made because in San Diego, affordable two bedrooms need at least 1.75 parking spaces each, as opposed to one in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The different standards amount to an addition 150 parking spaces for the San Diego project. With California looking to cut carbon emissions, developments like this that allow for the status quo in car use just aren’t as attractive to the grant managers.

Now, at the behest of redevelopment agencies and affordable housing developers like Jacobs, San Diego is reevaluating its parking allotments in a study due out next year. The city is expected to reduce the ratio for affordable housing, and changes could eventually span the entire housing spectrum—potential reductions that worry residents in neighborhoods with little curb space to spare.

Developers favor reduced parking to increase housing

Market Creek Plaza, the partially completed project in Lincoln Park, is a bright, multi-colored compound that stands out among dry-brush hills, warehouses and fading homes. It brought the first grocery store to the area and has raised property values enough for a neighboring medical center to take out loans for expansion and offer hope for new jobs. Trolley tracks and 12 bus routes crisscross the 45 acres of continuous land slated for residential and commercial development by JCNI. It has the makings of a sustainable community center, except too much pavement.

Info from stock.xchng and the City of San Diego

According to Buttner, San Diego’s parking requirements have cost the project about $17 million in grants and set construction back at least a year. Michael VanBuskirk, a private consultant who helps developers write and submit proposals, said Buttner’s assertion that parking requirements weigh heavily on funding opportunities is valid. According to VanBuskirk, funding and government agencies typically ask developers to address sustainable practices in their proposals. Builds that encourage transit use and walking are favored, as are those that qualify for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, which accounts for parking ratios.

“A certain level of sustainable design is becoming expected in these projects rather than the exception,” VanBuskirk said.

Charles Davis, the director of project development at JCNI, said the amount of Prop 1C funding San Diego County got as a whole is representative of the preference given to smart growth projects. San Diego brought in just $23 million while San Francisco, a denser city with more efficient transit, won $175 million.

Eliminating space for cars could make San Diego developers more competitive. It could also help alleviate a shortage of affordable housing, said Davis and others. In 2002, the city council declared a housing state of emergency that hasn’t been lifted; the city can only meet about 25 percent of the demand for affordable housing, according to Terri O’Connor, a planner with the group conducting the parking study.

Market Creek Plaza is a multi-colored compound that stands out among dry-brush hills, warehouses and fading homes in Lincoln Park. It has the makings of a sustainable community center, but its developer says high parking requirements are holding it back.

“We have a housing crisis, not a parking crisis,” said Doris Payne Camp of the San Diego Housing Federation.

Camp, as well as Buttner and Davis, said the cost of building parking spaces might be better spent on constructing additional housing units. According to a city report, an individual parking space costs between $1,000 for surface and $22,000 for underground parking. Dave Gatzke, a project manager with Community Housing Works, said the range can actually top out at $40,000 when design and financing costs are included.

Gatzke said most new units in San Diego’s mid-city neighborhoods are stacked above ground-level parking. A parking space for this type of building costs $31,000 to construct, according to Chris Kennedy of Advent Companies, an Orange County development group that has studied parking costs throughout the state. Kennedy said eliminating eight of these stalls would fund one additional unit of affordable housing.

“The way I see it, you can either park people or you can park cars,” Davis said. The developers who spoke with HealthyCal.org said they’re more interested in sheltering people.

Some confused about designated affordable housing

Some residents, however, have said they’re worried that developer support for a parking reduction is actually aimed at bolstering profits. In a workshop hosted by the parking study organizers, several homeowners said they doubt money saved on parking would actually go to more housing.

“There’s this perception that every developer wears a black hat and rides away on an expensive horse,” said Marcela Escobar-Eck, a land-use consultant with Atlantis Group, LLC. “Affordable housing developers are a different breed.”

Because they use public subsidies from redevelopment agencies and state and federal funds, money spared by a potential parking reduction would go toward subsidizing similar projects. What’s more, the amount of rent charged and the type of tenants leased to are restricted for 55 years, Camp said. The owners of these buildings base rent on a fixed percentage of the tenant’s income. According to Buttner, rent typically covers just 10 percent of the cost to build and maintain the units.

Residents at the workshop also said they worry low-income families are the wrong target for a parking reduction, citing neighbors who share dwellings with other families and keep cars for both. While such living arrangements can be observed throughout the city, tenants in designated affordable housing cannot exceed maximum occupancy. Additionally, 2000 Census data suggests car ownership does, indeed, correlate with income; the less money a family makes, the fewer cars it owns. The current study will look at ownership trends, among others, at up to 30 affordable housing sites to further assess this trend, according to the study organizers.

Residents say they’re already over-parked

Despite the data, the daily hunt for prized curb space is still enough for residents to question a parking reduction. Recent gentrification has brought booming business districts and new duplexes to mid-city neighborhoods. Streets are full during peak shopping hours and again at night when residents return home and popular bars open. The San Diego Association of Government’s most recent forecast anticipates the population will grow by almost 50 percent by 2050, with most of the growth occurring in these same urban areas. With infill imminent and parking already at a premium, many residents are calling for an increase in parking ratios.

At midday, streets in this Serra Mesa subdivision are empty. But curbs fill up so quickly in the evening that community members are asking new developments to exceed the city minimum for parking.

About 15 minutes from the stalled Lincoln Park project, another residential development is idling—this time after neighbors complained it provided too little parking. In 2008, residents in Serra Mesa filed a lawsuit against the City of San Diego because it didn’t complete a traffic impact study for a new Westcore Properties development, the Palladium. Neighbors said the city didn’t consider traffic patterns and parking needs when it approved the multi-family project, and feared limited parking infrastructure would send new residents looking for parking in front of their homes.

“Try going over there late in the evening, parking is at a premium. People park in the adjacent single-family home area,” said Cindy Moore, the community member who spearheaded the lawsuit.

That’s because Serra Mesa is made up of subdivisions tucked between business parks and busy roads where parking is largely prohibited. A nearby hospital often means nursing and medical students share units while keeping a car each. Meanwhile, families in the more suburban subdivisions need space for multiple cars and recreation vehicles.

“I know my own family and friends and we have at least two cars, if not more,” said Carl Demas, the president of the local community council. “The city is being unrealistic about current patterns. We need an increase in parking.”

With rent set fairly high—about $1,600 for a one bedroom, Demas said—new residents were expected to have similar lifestyles and pavement needs. Though parking would be difficult, residents assumed Palladium tenants would also rely on cars, because services and entertainment aren’t within walking distance and transit is inadequate, Moore said.

“If excellent mass transit and abundant on-street parking were available, reducing the parking requirements might work,” Moore said.

Moore and her neighbors, who collectively raised more than $30,000 for the lawsuit, illustrate a sentiment that echoes throughout San Diego communities, no matter the location or density. In a city where public transit is deemed inefficient (http://www.healthycal.org/transit-cuts-hit-hard-in-san-diego.html), residents aren’t convinced to give up their cars or the pavement beneath them.

The city and Westcore settled with Serra Mesa residents out of court, electing to reduce the number of units and increase the parking ratio from two per two-bedroom dwelling (the city requirement for non-affordable housing) to 2.25. While awaiting an outcome, Westcore lost its funding and the project has since come to a halt, Demas said.

Transit advocates call for “growing pains”

Escobar-Eck, who consulted Westcore, said the settlement “ripped my heart out.” Escobar-Eck is in the camp of public transit advocates who say a parking reduction is necessary to break San Diego’s dependence on driving.

“In Southern California, we think it’s a right to have free parking—so much that we’re willing to drive around for 20 minutes to find a spot,” said Elyse Lowe, the executive director of Move San Diego, a nonprofit group that works to improve transit and increase ridership. “People don’t think about how much parking actually costs.”

“Parking [availability] and the pricing of parking is how we will see behavior change,” Lowe continued.

In addition to easing the development of affordable housing, supporters of a parking decrease said parking is a significant piece of moving San Diego toward smart growth and more robust transit. Lowe said residents may experience “growing pains” with infill and a subsequent parking shortage, but that the struggle could aid in changing people’s transportation habits.

“I think it’s important to look at how we’re evolving as a region,” Gatzke said. “As prices get higher and we see the environmental impacts of the fuel we use, we need to think about how we want to get around in 20, 30 and 50 years from now. Parking is a part of that equation.”

Study aims to strike a balance

Bill Keller, a business owner in downtown San Diego, said he would also like to see a greater reliance on public transit and walking. But he said he also recognizes that the downtown area, where cafés and services are concentrated, “is a different animal than other parts of town.” Keller said he hopes the city’s parking study will result in requirements that are tailored to individual neighborhoods.

The city is, indeed, looking at efficiency-based parking standards for affordable housing that vary according to proximity to transit and tenant demographics like age, O’Connor said. The changes are expected, however, to represent an overall decrease in affordable housing parking, according to Lowe, who sat on the committee that pushed for the current study. A 2007 study by the San Diego Housing Commission and planning division has already recommended a decrease to affordable and market-priced housing alike, suggesting that changes could eventually affect housing beyond the affordable designation.

The study is scheduled for completion in January 2011, with data from neighborhoods as varied and as Lincoln Park and Serra Mesa. A second public workshop for the study is scheduled for Sept. 21.

“It’s not a one-size-fits all,” Keller said. “It’s a tough issue because both sides are right.”

 

Student-run project part of SD safety net

Published: May 26, 2010 | No Comments

By Dr. Ellen Beck

San Diego’s safety net is in tatters. There is no county hospital and no school of dentistry. In order to receive County Medical Services, the health care program for indigent adults, people have to sign a lien against any future property they might own. And so, a “student-run” program has become part of the safety net.

The University of California at San Diego’s Student-Run Free Clinic Project provides comprehensive health care for people who do not qualify for government aid and cannot afford private insurance.

The Project was founded in 1997 by myself, a group of committed medical students and dedicated community partners. Since our inception, we have looked to medical students to be the main drivers in this model of high-quality care for the underserved.

We started in a church basement one night a week. Now we serve more than 2,000 people a year, providing high-quality health care on each day of the week. We operate out of two churches and a school, and serve those who do not qualify for access to care. The doctors-in-training — supervised by licensed physicians — even make house calls to the homeless, reaching out to people on the street.

The majority of our patients have chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension, diseases that could lead to disability and death if left untreated. Our students provide much-needed care to these patients, helping to prevent blindness, amputation, heart disease and stroke. Student doctors are taught a humanistic approach, spending considerably more time with each patient than is common in traditional practices. And our dental clinic makes a point of doing restorative dentistry — not just poverty dentistry, which is essentially pulling teeth — so that toothlessness does not lead to joblessness.

Contributions of time, services and goods from an extensive network of volunteers and donors allow the clinics to run at the low average cost of $800 per patient per year. The project not only offers high-quality care, but trains and inspires the students who provide it. The students are learning not only to be physicians and scientists, but to be healers and teachers. Future health professionals arrive at medical school with passion, compassion and a desire to make a difference. Programs like ours help to keep those passions alive. Indeed, many graduates of the program return to the clinic as volunteer supervisors or start their own practices in underserved communities.

Students not only learn to be junior clinicians, but also all the elements of managing and coordinating patient services. Under supervision and with training, they are in charge of all aspects of the functioning of the clinic, including environmental waste management, supplies inventory, specialty services coordination and preventive services.

Through our patient-centered approach, we create an environment of respect and trust where people without access to care can take charge of their health. Patients are also provided the tools to achieve well-being for themselves as a whole, both mind and body, because of our trans-disciplinary model with health professionals and students across myriad specialties, which can include medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, mental health and acupuncture.

Although we are not the first student-run free clinic project, we are the first to “take the show on the road.” As a result of the national faculty training program we created, called Addressing the Health Needs of the Underserved, and numerous site visits and consultations, more than 15 other locations across the country have started student-run free clinic projects, in locations as diverse as Milani, Hawaii; Houston, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; Orlando, Florida; and Kansas City, Missouri.

And recently, students from around the country held the inaugural meeting of a new student organization, the Society of Student-Run Free Clinics. More than 200 attendees from several countries attended the meeting in Jacksonville, Florida. We see ourselves as the midwife for the birth of this new organization. We have also created the first year-long fellowship in underserved health care in the country, where former students return after residency and licensure to devote their careers to this work.

The need for access to care is infinite, but there is also a need for health care that is humanistic and respectful: that builds trust over time and looks to the community to be the teacher. This kind of care does not simply bandage a wound, but helps to transform lives, both of patients, students and physicians. This is what we aim to achieve.

Dr. Ellen Beck is the director of the UCSD Student-Run Free Clinic Project in San Diego and a 2010 recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards.

 

San Diego tenants get no help fighting rats, mold

Published: April 4, 2010 | Comments (2)

By Megan Burks

Appalled by the substandard living conditions they found in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, community organizers told residents last year that they would take their concerns to the city—literally. Armed with storage-sized freezer bags full of roaches and rats from houses and rental units, healthy homes advocates presented their findings to the San Diego City Council and asked for better housing code enforcement.

The group called for regulation of mold and vermin infestation to help combat the disproportionate level of housing-related asthma in City Heights. According to the National Latino Research Center, residents of City Heights are three times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than others in San Diego County.

The council delayed action, asking for more information from Proyecto Casas Saludables, the organization spearheading efforts to improve living conditions in City Heights, and other stakeholders.

But the information the council needs could be as close as the California Health and Safety Code, which the city’s Neighborhood Code Compliance office said it already enforces. But the city’s enforcement leaves out several components of the state code, including regulation of insect infestations, mold, mildew, rats and other rodents, according to information on the city’s web site.

According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, such negligence could be grounds for legal action against the city if shortfalls aren’t remedied.

Doug Hensel, the assistant deputy director of codes and standards with the department, said cities are obligated to uphold the code, which delegates enforcement to city housing or health entities.

Rosalie Leon, a supervisor with Neighborhood Code Compliance, said no agency in San Diego deals with mold or infestation complaints. That’s because the code doesn’t specify mold as evidence of substandard housing, said Alan Johanns, a program manager with the city’s Environmental Services Department, which doesn’t oversee housing code compliance. Instead, the code vaguely regulates “dampness of habitable rooms” and “inadequate sanitation.” What’s more, the code’s language suggests that a health officer–not expressly an inspector–is responsible for determining whether the unit has a cockroach, vermin or rodent infestation.

San Diego doesn’t have a health officer. Residents with these housing problems and other health queries are referred to the county government, which often cannot help. The County Department of Environmental Health regulates mold and vermin, but only for residents under the county’s jurisdiction. Complaints from city residents are looped back to the city.

Leon said residents with mold and vermin problems can also contact the California Indoor Air Quality Program for help. Funding cuts, however, have forced the program to discontinue its phone hotline. Residents can still email their concerns, but response time is slow; the program did not respond before press time.

Though Casas Saludables and other affiliated organizations said they do not have plans to take legal action against the city, they said red tape like this makes policy change necessary.

The residents most affected by substandard housing are also most likely to be refugees and immigrants with limited knowledge of local government services. Virginia Angeles, the director of Casas Saludables, said many of the residents she worked with qualified for Section 8 housing subsidies and feared their landlords would retaliate if they complained. That’s why Casas Saludables works to train residents to become promotoras who educate their neighbors on housing issues and help press for repairs at a grassroots level.

Valerie Camacho, a City Heights resident, said her lungs have been “pretty much obliterated” by living conditions in City Heights and the Imperial Valley. Although she did not want to comment on her current apartment, she said that generally, landlords in the area neglect their properties.

“A lot of the landlords don’t live in City Heights and never have and never will,” she said. “I don’t think they understand what it’s like to live with the realities. The majority of them live in North County and City Heights is just a cash cow to them.”

Alan Pentico, a spokesman for the San Diego County Apartment Association, said negligent landlords “are the exception and not the rule.” He said the association supports better code enforcement, but cautioned against mandatory inspection policies because of the cost to landlords and the city, and the privacy rights of tenants.

“There is already a process in place and it’s just a matter of following through,” he said.

Community organizers said the Asthma Coalition of Los Angeles County is a model for the kind of reform they’d like to see in San Diego. Los Angeles began mandatory three-year inspections after working with the coalition to alleviate childhood asthma, but Casas Saludables has not expressly pushed for mandatory inspections.

Currently, the city of San Diego conducts inspections only at the behest of tenant or community complaints. The Housing Commission, which oversees public housing, also does not conduct regular inspections of its properties, except to take inventory of fixtures when tenants move in, said commission spokesman Terry Rogers.

“Housing is crucial to make the difference for City Heights,” said Angeles. “It’s connected to everything.”

Though outdoor air pollution and health care disparities are other factors that plague the community, housing stock in the area is much older than in other parts of the county. According to the 2000 Census, only 17 percent of the housing in City Heights was built after 1980, compared to 32 percent and 36 percent in the city and county, respectively. This leaves residents susceptible to lead paint, old carpeting and leaky plumbing, all of which have been linked to asthma.

More than 80 percent of residents do not smoke or keep pets and said they clean on a regular basis. Still, nearly 80 percent had roach infestations and over half reported signs of mold, according to the National Latino Research Center. Of those with roach problems, nearly half had asthma.

“The single most determining factor for a person’s health is their zip code,” said Camacho.

Despite gaps in enforcement, the City of San Diego is addressing community health issues in City Heights with its Housing and Urban Development Healthy Homes grant. Awarded in 2007 and scheduled for renewal this summer, the grant allows the Environmental Services Department to fund voluntary inspections and follow-up education and repairs for low-income families affected by, or at-risk for, asthma. Since 2007, the program has worked with 225 households and educated hundreds more, said Johanns. The renewal will award $875,000 and is expected to serve 150 households.

Johanns said the program will complete a report later this year that he hopes will affect policy change and provide suggestions for more enforcement funding. City authorities and advocates alike said funding is the main hurdle for better housing regulation.

“In a perfect world, the government should and would enforce all their codes and regulations, but we are not in that world,” said Steven Kellman, an attorney with the Tenants Legal Center. “Based on such a limited budget and funding, the Neighborhood Code Compliance will have to work with a triage method.”

For now, Angeles said Casas Saludables is focusing on getting more funding and working with the community before it goes back to the city council. Hensel said the legal department with state housing authorities would need to be contacted for it to enter into discussions with the City of San Diego.

“We don’t just go out with a heavy hand at first,” he said. “We have and we will, but usually they just don’t really know what their responsibility is.”

City Heights residents grow their own remedies

Rich Macgurn scooped soil away to reveal a weed-like plant fanning out along the ground.

“This one dilates the bronchioles,” he said.

He revealed unsuspecting roots and more plants that could be passed over as weeds.

“These can be steeped in hot water for tea that boosts the immune system and opens the airways,” he continued.

Macgurn, who has a degree in herbalism, is reinventing the community garden. In City Heights, where residents are more likely to suffer from asthma, diabetes and obesity than in many parts of San Diego County, the community garden is as much about relief as it is sustenance.

Opened just over a year ago, the City Heights Community Garden provided plots of land and workshops for residents who want to grow vegetables. But Macgurn and garden coordinator Valerie Camacho also grow herbs and roots that can treat ailments common among residents. At periodic workshops, attendees are given handfuls of gumweed and astragalus, along with an information sheet–a prescription of sorts to take home to their wheezing kids or aging parents.

Camacho said the goal of these herbal remedies is to build up strength and resistance in the body, but she said she’s noticed the garden strengthening community ties, as well.

“Having this space is really important because everyone in this community knows someone struggling with a serious health issue,” she said. “It gives people a place to talk about issues.”

What’s more, Camacho said it gives residents who are new to the country a place to share experiences and learn from others who have successfully navigated health and legal systems in San Diego.

“It becomes about building self-sufficiencies,” she said.