The independent review finds the draft claims fair housing progress without showing the analysis behind it. Mid-City has lost 15,350 children and 11,028 naturally occurring affordable rentals since 2000, and the plan measures neither.
On Oct. 2, the San Diego Fair Housing Lab released an independent review finding that the City of San Diego’s first draft Mid-City Communities Plan Update states that the City is reversing patterns of segregation and reducing concentrations of poverty, consistent with fair housing law, without presenting the analysis that would show it. The Lab is asking the City to address fifteen findings before it issues a second draft.
The plan is the 30-year plan for City Heights, Eastern Area, Kensington-Talmadge and Normal Heights. The review, a fifteen-finding summary, a corridor analysis and four community reports are posted at sdfairhousinglab.org/mid-city and were delivered to the Planning Department, the Mayor’s office and the Council offices covering the plan area.
Normal Heights’ Black population fell 76.6 percent since 2000, from 1,827 to 427. That is the steepest decline of any San Diego community that had 500 or more Black residents in 2000. Every census tract in Normal Heights carries a State displacement-risk flag, and the community holds the plan area’s only high-opportunity tract. City Heights’ Black population fell by 3,043 over the same period. The draft plan names displacement as a concern and sets no baseline, target or date for addressing it.
Why this plan is unlike any other the City has written
The plan being replaced was adopted on 4 August 1998. Every fair housing rule that now governs planning in California came after it: the 2018 state law (AB 686) that requires cities to actively further fair housing, the State’s opportunity and neighborhood change maps, and the City’s own 2025 Baker Settlement. This is the first time these four communities have been planned under those rules.
Since 2016 the City has updated twelve community plans. Those twelve cover 96 census areas; 63 of them are in the State’s two highest opportunity tiers, and 14 are flagged by the State as neighborhoods undergoing change. Nine of the twelve plans contain no flagged area at all.
Mid-City covers 30 census areas. One is in a high opportunity tier. Twenty-three sit in the State’s lowest tier, and nine carry the State’s change flag, double the citywide rate. On the two measures the State itself uses, Mid-City is close to the opposite of everything the City has planned in the last decade.
What the numbers show
Families are leaving. The plan area has lost 15,350 children since 2000, a 34 percent decline against 12 percent citywide. These 30 areas are about a tenth of the city and account for 43 percent of San Diego’s entire loss of children. Normal Heights lost more than half its children; City Heights lost 12,878, more than any other community in the city.
Loss of naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). In 2000, 83 percent of Mid-City’s rentals were affordable to a household earning 60 percent of the county’s median family income. Today 47 percent are. That is 11,028 fewer affordable rentals, homes that were affordable because of what they rented for,
with no subsidy or covenant involved, in a plan area that permits new homes at roughly half the city’s rate. Too little housing was built at every price, and the older stock was not able to stay affordable.
Affordable homes are permitted where opportunity is lowest, and completed there too. Kensington Talmadge, the plan area’s most affluent community, has permitted 36 affordable homes since the current housing cycle began in April 2021, 4.9 per 1,000 existing homes against 11.8 citywide; twelve of the 36 are accessory dwelling units. The City’s own housing filings record no affordable home completed there in the cycle. City Heights, entirely in the lowest opportunity tier, carries 80 percent of the plan area’s affordable production.
Four communities, four different problems
City Heights, 15 areas: scale. Half the plan area’s population and its largest need. Every one of its areas is in the lowest opportunity tier, overcrowding runs at 15.7 percent against 5.8 citywide, and it carries the plan area’s heaviest environmental burden. It added housing and lost 8 percent of its people: its Hispanic or Latino population fell by 3,279 people, its Black population by 3,043 and its Asian population by 1,316, while its white population grew by 1,070, the only group in the community that did.
Eastern Area, 7 areas: changing, and undetected. The only Mid-City community that grew, by 15 percent, and the only one where people arrived faster than housing did. Every one of its areas is in the lowest tier, none borders a higher-opportunity neighborhood, and not one carries a State change flag.
Kensington-Talmadge, 4 areas: access. The plan area’s affluence concentration, with a median home value of $1.13 million, about $254,500 above the city’s, and a census area the City’s own fair housing appendix names as one of three racially concentrated areas of affluence in San Diego. Its community average describes nobody in it: the two areas north of Adams Avenue sit near $182,000 in household income with a quarter renters, and the two south of Adams sit near $79,000 with more than 80 percent renters. One of those southern areas carries all three of the State’s neighborhood change flags at once. The dividing line runs through the middle of the community, not around it.
Normal Heights, 4 areas: changing fastest. Every area carries a State change flag, the only Mid-City community where that is true, with rent growth of 83 percent since 2013. Fewer than one household in twelve has been there since 2000. It holds the plan area’s only high-opportunity area.
What we ask the City to do before the second draft
1. Perform and publish the fair housing analysis the draft says it is carrying out.
2. Say plainly what this plan cannot accomplish inside its own boundary, and where in the city the City will act instead.
3. Publish residential capacity and answer community by community, not as one “Mid-City”.
4. Attach anti-displacement tools and affordability targets to every priority corridor, each with a baseline, a target, a date and an annual report.
5. Say what will make Kensington-Talmadge reachable at a wider range of incomes.
6. Complete the air and noise assessment the City committed to in August 2025 before the highest intensities are fixed on the corridors.
7. Publish engagement participation by community, and return to the communities the process did not reach.
“A 30-year plan should show how it will meet its fair housing obligations in each community, not simply state that it will,” said Wesley Morgan, Executive Director of the San Diego Fair Housing Lab. “Mid-City has already lost a third of its children. The second draft is the City’s chance to say what it will do about that, community by community.”
The documents
All seven are at sdfairhousinglab.org/mid-city.
Fair Housing Findings on the Mid-City Plan Update: the fifteen findings, one per page Mid-City Communities Fair Housing Review
Mid-City Corridors: Traffic Exposure, Transit Demand and Residential Intensity
Appendices 1 to 4: community fair housing reports for City Heights, Eastern Area, Kensington Talmadge and Normal Heights
About the San Diego Fair Housing Lab
The San Diego Fair Housing Lab is an independent fair housing research organization based in San Diego. It is a California nonprofit corporation that is applying to the IRS for recognition of tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Lab works with neighborhood organizations, housing groups, and community partners across San Diego County.
