Boy it’s hot! ("How hot is it?")

As I understand it, our fearless leader is out my way in San Diego.  He might be escaping the heat of lil’ Rhodey, but he jumped into a frying pan out here too.  He’ll probably stay coastal, but a little more inland where I live it’ll be hitting 90, and if you go a little further east, it’ll be 95 or so.  And it's humid as all get out.  I have a wedding to attend this afternoon/evening* in one of those inland valleys, and it’s an outdoor occasion to boot.  It’ll cool off a bit, but the humidity is what I can barely tolerate. And SanDog is much more humid than it was when I first came back to the area in the mid-80’s.  If it wasn’t the wedding of the son of a cousin I’m close to (first cousin once removed for those interested in that kind of stuff), I might consider not going.  That’s how much I appreciate air conditioning.  I don’t know how I survived living in Pensacola for two years back in flight school.

In all honesty, I wouldn't back out of a wedding RSVP even if it was hotter than a flight deck in the Arabian Gulf during summer flight ops.  We’re actually all very excited about a family wedding.  As I probably mentioned before in a post or two over the years, I have A LOT or relatives living in the area, 50 or so, and we’re all very close.  While all the cousins (offspring of my mom and her 6 brothers and sisters) are all long married off, their kids- the second cousins once removed, are starting to get into the marriage game, or close to it.    

We were a bigger family once, with all my aunts and uncles having big families, but just two or three kids among my cousins’ families, mine included.  And our offspring are not as hot about getting hitched- with several unmarrieds in their 30s.   I guess I understand that a little.  Life is more complex these days, and definitely more expensive, especially out here on the left coast.  Property is CRAZY expensive, and the market is hotter than it has ever been.  But even though my wife is now in the real-estate game, that’s not even remotely a good thing.  By hot, I only mean that properties go off the market super quick, at far more than asking price, breaking all the norms of home buying.  She’s been a realtor for three years and after a slow start, she’s on a semi-hot streak recently though with a few condos under her belt and a house about to close.     

The problem with this hot market is that it’s pricing out so many so fast.  It’s also tough on realtors like my wife, since their clients are probably not rich executives with full cash offers.  She lost several bids due to a market that is demanding anywhere from $25-$50K over asking, no contingencies (fix this and that please), and is often going to full cash offers, and sometimes sight unseen by the winner bidders.  Prices are also off the charts.  

Realtors Report Home Prices in San Diego County Rose 1.6% in June to $865,000 Median                                                                    Source  

Is California so wonderful that an average home is worth over $850k?  Not if you like water.  

I love several things about my hometown- the weather, nearby family, cool stuff to do every day in a big Navy town, and my job of course, but that's about where the good stuff ends.  Gas is over $4 per gallon, taxes are high (highest state income tax and sales tax in the nation), roads are lousy, homeless flock here, yet we either don't want to or are unable to both enforce laws, or provide drug and mental health treatment to these people to help correct the problem.  What else?  Tradesmen get underbid on jobs by those not here legally, and a laissez faire attitude towards that illegal immigration, to put it mildly.  There’s also massive regulation on businesses, and with prohibitive start up costs.  I could go all day.  The political attitude is frustrating, yet we're trying to take CA back, firing our governor in a couple months if the recall goes through.  Maybe it'll get better, maybe it won't, but I'm happy that I'm an old vet with commissary privileges who bought a house when it was affordable.  

Another one to add to that list of gripes though is a local effort to provide more and more housing in an area that is pretty much locked up.  We have the Pacific Ocean to the west, the desert to the east, Mexico just south, and Camp Pendleton to the north.  There's very little land left.  Yet the demand for housing keeps increasing.  I understand this though, as San Diego is a gem and people really want to live here.  Therefore, the Mayor and City Council feel the need to disrupt what is, and they approved a plan to allow a massive change to single family home neighborhoods.  Last October, the council decimated single-family zoning by incentivizing developers to covert single-family parcels into high-density income properties.  Since there’s little land for new dwellings, the city is allowing not just small accessory dwelling units (ADUs aka Granny Flats) to be built in the back yard of neighborhood homes, but actual apartment buildings crammed in between your house and your neighbor's backyard.    

It's not only feasible, but it's happening already.  With homeowners having their yards developed, or developers buying up homes at generous prices and forcing this on the neighborhoods, neighborhoods are changing dramatically, and not in a good way.

It's not just that the city is allowing multiple units, but that they have eliminated both setbacks from your neighbor, and any regulations on parking.  If a home with an ADU is within a half mile of a transit corridor (aka bus line), there's no need for parking.  So if two cars can park in front of a garage with a single home, there's no need to add parking with what could be 17 homes on the lot.  Except everyone in California drives a car, and the public transit system is unreliable, so that just clogs up the neighborhood streets.  Not to get all judgmental, but neighborhoods with rentals and apartments just have a different feel from single-family neighborhoods with high owner occupancy.   There's a lot of congestion, more crime, and they're just not as safe.  Parking has already become a hot topic in multiple neighborhoods, with ADUs in some areas nearly doubling the amount of cars being parked on the street, and not always parked well at that.  These politicians are trying to apply a fix to a problem that isn't actually a fix, nor is it a problem in my opinion.  Sometimes areas are just too expensive, and the market bears what the market bears.  As much as I may not like the skyrocketing costs, (I have no interest in selling) that's something that is caused by a free market.  And our geography isn't conducive to more supply, no matter how many min-apartments the city council wants to force on us. 

So the weather is hot, the market is hot, and these politicians are making me and all of my neighbors hot under the collar.  While the drought has caused the water shortage, politicians have caused all the other ills that this gem of San Diego has been infected with.  I'm not sure what the solution is, other than to move away, or better yet- vote them out, every incumbent, every time.  

*Post written on Sunday 7/18