A project to build affordable housing and an upgraded health clinic in Logan Heights was approved Tuesday by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n
The project, on the 3100 block of Ocean View Boulevard, will feature 121 affordable units for families earning an average of about half of the area\u2019s median income \u2014 which is now just below $131,000 \u2014 and a nearly 24,000-square-foot health clinic next to it.<\/p>\n
Development rights were given to BRIDGE Housing and San Ysidro Health through the lease of surplus county land for $300 a year. This is on the condition that any housing developed must be deemed affordable, and any clinic built on the site must be operated by a federally-qualified health center, for 99 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many years, the San Diego region has faced a chronic shortage of affordable housing units that directly impacts housing insecurity and housing cost burden for lower-income households,\u201d read the county\u2019s board letter. \u201cGiven this housing crisis, we must leverage every available option to develop more affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ocean View property is one of 12 tracts of county surplus land chosen as sites for affordable housing. Three are complete, one is under construction, seven are expected to break ground in the next three years, and one is in the planning process, according to the county.<\/a><\/p>\n Housing<\/p>\n The property to be developed is three parcels declared as surplus land by the county in April 2023. BRIDGE was selected to develop it through a competitive bid process, according to county documents.\u00a0Of the 12 county surplus land projects<\/a>, the Ocean View property is the third granted to BRIDGE for development. The non-profit had developed several projects along the West Coast.<\/p>\n On its website, BRIDGE touts that it has \u201cpioneered the use of private-sector capital\u201d in the development of affordable housing. It secured a private equity fund of $250 million from Morgan Stanley and National Equity Fund.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have always been a nonprofit that operates like a business, pursuing entrepreneurial strategies and creative approaches to advance our mission,\u201d reads the website\u2019s finance page.<\/p>\n This structure was met with some backlash at the Board of Supervisors\u2019 Tuesday meeting. Over 55 pages of letters<\/a> were submitted to the board in opposition of BRIDGE and called for more favorable rents at another of its affordable housing units, Kettner Crossings, located in Little Italy.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no way that people that are living on what was formerly county land should be coming to us saying [sic] that they cannot afford the rent,\u201d said Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe.<\/p>\n Health care<\/p>\n The idea for an upgraded clinic came from the community. The San Ysidro Comprehensive Health Center already exists at that location, but would need to be demolished to build affordable housing.<\/p>\n When the county gathered feedback in 2023, several residents were concerned their community would lose its access to local health care. The county instead opted to construct the new clinic in the parking lot of the existing one, so that demolition of the old clinic would not begin until the new one opened its doors, according to the board\u2019s agenda letter.<\/a><\/p>\n San Ysidro also won a competitive bid to develop the new clinic on a county request for proposal, according to documents attached to the board\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n Terms<\/p>\n A $500,000 initial payment from BRIDGE and San Ysidro will be deposited into the county\u2019s Innovative Housing Trust Fund, which aims to support more affordable housing development in the future. Rent for BRIDGE is $100 per year and $200 per year for San Ysidro. Both figures will increase at 3.5% every year. Proceeds will also be deposited into the IHTF.<\/p>\n The project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, due to its status as providing affordable housing and healthcare.<\/p>\n The project was approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors as part of the meeting\u2019s consent agenda. The board\u2019s vote approved disposition and development agreements, ground leases, restrictive covenants, regulatory agreement and CEQA exemption. All but the CEQA exemption have not been made available to the public as of Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A project to build affordable housing and an upgraded health clinic in Logan Heights was approved Tuesday by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[23,100,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-439685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}