Growth for its own sake is the philosophy of a cancer cell.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. — Kenneth Boulding

The headline was among graffiti scrawled on a men’s room wall in an Encinitas restaurant. It’s a variation on a line written by Edward Abbey in The Journey Home.

The Boulding quote means economic growth increasing by a successive percentage.

If exponential economic growth meant lifting more and more people out of poverty and a more equitable distribution of wealth, it would be a good thing. It has often meant that in what are called developing economies. In recent decades in the US, however, it has meant the opposite.

The downside of economic growth is that it’s nearly always environmentally destructive. Eventually, the damage outweighs the benefits. If we’re more well off as we destroy the planet that sustains us, where’s the good?

Among the threats humanity has caused and faces:

Global Warming/Climate Change: July 2019 was the hottest month measured on Earth since records began in 1880, the latest in a long line of peaks that scientists say backs up predictions for man-made climate change. — Associated Press

The effects of global warming and climate change are broad, deep and dire.

Scientists don’t want you to take this as a death sentence. There is still hope to curb climate change before it becomes life-threatening; it simply needs a massive amount of financial support and attention. — National Public Radio

Water Crisis: A quarter of the human population [~1.9 billion people] is facing the growing and dire risk of running out of water, according to World Resources Institute data. — New York Times

There is and has always been a fixed amount of fresh water on the planet. The only way to make more is to desalinate sea water.

Desertification: A half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times as fast as it is forming. — New York Times citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of scientists convened by the United Nations

Shrinking/shifting arable land: Climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself, with the possibility that food crises could develop on several continents at once. — Attribution as immediately above

Species Extinction: The UN already reported earlier this year that one million species are threatened by human activity. — CNN

Life on Earth is in peril. The biodiversity crisis could potentially have permanent effects if swift action is not taken. — Vox

Sea Level Rise: It has two components. The volume of ocean water is increasing as northern and southern ice caps melt. Global warming is raising sea water temperature. The warmer the water, the more it expands. Sea water is simply taking up more space, forcing land area to shrink.

Plastic Pollution: One of the reasons global warming and climate change have taken so long to alarm most people is because they’re slow. They don’t seem like an emergency because they’re not readily apparent. On the other hand, plastic pollution is visible everywhere. Besides having been recently found in snow and rain, it’s abundantly visible in the oceans, on beaches, in inland waters and on the land. It has even overwhelmed the peak of Mount Everest.

The seven problems given above are consequences. The cause is too many people. Our population has grown beyond Earth’s carrying capacity.

The solution is not 10 or 12 billion people driving electric cars. The solution is fewer people — about half the current 7.7 billion world population. We got away with our destructive behavior until there were too many of us. We have overloaded the planet. We’re killing it and its ability to sustain life — and not only human life. We’re heading for a Mad Max scenario: Too many people competing for too few resources.

The fertility rate (the number of births per woman) is shrinking below or to the replacement level in many countries. In 1964 worldwide, it was 5.0. By 2017, it had dropped to 2.4. That still means population growth overall. For population to gradually shrink, the global fertility rate has to fall below 2.0.

Check this: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Driven by economics and fear of the future, some people are choosing to have fewer or no children. But openly encouraging population reduction provokes instant condemnation. Almost nobody talks about it.

Hummingbird chicks so small they fit in a teaspoon know not to poop in their own nests. They raise their tiny butts above the rim and shoot poop projectiles into the air. We humans soil the only nest we have. The more of us there are, the faster we destroy our planet. The only way to save our species and millions of others is to reduce our numbers.

Problems caused by a shrinking population — more older people and fewer younger people — are solvable. Problems caused by limitless population growth are not. They threaten the existence of life on Earth.

— Doug Fiske

Providing Affordable Housing Requires Filling the Gap

First, there’s what housing actually costs. Second, there’s what the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says people can afford to pay. At least in coastal California counties, the second figure is much lower than the first. For a city to provide affordable housing requires filling the gap between the two figures.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) uses HUD’s figures. HUD says housing costs 30 percent of total income. The latest figures available at post time were for 2018. See the full details here:

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/income-limits/state-and-federal-income-limits/docs/inc2k18.pdf

To simplify things a bit, HUD and HCD use a four-person household and the county’s median income as benchmarks. The figures for other income categories are percentages of the median. The city of Encinitas has designated only the Very Low and Low Income categories in its affordable housing plans, so I’ve included only those in the chart below.

San Diego County 4-Person Area Median Income: $81,800

# People	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Median	57250	65450	73600	81800	88350	94900	101450	108000
VeryLo	34100	38950	43800	48650	52550	56450	60350	64250
Low	54500	62300	70100	77850	84100	90350	96550	102800

The term “affordable housing” is tossed around without definition. To make it meaningful, it has to be expressed in dollars. Going with the 30-percent-of-income allowance for housing, here’s what a four-person household can afford to pay per month in San Diego County:

Very Low Income: $1,216

Low Income: $1,946

Say a four-person household needs a two-bedroom, two-bath unit. That’s tight but let’s not get extravagant. At post time, Zillow showed 20 rentals with those specifics in Encinitas. Of those, 13 were under $3,000. The range was $2,145 to $2,900. The average was $2,561.

Using that average and the HUD/HCD figures for affordability in San Diego County, here are the gaps the city would have to fill per rental unit:

Very Low Income: $1,345

Low Income: $615

None of this is exact and not everybody is in a four-person household. But putting affordability in dollar terms using the accepted benchmarks gives some idea of what the city of Encinitas is up against. Incidentally, the wait list for HUD Section 8 housing funding in San Diego County varies a bit from city to city, but it’s about 10 years long. Effectively, there’s no new Section 8 funding.

In her April 24, 2019 commentary in the Union-Tribune, Mayor Blakespear wrote: “Our housing plan accommodates zoning for 1,504 housing units designed to be affordable for lower-income people, spread across 15 different sites throughout the city.” That’s not correct. (The income figures the mayor gives are also wrong.) A maximum of 15 percent of the units the upzoning permits would be “affordable for lower-income people.” If that actually happens, which is doubtful, there would be 226 affordable units.

What can the city do to fill the gap between what housing costs and what HUD/HCD say Very Low and Low Income people can afford to pay? The city has to provide some form of subsidy. One way is to build the housing on city-owned land. That takes a substantial cost out of the calculation. The deal the city struck with Habitat for Humanity to build housing on city-owned land on the corner of Urania Avenue and Leucadia Boulevard did that. City-owned site L7 on Quail Gardens Drive could have done that, but the majority of then-City Council members struck the L7 site from consideration.

A way the city now fills the gap: It owns 16 condos at Pacific Pines on El Camino Real. They’re a mix of one and two bedroom units with one or two baths. The rent range is $962 to $1,406 per month. The highest rent is $1,155 below the $2,561 average given above.

Facing the problem of having to fill the dollar gap for 1,504 units, what did the city do? It gifted developers at least 1,278 market-rate units for the sake of maybe getting 226 affordable units. The city shifted the subsidy from itself to the buyers of the market-rate units. The developers won’t pay the subsidy; they’ll pass it on to the market-rate buyers.

The city also forced the suspension of voter-approved Proposition A. Rather than abiding by Prop A as several residents demonstrated could be done while still satisfying HCD’s mandate, the City Council compromised the law, gifted developers and broke faith with the residents they were elected to serve. 

— Doug Fiske

VOSD Refuses to Correct Its Faulty Reporting on Encinitas Housing Issues 

For background, scroll down to my Dec. 27, 2018 post. It’s taken me months to compose and post this followup because I didn’t want to agree with the conclusion the evidence leads to.

That conclusion: Voice of San Diego (VOSD) persistently misrepresented the facts in stories about Proposition A, density bonus and the Housing Element Update (HEU) in Encinitas. When called out on their faulty reporting, Editor-in-Chief Scott Lewis and Associate Editor Jesse Marx refused to make amends.

The bulleted points give the sequence of events:

• On Nov. 14, 2018, VOSD published a Marx story about Encinitas housing that was laced with inaccuracies. It continued the erroneous slant that started with a March 9, 2016 VOSD story by Maya Srikrishnan.

• On Nov. 21, I posted to Marx, saying VOSD had consistently gotten Encinitas housing issues wrong. I suggested he should start over and get it right. In another post to him on Nov. 30, I said essentially the same thing. He replied and asked what he had gotten wrong. I responded that to get the story right, Marx would have to scrap almost everything VOSD had published on Encinitas housing, go back before Prop A, follow the city’s abortive efforts at an HEU, and bring the story up to present day. I included contact information for four Encinitas residents who know more about the issues than I do.

• On Dec. 4, Marx replied with a misinterpretation of a point I made about Prop A in my Nov. 30 post. I replied to correct him and again suggested he contact a resident I named who is thoroughly versed on the issues. Marx called that resident, but if he got any information he didn’t publish it. On Dec. 5 and 6, I posted lengthy comments to Marx on Encinitas housing issues and VOSD’s reporting on them. I waited for a reply or a corrective story. Neither happened, so I posted my Dec. 27 critique. I emailed the URL to Marx, Editor-in-Chief Lewis and three other VOSD staffers.

• On Jan. 3, 2019, Lewis replied, saying the criticisms in my Dec. 27 post were unsubstantiated. This despite my having included six quotes from VOSD reporting that contained inaccuracies. I replied at length to Lewis, suggesting reporting steps VOSD could follow to get the story right. I also provided contact information for six knowledgeable Encinitas residents. I referred Lewis to my email exchange with Marx for further specifics.

• On Jan. 4, Lewis replied, saying I should explain how VOSD was wrong. He said he had not seen my email exchange with Marx. On Jan. 5, I replied that he was asking me to do his job. I referred him to emails other Encinitas residents had posted to VOSD regarding its faulty reporting and to the critical comments below previous VOSD stories on Encinitas housing. If Lewis had looked in VOSD’s archive, he would have found those comments and an April 20, 2016 commentary written by three Encinitas residents “to supply missing background information, correct factual errors and provide a more precise context for some of the assertions made in the VOSD article.” The residents had met with Srikrishnan before her March 9, 2016 story, had tried to familiarize her with the facts and were disappointed in the results.

• On Jan. 5, Lewis again asked me to explain how VOSD got their Encinitas housing stories wrong. This despite the specifics I had given in my blog post, in my emails to him, previously to Marx, and those I had referred Lewis to in the VOSD archive. Lewis showed himself to be like a man who, when told his fly is open, demands more proof before checking for himself. Nevertheless, he wrote “as a gesture to diffuse this tension I’ll spend some time looking into this.”

• I waited a month. On Feb. 5, I posted to Lewis and asked what he had found. He replied that he found nothing incorrect in what VOSD wrote. It’s impossible to read VOSD’s reporting on Encinitas housing issues since March 9, 2016, the three residents’ April 20, 2016 commentary, comments below the stories in VOSD’s archive, my Dec. 27 blog post and my emails to Marx, and still find VOSD’s reporting faultless. Either Lewis didn’t look, he’s blind to his publication’s faults, or VOSD intentionally misrepresented the facts about Encinitas housing issues. For good measure, I referred Lewis to the Encinitas Undercover blog, which has called out VOSD three times for bad reporting on Encinitas issues.

All this is water under the bridge now. Yet, as late as Feb. 20, 2019, Marx wrote: “Encinitas is one of 47 municipalities . . . that has failed to submit a plan to the state identifying sites for housing production of all income levels.” The city had submitted the HEU to the state on Dec. 21, 2018.

Until VOSD’s refusal to correct their faulty reporting on Encinitas housing issues, I had given them the benefit of the doubt. They had done what appeared to be accurate reporting on too many other subjects to conclude they were intentionally falsifying their Encinitas reporting. A few other locals accused VOSD of being pro-development and pro-BIA (Building Industry Association of San Diego County).

According to their website, VOSD is “funded by individual members, major charitable gifts, foundations and community partnerships.” I find no institutional connection with the BIA on the site. I don’t know if VOSD’s board members or individual supporters are linked to the BIA.

On Feb 14, 2019, the BIA hosted a breakfast meeting at the La Jolla Marriott hotel. Here are the details:

“Community Relations: It Can Make or Break Project Approval
Learn the Builder’s Strategy & How You Can Help
Today, the NIMBYs have a very loud voice and are halting projects around the county. Learn from a panel of experts to see what builders/developers are doing to get projects approved and how our industry must help.”

There were four speakers on the “panel of experts.” One was VOSD Staff Writer Lisa Halverstadt.

Credibility for any news outlet depends on objective, accurate reporting. If an outlet’s faulty reporting on one issue goes uncorrected, its coverage of every other issue becomes questionable.

For well-informed, accurate reporting on Encinitas housing issues, see Barbara Henry’s stories in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

— Doug Fiske

How a Developer Got to Build a Three-Story Hotel on the Leucadia Bluff

The California Coastal Commission first approved the project that’s become known as the Encinitas Beach Hotel in December 1992. Subsequent amendments, renewals, etc. were based on the first approval and did not change the height and grading specifications.

Quotes from the 1992 staff report:

• Page 3: “Said plans shall have received design review approval from the City of Encinitas and verify that no structure shall exceed 2 stories or 30 feet in height as measured from the lower of natural or finished grade.”

• Page 10: “. . . construction of an approximately 138,460 sq. ft., two-story plus basement level, 30-ft. high, 130-unit resort hotel complex on a 4.3 acre blufftop site in the City of Encinitas.”

This Orwellian paragraph appears on page 11:

• “Although the proposed buildings are to be constructed as two-stories with a basement level, portions will appear to be 3 stories. Most of the proposed north facing buildings will have a 3-story appearance, rising vertically for all three floors, giving the appearance of a solid wall of buildings along the north facing portion of the site.”

According to the CCC, a building can appear to be three stories but actually be only two. As the developer’s rendering above clearly shows, the north-facing wing of the building is three stories. The first story starts at the level above the basement and rises to three stories from the finished grade. About two-thirds of the building doesn’t only appear to be three stories, it is three stories.

Asked about this discrepancy, Katie Innes, a senior planner in the city’s Development Services Department, replied, “The Encinitas Beach Resort is required to meet the City’s height requirement of 30 feet and two stories. The subterranean levels of the building do not count toward the two story height limitation.”

Advised that “subterranean” means underground and that the developer’s rendering clearly shows three stories above ground, Innes replied, “When more than 50% of the perimeter of a building level is buried (<4 ft. exposed), it is considered a basement level. There are portions of the lowest visible level shown on the rendering that are located behind the building that are buried (more than 50%), which qualifies that level as a basement.”

When notified of the inconsistencies between the height specifics in the CCC’s approval and the building shown in the developer’s rendering, Eric Stevens, a coastal program analyst in the CCC’s South Coast District office, replied in part as follows:

“This response email was written in coordination with the Commission’s legal and enforcement divisions.” . . .

“The project was approved prior to certification of the City’s Local Coastal Plan and the standard of review was the Coastal Act.” . . .

“I understand that you have some concerns about how the City calculates and/or defines basements, and whether the proposed project is consistent with City requirements. Please understand that Commission staff has not and is not reviewing the project for conformance to the City’s requirements, but rather to the project as approved by the Commission.”

The CCC’s approval specified a height limit of two stories and 30 feet from the lower of natural or finished grade. The approval came before the city’s Local Coastal Plan was certified. Therefore, the standard of review should indeed be the Coastal Act and the CCC’s specifics, not the city’s convoluted definition of what’s above and below ground. The city’s specifics are irrelevant.

The CCC staff and its legal and enforcement divisions ignored the approved 1992 height limits, deferred to an irrelevant, convoluted city definition and improperly approved a three-story hotel on the bluff in Leucadia.

— Doug Fiske

VOSD Persists in Getting Encinitas Housing Issues Wrong

Some local observers say Voice of San Diego (VOSD) has a pro-development stance because its principal funders require it. Recognizing the reporters and editors as objective journalists would be preferable, but the publication’s persistent bias in covering Encinitas housing issues makes that difficult.

VOSD is a nonprofit. According to its website, it’s “fully funded by individual members, major charitable gifts, foundations and community partnerships.” It carries no advertising. It was founded as an alternative to the Union-Tribune, which few would say has a history of objective journalism.

Publications have editorial processes to ensure objective, accurate reporting, clarity of expression and good English. Virtually no responsible publication gives its reporters free rein. What readers see has been scrutinized by editorial eyes. Reporters’ copy typically goes through a copy editor and a line editor. Weekly and monthly publications often have fact-checking departments. Dailies typically don’t because they don’t have the time or money. They have to rely on their reporters for accuracy.

With the decline of revenue, publishers’ budgets have tightened and staffs have shrunk. Factual errors, muddled writing, typos and poor English have become more common in many publications. Opinion has crept into what should be objective reporting because editorial eyes are no longer there to remove it.

VOSD has had a reporter assigned to North County for years. The personnel have changed, but the position has been consistent. The reporter writes the weekly North County Report. Currently, the reporter is Jesse Marx. In its daily Morning Report, VOSD often publishes a capsule summary of a North County Report story. Various writers compile the Morning Reports. Sara Libby edited two recent reports.

VOSD’s biased and often woefully inaccurate reporting about Encinitas housing issues seems to have begun with Maya Srikrishnan’s March 9, 2016 story headlined “Years of Defying State Affordable Housing Law Gets Encinitas Sued Again.” It’s odd the March 9 story took the tack it did because Srikrishnan’s September 4, 2015 story headlined “Encinitas Hopes to Comply With State Housing Law by 2016” was largely neutral and accurate.

A local observer characterized the March 9 story by saying, “Maya got rolled by David Meyer.” Meyer is a local developer who has sued the city and was quoted in the story.

Rather than heeding that remark or detailed comments from knowledgeable locals found below the story, VOSD stuck with the piece’s bias and inaccuracies, not only repeating them in subsequent stories but magnifying them. VOSD got on the wrong track. Despite corrective input and encouragement from several locals, the publication stubbornly stayed there.

Srikrishnan wrote the following in VOSD:

“. . . both affordable housing advocates and developers like the [density bonus] law: It lets private developers make more money if they build homes for poor people. The city of Encinitas has spent years trying to get around this law.”

“City leaders haven’t been bashful about their attempts to circumvent the law. They’ve routinely said one of their top priorities is finding ways to disobey it.”

“Residents are hostile to new development in Encinitas, density bonus or otherwise.”

Marx followed Srikrishnan’s lead, apparently with no independent research:

“. . . for years [Encinitas has] been defying California law by failing to craft and send a legally acceptable housing plan to Sacramento.”

“The voices that often dominate stories about Encinitas’ struggle to accommodate new housing are those of wealthy residents who oppose building.”

Adriana Heldiz stayed on the villainous-locals track: “Hero of the Week. This week’s hero is Superior Court Judge Ronald Frazier, who’s poised to suspend an Encinitas law giving locals final say over major land-use changes.”

VOSD has portrayed density bonus, Proposition A and HEUs in Encinitas simplistically and largely ignorantly. They’re not black-and-white, heroes-and-villains issues. VOSD has characterized City Councils and voters as trying to oppress low-income people and prevent them from living in Encinitas. No VOSD reporter has researched the topic well enough to understand it.

To get it right, VOSD would have to admit its gross errors regarding housing in Encinitas, start over and thoroughly research the issues. The publication’s integrity and credibility are at stake.

— Doug Fiske

Encinitas Convinced the Coastal Commission to Ignore the Coastal Act

To understand the Leucadia 101 Streetscape project, it must be seen in this context: Every City Council since the project’s approval on January 13, 2010 has been fiercely determined to push it through. Regardless of facts that argue strongly against it, the city has been dead set on getting the project done.

Toward that end, the city retained the civil engineering firm Michael Baker International (MBI) to design and direct the project. MBI also conducted the Environmental Impact Report and the traffic study. With those, MBI found nothing to upset its multi-million dollar contract. Ignoring the conflict of interest was part of the plan. Assigning MBI multiple roles ensured the project would go forward.

In the EIR, MBI identified only one hindrance the company couldn’t mitigate or find insignificant: The project would slow emergency response times that were already too slow. To get around that problem, the city committed about $700,000 to equip a fire department station for two personnel at the north end of the corridor. The trial period is two years. Originally, the department was to demonstrate acceptable response times before the project proceeded. The city and department are now ignoring that requirement.

In the traffic study, MBI glossed over or ignored the traffic jams that back up from the Leucadia Boulevard light. With the project, those jams will be more frequent and twice as long in time and distance. MBI could not admit the jams because saying the project would reduce beach access and increase travel time would prevent Coastal Commission approval.

MBI also ignored the effects of the placement of the roundabouts. Originally, there were six, all but one in 8/10 mile at the north end. Now there are four. Three in a half-mile stretch at the north end, one 1.2 miles south. MBI supported the false claim that roundabouts at one end and another more than a mile away would slow traffic and keep it flowing through the entire corridor.

Coastal Commission approval was a big hurdle. To help convince the San Diego staff and the commissioners themselves, MBI provided an EIR and a traffic study that were essentially false. Documents obtained through a Public Records Act request reveal that the city staff campaigned hard to have the commission staff greenlight the project. The commission staff stuck to the agency’s mandate to enforce the California Coastal Act of 1976. It prohibits anything that restricts beach access. Unquestionably and unavoidably, Streetscape does that.

On July 27, 2018, the commission staff released a report that required the city to prove the project would not restrict beach access and slow travel time. That was a condition of approval. Simply put, the city had to conduct studies to demonstrate the project’s legality.

Several residents and two commissioners appealed the Coastal Development Permit (CDP) required for approval. With other factors, the appeals cited the same points raised in the commission staff report. The city was up against a wall and had to do something about it.

Between July 27 and September 28, the city somehow got the commission staff to flip its position from effectively prohibiting Streetscape to permitting it. The September 28 commission staff report added this sentence:

“The portion of the suggested modification regarding future requirements for summer traffic surveys is not intended to be retroactively applied to projects already approved by the City.”

The staff reversed its earlier position by exempting the project. Its conditions no longer require the city to prove the project does not violate the Coastal Act.

On October 11, the Coastal Commission approved the project on the staff’s recommendation. One of the commissioners who had appealed the CDP made the motion to approve. The vote was 12-0. The commissioners who appealed the CDP did not reply to a post-hearing request to explain their reversal.

As the hearing opened, Commissioners Padilla and Uranga reported ex parte phone calls with Mayor Catherine Blakespear that had occurred days earlier. Padilla also reported an ex parte call with Encinitas Residents Coalition President Leah Bissonette. Padilla summarized the content of his conversations. Uranga said his was like Padilla’s. I requested ex parte phone calls with Padilla and Commissioner Turnbull-Sanders, who were the commissioner CDP appellants. Padilla declined, Turnbull-Sanders did not reply.

Documents obtained through a Public Records Act request show no smoking gun to explain how the city got the commission staff to flip and the commission to go along. The documents show intense collaboration between the city and commission staffs but no evidence of collusion.

A Coastal Commission attorney refused a subsequent request for documents that would explain the flip, saying internal communications are exempt from public scrutiny. That’s not transparency. It’s a coverup.

The city performed a master stroke in convincing the commission to ignore the law it’s duty-bound to enforce. How the city did that remains unknown.

— Doug Fiske