Politics Report: Affordable Housing Cost Fix? 50%
By Will Huntsberry40% Scott Lewis67%
7/18/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Confirmation Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 16.3% saturation with 121 hits. Analysis detected 1,266 faulty-reasoning hits from 741 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50.3% and a BS Rank of 50% (8,883 of 17,596 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 50.50% of the article peer group.
The cost of affordable housing in California — and the time it takes to build — are pretty shocking.
We’ve all heard the stories about units costing nearly a million dollars each to build and projects going on for years and years.
Paul Downey, a local advocate for seniors, put a fine point on it last year in an essay for Voice of San Diego .
Downey wrote about a 79-unit affordable housing complex in Clairemont that took seven years to build.
The state’s byzantine funding system was to blame, he argued.
“Serving Seniors and partners had to secure five different government funding sources to cover the $43 million cost of the project.
Each funding source added approximately $15,000 per unit in cost,” Downey wrote.
The problem was, in part, both the governor and the state treasurer controlled different pots of housing money and they each required different hoops be jumped through.
“The solution is straightforward,” Downey wrote.
“The state of California should create a single pool of federal, state and local funding with a single application process.”
Newsom said he fixed the problem with a budget trailer bill he signed into law this week.
The fix isn’t exactly what Downey was asking for — at least not yet.
Ironically, Newsom’s fix to a problem of too many government agencies is, you guessed it, the creation of another government agency.
Stephen Russell of the San Diego Housing Federation told the Politics Report that’s actually good.
“Basically, we’re all happy.
And our sector is [usually] afraid of change,” he said.
This new committee, the Housing Development and Finance Committee, will begin to realign the work that has been spread across the treasurer’s office and the Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD.
It’s unclear exactly how the mechanics will work but the idea is that projects will be approved by the new committee and they will automatically receive multiple forms of funding.
The new committee won’t be able to pull all the strings immediately.
For now, it won’t control 100 percent of funding.
The idea is for it to be slowly vested with power, Russell said.
Ultimately, for California to get out of its affordable-home-building funk, money needs to get out the door quicker, said Russell.
“The cake is there,” he said, using a metaphor for funding.
“The problem is the cake isn’t getting handed out fast enough.”
The committee’s goal will be to get the money out the door.
Doing that would not only mean more homes on the ground faster.
It would also mean cheaper homes, because costs grow exponentially as projects are delayed.
Ultimately though Russell acknolwedeged: “The proof will be in the pudding — or cake.”
Elections Contest Winner
Stop it.
This is a perfectly normal amount of time to pass before we tallied up the results the Elections Contest for last month’s primary.
This is California.
Reader John La Raia won and will have lunch with us in coming weeks.
You all are pretty good in the aggregate: As may be expected, almost everyone knew Xavier Becerra would advance and the rest split between Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer for second place, with a few more for Hilton.
For the 48th Congressional District, a solid majority assumed Jim Desmond would advance and just a few less thought Marni von Wilpert would.
In the county supervisor District 5, the seat being vacated by Desmond, more people incorrectly thought John Franklin would advance than Kyle Krahel.
In the 40th District State Senate, almost everyone correctly marked that Mara Elliott would advance but more of you thought Ed Musgrove would advance than Kristi Bruce-Lane and that was wrong.
In City Council District 2, pluralities correctly picked Richard Bailey and Nicole Crosby but a lot of people thought Josh Coyne or Mandy Havlik would advance.
More people also thought Venus Molina would advance in District 8 than Gerardo Ramirez, and that was incorrect.
Candidates are confirming left and right.
Politifest is back: Oct.
3
We’re bringing together local politicians to go head-to-head at Politifest: Elections Showdown .
Attendees will hear from candidates across San Diego and cast their votes for who would most effectively address the biggest issues facing our community.
Get discounted tickets today.
Politics is going to heat up again soon.
We will as well.
If you have any ideas or feedback for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org.
Analysis
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