2018 > June

Council Committee Considers Section-8 Non-Discrimination Ordinance

San Diego City Council Member Gómez has introduced an ordinance to prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to tenants because they have Section 8 vouchers.  You may read her presentation on the City’s website, and more information is available in the supporting documents section of the Committee Agenda.

This is what Housing Committee Member Steve Dorner had to say in support of the ordinance:

2018 06 27 Comments at Smart Growth and Land Use Committee

Steve Dorner, member of the NAACP Housing Committee, urges the committee to approve the ordinance prohibiting discrimination against Section 8 voucher holder.

The person you see walking out during Mr Dorner’s remarks is Council Member Lori Zapf, who voted against the ordinance.

Many other people spoke in favor of the ordinance.  The San Diego Housing Commission supports it strongly.

Against it were some landlords.  Their argument was that the Section 8 process sometimes took 2-4 weeks, which left their unit vacant for that time, and so lost them income.

Given the lopsided market in favor of landlords, the miniscule vacancy rate, and the vicissitudes of a well-functioning housing market, Mr Dorner found it hard to sympathize with people whose main concern was missing a small amount of income on their second (or third, or tenth, or…) home, rather than people looking for a place to live.

Section 8 is intended to serve a purpose beyond mere housing, vital though that is.  Section 8 is intended to combat segregation by allowing low-income folks, African-Americans particularly, to live in areas of higher rents and more economic prosperity.  It’s been shown that people do better financially if low-income folks aren’t all forced into the same area of town, but instead get to live in prosperous neighborhoods.  In the City of San Diego, Section 8 vouchers are used in predominantly minority neighborhoods:

Many people believe that a big part of the resistance to Section 8 is actually based in racial discrimination.

Council Member Alvarez spoke in favor of the ordinance, though he asked the SDHC for more information and encouraged them to make even more effort on behalf of landlords.  Member Sherman was not ready to support the ordinance at this time.  Member Zapf could see no need at all for the ordinance; perhaps the fact that she asked questions that were plainly answered in the preceding presentations gives a clue as to the source of her difficulty.

In the end, the committee spit 2-2, with Member Alvarez voting with Member Gómez for it, Members Sherman and Zapf opposed.  As Member Gómez is Chair of the Committee, it is her prerogative to send the measure to the full council, though without Committee recommendation, and she did so.

Mobile STEM Camp

This week, the NAACP is sponsoring a STEM camp at Bell Middle School. More than a dozen kids are being introduced to entrepreneurship and engineering, both electrical and software.  

You can read more about the STEM camp here.

Housing Committee Member Urges City to Try New Approaches

Steve Dorner, Housing Committee Member, attended the San Diego City Council meeting on June 26th, to thank them for taking training regarding the City’s affordable housing program.  He took the opportunity to give them a gift; a copy of Evicted by Matthew Desmond, and urged the to try Shared Equity models like Community Land Use Trusts.

Job Openings at SANDAG

SANDAG has a variety of jobs currently available:

Accounting Specialist
Business and Operations Manager
Division Director of Toll Operations
Human Resources Specialist
Marketing Analyst
Program Manager of Economic and Demographic Forecasting
Senior Risk Program Analyst
Toll Plaza Attendant
Transportation Planner – Goods Movement
Transportation Planning Intern

Read more on their website.

SANDAG :: Careers :: San Diego’s Regional Planning Agency

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is the San Diego region’s primary public planning, transportation, and research agency, providing the public forum for regional policy decisions about growth, transportation planning and construction, environmental management, housing, open space, energy, public safety, and binational topics.

Donations Needed: School Supplies

At the Back-to-School Stay-in-School Fair, we will be distributing school supplies to the kids.  The following supplies are needed; you may bring them to the NAACP General Meetings on July 7 and August 2nd, at 6pm in the Community Room at the Jacobs Center, 404 Euclid Ave.

Thank you!

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City of San Diego Urged to Support NAACP Lawsuit Against Trump Administration

The City of San Diego has been asked to file an amicus brief supporting the NAACP in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. The following statement was read at the 10am session of the San Diego City Council, where public comment was taken for the 11am closed session where the item is to be discussed:

2018-06-12 NAACP TPS Lawsuit Statement

We encourage you to read the complaint in its entirety, as it has much more to say than we were able to quote to the City council.

Kate Yavenditti Speaks to the NAACP about CRB Reform

At the June 7th general meeting of the NAACP San Diego, Kate Yavenditti from Women Occupy San Diego spoke about replacing the Community Review Board with an independent Commission on Police Practices. She explained that the current board is being understaffed by Mayor Faulconer, lacks independent legal counsel and investigators, and is only presented with cases the SDPD itself deems worthy of investigation. WOSD’s amendment to the City Charter would remedy this.

There is a critical Rules Committee meeting at 2pm on July 11th at 202 C Street that might move the amendment forward. The NAACP backs strongly the idea of independent community review of alleged police misconduct. The police have a long record of bias, implicit and explicit, against African-Americans and other people of color. The police need to be held accountable when they misuse the vast power they have been granted by our legislatures and courts.

WOSD Charter Amendment for November Ballot_0