State Farm is cutting property insurance coverage in California and won’t renew policies for 72,000 properties throughout the state, including more than 2,000 in San Diego County. In San Diego County, the company plans to eliminate half its coverage to the affluent community of Rancho Santa Fe, denying renewals for 713 out of 1,421 policies. Other areas facing major cuts include Alpine, Chula Vista, Jamul, Lakeside and El Cajon. County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who represents Rancho Santa Fe, said homeowners should not be “left to trust the black box of insurance algorithms to determine ..read more

As Mayor Todd Gloria’s team sought to close a large city budget deficit and fund homeless services in the upcoming year’s budget, they penciled in $15 million from the city’s housing agency to avoid major cuts. Yet, as our Lisa Halverstadt reports, neither the Gloria administration or Housing Commission officials know exactly where that money will come from. And the housing agency is staring down what it views as significant cuts to city homeless programs it oversees even with its assumed $15 million contribution. Proposed cuts affect eight shelters, a homelessness prevention program that Cit ..read more

An effort to raise taxes to fix San Diego’s crumbling and clogged stormwater system took a step toward the November ballot Thursday.  The city of San Diego’s Rules Committee unanimously directed city staff to bring a recommendation back in June on how to tax properties based on square footage of surfaces that don’t absorb water (like concrete driveways or parking lots) to raise money for the stormwater system.  Urbanization and the paving of otherwise natural soils, especially along waterways, is a big reason why San Diego flooded so badly on Jan. 22. San Diego unsuccessfully tried ..read more

Mayor Todd Gloria’s office wants the city’s Housing Commission to come up with $15 million to help plug the city’s budget deficit and minimize cuts to homeless services.  Yet Gloria’s team doesn’t know where the money’s going to come from.   Housing agency officials aren’t certain, either. They say there are strings attached to the various accounts that Gloria’s team initially thought they could tap.  The housing agency is also dealing with another blow. Gloria’s proposed budget already includes a separate 11 percent year-over-year decrease in city money for homelessness p ..read more

Look familiar? We pulled this post from the Morning Report. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news. Click here. This week, the executive committee of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council approved a resolution in support of Cindy Chavez, a Santa Clara county supervisor, and her application to be the new chief administrative officer. The proposed resolution will now go to the full group of delegates that represent all the unions within the Labor Council. It follows a similar resolution by the San Diego County Democratic Party.  Chavez had ..read more

Look familiar? We pulled this post from the Morning Report. Subscribe to our daily newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news. Click here. The San Diego City Council is set to have a closed-door discussion next week on the cost and terms of Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposal to lease a Middletown warehouse and make it a 1,000-bed homeless shelter. The planned discussion comes in the wake of the Gloria administration’s decision to postpone a Thursday Land Use and Housing Committee hearing on a proposed 35-year lease for the nearly 65,000 square foot former print shop at Kettner Boule ..read more

Mayor Todd Gloria wants to hit the brakes on a program that would have helped people previously charged for black market cannabis dealings break into the legal weed market.  City staffers had put years of work into the proposal, which is known as the Cannabis Social Equity program. It would have been set to take effect in the new future. If Gloria successfully ends the program, the city will need to return a nearly million dollar grant to the state.  Advocates aren’t happy. The program was supposed to be the city’s way of “saying sorry,” one person said.  Editor Andrea Lopez-Vi ..read more

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria is proposing to eliminate a city program that would have helped people charged with crimes related to cannabis enter the legal weed market. City staff had been working on the Cannabis Social Equity program for years but had yet to get it off the ground.   Killing the program would force the city to return an $880,000 grant it secured from the state to help potential equity program applicants pay for permit and legal fees, licenses and other expenses. The grant expires in six months.   Last week, Gloria unveiled a proposed budget that relies on cuts a ..read more

When San Diego pitched its latest bond measure it specifically allocated funds to build housing on unused district lands. Exactly what a district-built project could look like still isn’t clear, but the concept of housing on district-owned land wasn’t entirely new.   The district already had one housing project on the books, a 264-unit complex in Scripps Ranch. But that complex was built by a private developer who leased the land via a joint occupancy agreement, a strategy the district touts as allowing it to keep the land while generating revenue.  Last night, the distric ..read more

Look familiar? We pulled this from the Morning Report. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here. It’s now been two years since San Diego County’s efforts to house homeless residents outpaced the number of people falling into homelessness for the first time. The Regional Task Force on Homelessness reported Tuesday that 1,337 people became homeless for the first time in March and 1,226 exited homelessness. What this means: For the past 24 months, local programs trying to combat homelessness haven’t been able to keep up with the flood of people losing their homes. One comm ..read more