Council Banks $8.5 Million for Affordable Housing, Advances Lobbying Reform
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The San Diego City Council entered its summer legislative recess Wednesday, but not before completing two significant pieces of business in its final pre-recess session on Sunday, June 29. The full Council voted unanimously to establish a new Affordable Housing Preservation Fund and immediately transferred $8.5 million into it, authorizing the San Diego Housing Commission to administer the money. The fund targets what planners call 'naturally occurring affordable housing' — older market-rate rental units that are currently affordable by virtue of their age, location, or condition, not through any legal covenant — and which are at serious risk of being renovated, converted, or sold out of affordability. The proposal was championed by Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee along with Councilmembers Vivian Moreno and Sean Elo-Rivera. Specific spending proposals will be developed by the Housing Commission and returned to the full Council after recess.
Councilmember Elo-Rivera also cleared a significant hurdle on ethics reform before the break. His 'Follow the Money' lobbying ordinance passed the Rules Committee unanimously and now advances to the full Council for a final vote upon their return. The ordinance would lower the disclosure trigger for attempts to influence city decisions from $5,000 to $1,000, require 24-hour filing with the City Clerk when lobbying occurs, ban campaign contributions from registered lobbyists to the specific officials they lobby, and — in what would be new legal territory — mandate disclosure when AI-generated content is used in political communications. No date has been set for the full Council vote, but unanimous committee passage is typically a strong indicator of forward momentum.
On public safety, San Diego police are actively searching this morning for a suspect following an officer-involved shooting that occurred Tuesday morning near the 4800 block of Pacific Highway at the Morena Boulevard riverbed corridor. No officer fatalities have been confirmed. The San Diego County Sheriff's Homicide Unit has taken over the investigation per the countywide memorandum of understanding — standard protocol for officer-involved shooting incidents. Details on the suspect and the circumstances leading to the shooting remain under development. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477. A separate June 23 fatal officer-involved shooting in the Cortez Hill neighborhood, in which officers responding to a barricaded suspect who set an apartment fire and threw objects at officers fatally shot the individual, also remains under active investigation by the Sheriff's Homicide Unit and will be submitted to the District Attorney for criminal liability review.