SB 10 Has Serious Negative Implications Including Inequity and Quality of Life for Minority Neighborhoods
I’ve decided to raise more concerns about this worthless bill (SB 10) that continues to remind us that someone at city hall and in Sacramento isn’t doing their part to truly understand the impact of creating more extreme density in urban communities.
According to an analysis recently published by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group, about 41 million people in the U.S. live in urban heat islands, where city topography elevates temperatures by at least eight degrees Fahrenheit,
Urban heat islands occur when cities replace land cover including parks, trees, and live landscaping with buildings, pavement and other materials that absorb and retain heat. While the heat effect is most noticeable during summertime, urban heat islands are warmer all year-round.
“We’re basically talking about a phenomenon where there’s a measurable increase in urban air temperatures that’s caused by the way the city is built,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climate scientist with Climate Central. “It’s additional warming that is caused by dark building materials, dark pavement, building heights, population density and lack of green space.”
Climate Central researchers found that nine major cities — New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix and Detroit — each housed at least one million people currently affected by the urban heat island effect.
Experts studying urban heat islands say the issue has important implications for both health and equity. Higher temperatures for people living in urban areas means a greater risk of exacerbating medical conditions and even heat-related deaths, said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Climate School.
“The urban heat island effect tends to impact poorer neighborhoods, majority-minority neighborhoods,” Schlegelmilch said. “The areas that tend to get hotter don’t have the resources to invest in well-insulated housing or tree cover. They’re more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”
Additionally, as San Diego has already implemented via their Community Planning Groups, one that I am a vice chair, a significant means of providing housing opportunities. In other words, we’ve met the quota, yet our elected officials want to saturate urban communities with high rises and density that have negative impacts on the quality of life for all San Diegans.
To top that off, we’re experiencing a drop in our population for a lot of significant reasons. Cost of living in San Diego is the primary reason and cost of home ownership. Which, if allowed by SB 10, no one will be able to purchase a single-family home in the future. Speculators and investors will buy up San Diego and make it too expensive for the middle class and future potential homeowners.
The American Dream will be forever removed due to bad politicians and policies, like SB 10, which will allow a single-family lot to become a 10-to-14-unit building. This apartment building will require no parking, no landscaping, no trees, and no infrastructure to support the increased density.
Forget America’s Finest City. It will become, thanks to SB 10, another urban hot spot that is driven by greed and deceit.
As stated by Ellis California Jones, a council candidate for District 3 who spoke at a recent rally opposing SB 10, “This gives developers an out to not build the affordable housing units they claim they will provide. And though it has been marketed as means to help minority communities, as a means to push through the plan, none of this is true.”
If you want to join the thousands of people who are protesting SB 10 and are dedicated to protecting San Diego from this insanity, become a part of Neighbors for a Better San Diego, which is dedicated to protecting future home ownership and a quality of life for all San Diegans (https://www.neighborsforabettersandiego.org).
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