The San Diego Unified School District could make California history Monday — by approving the state’s largest ever educator housing project.
The plan to redevelop five sites into hundreds of affordable units could bring teachers and families back into a district with cratering enrollment, where educators struggle to live near the communities in which they work, and provide an ongoing education funding stream.
The biggest piece of the plan hinges on the redevelopment of district headquarters, a 13-acre site in a dense, walkable section of University Heights. The multi-block property presents a rare chance to redevelop a large area near North Park and Hillcrest and on a rapid bus line just a short distance from downtown.
“This is an opportunity that really is once in a generation,” said Andrew Sharp, a representative for one of the development teams — PROTEA/Malick — and a former SDUSD spokesperson.
Where the Civic Center and Sports Arena redevelopments promise to revive struggling areas with brand-new projects, the district’s big development opportunity is both in the heart of the city and surrounded by thriving urban neighborhoods.
The Monday vote follows a month-long postponement from a December hearing. The delay allowed board members and the public to thoroughly vet proposals from three remaining development teams whose plans range from 700 to 1500 units. It also gives Monarch Group and PROTEA/Malick a chance to demonstrate why their competing visions for the site fits district needs better than the staff recommendation in favor of Affirmed Housing Group’s proposal.
Monarch’s proposal for roughly 700 units offers five-story European-style architecture and the highest ratio of parking to housing units.
Affirmed’s 950-unit pitch includes four phases of construction — relying on a cheaper, prefabricated building method — with promises to renovate historic buildings on site, and to transform one into a child care center.
PROTEA/Malick, meanwhile, want to create an urbanist dream, with an 11-story tall mass timber village accessible to the outside surrounding community on all sides, with much-needed amenities like a community pool and open green space.
The three competing visions will force board members to weigh different priorities. The district will consider the financial viability, speed of construction, and the reliability of management teams for each project. Being able to execute the plan may matter as much or more to them than the details of the plan itself.
The plans offer different opportunities for who could move into University Heights.
Affirmed would build its project with a mix of financial sources from competitive state programs and federal tax credits. That means all its units are designated affordable — they’re reserved for people making 30% to 100% of the median income.
That also means most district teachers earn too much to qualify for those apartments.
Monarch is proposing the fewest units, but it also offers the smallest share of studios. Instead, the plan prioritizes market rate multi-bedroom units, envisioning them as ideal for both families of teachers and students alike.
Sara Kruer Jager, a partner at Monarch Group, argues its project has another advantage: certainty.
“Monarch’s plan is backed by $1 billion in available financing, which provides the district with assurance our plan will move forward,” she said in a statement. “Other plans rely on competitive tax credits or tax increment financing, which is subject to availability and future government approvals from several jurisdictions.”
PROTEA/Malick is the only team to include senior housing, with 323 units set aside for those over age 55. The district cannot legally prioritize retired district staffers to liven in those units. Still, Sharp argues including senior housing provides broad value to the community in general.
That project’s large scale also allowed it to provide the largest number of two- and three-bedroom apartments, with nearly 600 of those family-friendly units.
Significantly, developers are not allowed to adjust any parts of their proposals from their initial bids before Monday’s board presentations.
Trustee Richard Barrera, while pushing to postpone a decision during the December meeting, said he hoped developers would offer a range of rents that would be affordable to people at different income levels.
In the request for proposals, the board told developers to pitch the maximum number of affordable units. The district defined “affordable” as a rent that does not exceed 30% of a tenant’s annual income, but it did not specify what income level those units should target.
Almost all teachers make too much annually to qualify for traditional, income-restricted housing. From the dais, Barrera said he wanted housing for both certificated and classified workers.
The district could find itself in a situation like one that bedeviled the Los Angeles Unified School District a decade ago, when the LA school district built three affordable workforce housing projects that resulted in not a single teacher living in the new apartments, thanks to income restrictions attached to tax credits used to fund the developments. They did serve classified staff, however, such as custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
The district’s push for the maximum number of affordable housing units came from a workshop in December 2024 where the public gave ideas on what they wanted in these projects.
University Heights resident Andrew Bowen pointed out that pushing for the highest percentage of affordable units might not benefit the largest number of people. A small but fully income-restricted project, for instance, might meet the criteria, even while providing less affordable housing that teachers could qualify for than a bigger project with housing at a mix of income levels.
Beyond that point, the district’s request for developer proposals was fairly flexible.
“That’s one of the reasons we were so excited about it,” Sharp said. “They said, ‘We want affordable housing for our workforce. Show us what you got.’”
In the six weeks after the postponement, each developer presented their project to Uptown’s community planning group. There, board members rated the projects on their community amenities and access, design aesthetics and historic preservation.
The planning group was closely split on the PROTEA/Malick and Monarch proposals. It gave negative points to what they called Affirmed’s “boxy” idea. Even still, the group wrote a letter decrying the speed of the approval process.
The board split on a narrow 3-2 vote during that December meeting. Ahead of that meeting, the proposals and staff report on them were only made public on the Friday ahead of a Wednesday meeting. And staff only planned to present on the one project it recommended the board approve.
Now, these longer meetings will provide space for each developer to make their pitch.
“These proposals for this site are dramatically different from each other in concept and what they accomplish,” Barrera said.
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