San Diego County is in a housing emergency, and working families are paying the price for a system that rewards obstruction. Rents rise, families double up, seniors get pushed out and young people who grew up here are forced to leave.
Meanwhile, a very small but well-funded opposition has learned how to weaponize lawsuits to delay housing until it becomes impossible to build.
Enough.
I have spent decades fighting for working families and the basic idea that opportunity should not depend on your zip code or your bank account. That is why I am speaking up in strong support of Harmony Grove Village South and Senate Bill 1256. This bill is needed because CEQA abuse has gone so far that local democracy is being treated more like a suggestion than a decision backed by our elected leaders and the courts.
Consider how ridiculous this has become. This project was first submitted to San Diego County more than a decade ago. More than a decade of hearings, studies, revisions and lawsuits. More than a decade of delay while families struggle to find housing they can afford.
Harmony Grove Village South was not rammed through. It was reviewed publicly and approved lawfully. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve it, not once, but twice — by two different boards, under two different political majorities. Different members. Different eras. Same conclusion: San Diego must build housing responsibly.
In between approvals, the project was CEQA-litigated, fully adjudicated by California’s Appellate Court, and then brought back and re-approved by the supervisors. That is exactly how the system is supposed to work: public hearings, analysis, conditions and elected officials and judges making decisions. And after all of that, opponents still came back for more, looking for another angle, another hook, another delay.
That is not “community input.” That is a strategy: sue, delay, repeat, until housing becomes impossible to build.
At some point, residents across San Diego must ask a simple question: when does the public process actually mean something?
Here is the part too many people are afraid to say out loud. Elfin Forest is a well-resourced, affluent community. There is nothing wrong with being successful. But there is something very wrong with using wealth and influence to keep other people out.
When residents in multi-million-dollar homes organize to block homes that could start in the $400,000s, it is hard to take the moral speeches seriously. They dress it up as “process,” “character” and “concerns.” But the result is always the same: fewer homes, higher prices and a community that stays exclusive by design.
CEQA was created to ensure transparency and environmental accountability. Those are good goals. But across California, CEQA is too often abused as a political weapon, not to fix projects or improve mitigation, but to bury projects in years of delay after issues have already been studied, debated and resolved. That is not environmental protection. That is lawfare.
And who gets hurt? Not the people who can afford lawyers and years of litigation. The people who get hurt are renters, working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and first-time homebuyers. Every year of delay is another rent hike, another overcrowded apartment, another essential worker commuting farther, another family giving up on the American Dream in San Diego County.
That is why state legislative action matters.
Our local governing system is clearly defined. The five county supervisors represent the entire county, and our courts exist to resolve disputes when claims are brought. When those decisions are made through an open public process, and especially when they are affirmed through court rulings and repeated unanimous votes, they should not be sabotaged by endless, copycat litigation designed to run out the clock.
If we allow that to be the rule, we are not living in a democracy. We are living in a system where the loudest and wealthiest opponents get a permanent veto.
SB 1256 is a line in the sand. It says California will not keep rewarding the same tactic: relitigate and relitigate until housing collapses. It says local decisions should mean something. It says the state will not let CEQA be twisted into a tool to stop housing at any cost.
If you want San Diego to remain a place where regular people can live, not just a place where they commute to serve those who can, then you cannot stay silent while housing gets strangled by delay tactics.
Support SB 1256. Call your state Senator and Assemblymember today. Tell them to vote “yes” on SB 1256, stand up to CEQA abuse, and uphold the decisions made by San Diego County through its public process. Tell them you are done watching wealthy communities use lawsuits to keep San Diego closed to working families.
Dr. Kathleen Harmon is a longtime San Diego community activist and housing advocate.
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