High-density housing that generates increased traffic and worries emergency responders is impossible to ignore. Meeting state affordable housing mandates while doing the least damage is top of mind for most of us.
Doing so requires city leadership experience to manage and understand the complexities of state housing laws.
Given this, now is not the time to take a chance on Encinitas mayoral candidate Rimga Viskanta. Her affordable housing solutions are false narratives that ignore the facts. Rather than demonstrating an understanding of state housing requirements, she appears willfully ignorant on the subject to mask her allegiance to Sacramento and developers.
Her school board experience does not translate to navigating state housing law. Her background does not come close to opponent Mayor Bruce Ehlers’ 25 years of experience on the Planning Commission, Housing Element Task Force and City Council.
Past council members who have endorsed Viskanta created housing plans that fall far short of state mandates, although they did result in more than a dozen lucrative high-density, market-rate developments.
A fundraiser for Viskanta was held recently at the home of a major, well-heeled Encinitas developer. Viskanta’s housing positions and associations indicate that she will follow in prior councils’ footsteps.
She has 25 years of experience working with her family’s real estate investment business as an account manager, according to her LinkedIn profile. This firm was criminally prosecuted by the city of Long Beach: “For the first time ever, Long Beach criminally prosecutes a landlord for housing discrimination.” Viskanta has been silent on this issue.
Her affordable housing proposals are either inadmissible under state law or legally unworkable in practice. Mayor Ehlers and leaders in other cities across the state have proposed real solutions to rampant overdevelopment and state overreach, but none of Viskanta’s proposals work.
Below are her solutions, in bold, in response to a questionnaire asking how she would balance the need for housing with preserving neighborhood character. We have attended numerous housing forums, studied the topic and fact-checked Viskanta’s claims:
Work with SANDAG to oppose the state agency HCD and negotiate fewer housing units. This is already in the current council’s goals. And if the state auditor, after four years, can’t force HCD to recalculate inflated housing mandates, how can she?
Ensure that traffic and evacuation concerns are addressed. Without legal requirements to mitigate traffic and evacuation plans, developers cannot be forced to address concerns, and she cannot “ensure” their compliance.
Build “gentle density, like fourplexes and duplexes” to avoid oversized projects. HCD (Department of Housing and Community Development) does not count this type of project toward our housing requirements. “Gentle density” sounds attractive but won’t get us a single unit closer to meeting our state affordable housing obligations.
Preserve “naturally occurring affordable housing” refers to existing homes. But HCD does not accept existing units in our affordable housing plans, only new builds.
Work with smaller developers for lower-impact development. How would she legally bar larger companies from doing business in Encinitas? And again, “lower-impact development” isn’t acceptable to the state.
Use AB 787 to buy existing buildings and convert them to affordable units. Prohibitively expensive, it would use up most of the annual budget to support and would eliminate basic services such as fire and police to accommodate the $500,000-per-unit subsidy. It is sham affordability that requires just a 10% reduction from luxury housing rates to qualify as “affordable.”
For example, a $4,000-per-month unit would be lowered to $3,600 per month, which is hardly affordable for a low-income earner. In the five years since AB 787 became law, virtually no city has used it — and there’s a reason for this.
Encinitas is entering our next housing cycle. We cannot afford a mayor who ignores the realities of state housing law. The solutions Viskanta espouses will serve the developer community, not residents. Her solutions are demonstrably infeasible and financially irresponsible and, worst of all, would not increase affordable housing.
If elected, Rimga Viskanta would be the first mayor in our history who did not gain experience first as a council member. Now is not the time to play party politics, as her campaign team advocates. We encourage all voters to do their own homework and decide for themselves whether Rimga Viskanta is up to the task of determining the future of housing in Encinitas.
Sheila Cameron is a former mayor of Encinitas. Susan Turney is a former candidate for Encinitas City Council. Both live in Encinitas.
