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 school board candidates, which Viskanta attended, was recently held 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.
CORRECTION: This opinion submission has been updated to clarify that a fundraiser, at which Rimga Viskanta was present, was organized for school board candidates, not specifically Viskanta or her mayoral campaign.
9 comments
Leah Clare, wrong – again. There is no “gun lobby questionnaire.” Link it here, show your work. Not outing your name on Facebook but you’re making the same false claim there, too.
This is the candidate questionnaire from the San Diego Gun Owners PAC https://sandiegocountygunowners.com/questionnaire/
Leah Clare can have her opinion on Viskanta’s resume but on HCD Viskanta is not laughably wrong, she’s dangerously ignorant. And Leah Clare is good with that Got it.
“A fundraiser for Viskanta was held recently at the home of a major, well-heeled Encinitas developer.”
Perhaps so.
But notice what isn’t supplied in the article:
Who? What development interests? What contribution? What decision? What policy commitment? What quid pro quo?
The fundraiser can fairly be disclosed and discussed. Candidates’ financial relationships matter.
But association is not evidence of policy capture.
The article moves almost immediately from “a developer hosted a fundraiser” to suggesting Viskanta “will follow in prior councils’ footsteps.” That’s a lazy inference.
“How would she legally bar larger companies from doing business in Encinitas?”
But she doesn’t have to.
“Work with smaller developers” and “prohibit large developers” are entirely different propositions.
A city can structure public-private partnerships, city-owned-land projects, RFPs, financing programs, technical assistance and development rules in ways that make smaller projects more viable without declaring larger developers illegal.
The response in the op-ed answers an argument Viskanta didn’t actually make.
The SANDAG argument attacks an exaggerated version of Rimga’s position
HCD determines the regional housing need, after consultation with the regional Council of Governments. SANDAG then develops the methodology allocating that regional total among San Diego County jurisdictions.
So no Encinitas mayor can simply announce:
“Give us fewer units.”
Once an allocation is final, the mayor cannot unilaterally renegotiate it.
But the op-ed leaps from that fact to suggesting that working through SANDAG and HCD is essentially pointless.
It isn’t.
HCD explicitly describes consultation between HCD and Councils of Governments, while SANDAG is now preparing for the seventh RHNA cycle and monitoring reform of the RHNA process.
So there is a perfectly legitimate role for an Encinitas mayor to advocate through SANDAG, lobby Sacramento, challenge methodology assumptions, and seek legislative or administrative changes.
In fact, Encinitas’ own current legislative program calls for pushing back against aspects of state density-bonus law and seeking greater local control.
And Viskanta’s published housing platform similarly says she wants to challenge and reform RHNA and density-bonus policies rather than simply accept them.
So this supposed stark contrast—Ehlers fights Sacramento while Viskanta unquestioningly submits to it—is difficult to reconcile with her actual published position.
This Op Ed is a bunch of fear-mongering and misinformation. Bruce has had like 30 years advocating for local control and what has he accomplished?
Catherine Blakespear only endorsed developer puppets like herself.
Viskanta is a fraud. Blakespear also endorsed Brad Lefkowitz and Arielle Golden so hopefully folks will vote for Marco San Antonio for D4 and Ed Sprague for D3. Bruce Ehlers is the obvious choice for Mayor.
On Viskanta’s Linkedin:
Accounting Manager
Amber Family Partnership
Jul 2001 – Present 25 yrs 3 mos
Oversee accounting operations for a property investment and management group
There are some facts here worth discussing, but calling someone a “fraud” or a “developer puppet” doesn’t establish either claim.
Yes, Rimga Viskanta has publicly disclosed that she works as an accounting manager for her family’s real-estate investment and management business. That is not hidden information, and it is entirely fair to ask what her responsibilities are and how that experience informs her housing views. And it’s not been her sole income or source of employment, she has real local government experience.
Looking up theAmber Family Partnership/ Long Beach housing-discrimination case. Accuracy matters. The published reporting says a rental manager told an investigator the company did not rent to Section 8 voucher holders. It does not identify Rimga Viskanta as that rental manager, say she made the decision, or establish that she directed the policy. Public business records list other family members as the partnership’s general partners.
If there is evidence that Rimga personally participated in the discriminatory decision, by all means produce it. If there isn’t, then implying personal culpability because she handled accounting for a family business is guilt by association.
The same standard should apply to endorsements. An endorsement from Catherine Blakespear is evidence that Catherine Blakespear supports a candidate. It is not evidence that the candidate is controlled by her, much less proof that they are a “puppet.”
And Bruce is endorsed by the right-leaning San Diego Gun Owners PAC and on that PAC’s website, they clearly say that you have to fill out a questionnaire to get their endorsement, which means he went out of his way to court them. What do they expect from him? And why does he seem to only be engaging with Republican groups?
The main point of the article that nothing in Viskanta’s background prepares her for our housing challenges is made clear in her extreme misconceptions about how things work. To say she would be dangerous sitting up there as mayor is an understatement.
Saying “nothing in Viskanta’s background prepares her” is demonstrably inaccurate.
Calling someone “dangerous” doesn’t make the underlying argument more accurate.
The claim that “nothing in Viskanta’s background prepares her” for municipal housing issues leaves out a rather significant part of her background: nearly a decade working inside Solana Beach city government, including the City Manager’s Office and Finance Department, a Master of Public Administration, government consulting experience, and work in multifamily real-estate accounting.
And before declaring that she has “extreme misconceptions,” it’s worth examining whether some of the op-ed’s own statements about housing law are as absolute as presented.
For example, HCD does not simply declare that duplexes and fourplexes “don’t count.” New units can receive RHNA credit; what matters is the income category and demonstrated affordability. That does not mean gentle density alone satisfies Encinitas’ lower-income RHNA obligations, but that distinction matters.
Likewise, AB 787 is not simply a 10% discount on luxury rents. The law includes long-term affordability restrictions, income qualifications and government monitoring.
The op-ed says:
“Her school board experience does not translate to navigating state housing law.”
That framing leaves out a major part of her résumé.
Viskanta did not simply go from school board to mayoral candidate. She previously worked inside Solana Beach city government, including its City Manager and Finance offices. The Coast News itself acknowledges this. Official Solana Beach records also identify her as a Senior Management Analyst working on municipal regulatory and policy matters.
Meanwhile, the op-ed describes Ehlers as having “25 years of experience on the Planning Commission, Housing Element Task Force and City Council.” That wording is misleading. Ehlers’ own campaign biography says he has been a community activist/volunteer for more than 25 years, but says he served seven years on the Planning Commission. He joined the City Council in 2022 and became mayor in 2024.
Ehlers unquestionably has significant land-use experience. But comparing his “25 years” to Viskanta’s “school board experience” is an apples-to-oranges construction that minimizes one résumé while maximizing the other.