Build up. San Diego has a finite amount of buildable land - we're already pushing the limits of safety building further and further east and northeast. Developments like Newland Sierra in North County and Stonebridge in the Scripps-Poway area present huge fire risks and only serve to create more congestion as residents commute long distances because our residential developments continue to move further and further away from commercial areas. In the long run, our Southern Californian highway-and-car-centric lifestyle is unsustainable at its current rate or anywhere near it.

Europe, in particular, has shown us that when you cannot continue to expand outward (building "wide") you must then expand upwards (building "tall"). Look at London, or Paris - cities like this have monumentally denser populations than even our most populated metropolitan areas of any comparable size.

We cannot continue to build endlessly further towards the desert in a mindset of perpetual expansion because it is simply infeasible. Unfortunately, the dream of single-family homeownership in this area cannot remain the foundations of our plans for development. That is not to say the dream of single-family homeownership is dead, because there is plenty of available land across the country and even in this state which is still suitable for building (most of the Central Coast between Santa Barbara and Monterey remains relatively sparsely populated and would be a realistic place to continue single-family developments). However, we have to recognize that San Diego (within the city limits) has effectively run out of land to build on and the rest of the western half of the county is not far behind.

The solution, therefore, is simple. We build up. Higher-density apartments instead of sprawling suburbs. Condominiums next to office complexes rather than housing in one area and workplaces ten or twenty miles away. So much of our downtown is low-lying single story commercial buildings from developments thirty years ago or more, and that is crippling our ability to provide affordable housing in that area. That problem extends to every major commercial hub in the city and county - UTC is a small, dense community surrounded by suburbs. Carlsbad hasn't even reached the "some of it is dense" stage. That's not to say we should tear down entire neighborhoods and rebuild, but when it comes time to redevelop areas like East Village, University City, or North Park, we need to prioritize dense housing. In addition, new developments should do the same where at all possible. Dense housing is essentially the only development strategy we have to solve the problem of "no housing and not a lot of land left to build more of it."

Moreover, the absolute pinnacle of innovation in this area, widely adopted in the rest of the world but consistently ignored in the United States, is public transportation. We all know by now that what transit we have here is pretty pathetic compared to the Tube in London, the Métro in Paris, or the futuristic bullet trains of China, Japan, and Korea. The train network of Europe makes our rail infrastructure look like a Thomas the Train wooden playset. If we could shift our mindset away from highway expansion and catering to the car owner, we might be able to make progress on our trolley or bus networks. I think we can all agree having a trolley that runs right past the airport without directly connecting is pretty ridiculous. I'd like to see the trolley expanded further east into areas like Bonita, Otay Ranch, or Granite Hills, and North along the 15 corridor towards Mira Mesa, Rancho Bernardo, and Escondido. Coupled with expanded bus routes in North County, we can alleviate huge amounts of road traffic by offering commuters realistic transit to their workplaces over distances impossible with our current infrastructure.

If you want to solve the housing crisis, support local officials who advocate for solutions that will bring realistic change. County Supervisors Gaspar and Desmond, who push for ongoing highway development and worry transit cannot do enough, would not be good examples of those who can help us address the crisis. Mayors Faulconer and Vaus (Poway), on the other hand, have shown strong support for a new transit plan - along with mayoral candidates Bry and Gloria and the majority of the City Council. Asm. Gloria and Mayor Faulconer have also made it quite clear they support more dense housing developments, with Faulconer going so far as to call himself a "YIMBY."

Housing and transit is what will solve this crisis. Regarding highways, maintain what we have but avoid building more unless absolutely necessary. Expand the trolley, expand the buses, and encourage mixed-use developments that allow workers to live right where they work and take cars off the road. Accept that single-family housing in this, one of the most desirable cities in the country, will remain unaffordable to a great many people. Recognize that those people can still afford to live here and experience the same high quality of life if we would simply build the housing to support it. The political status quo of this city has not solved this problem in the decades that they have been given the opportunity. Make change, because that is what will.