San Diegans Like Living Here. Affordability Has Them Worried About the Future
A new countywide survey found affordability, housing costs and immigration enforcement are shaping how San Diegans feel about the region’s future.
Written by Emma Chen, Edited by Kate Morrissey
San Diegans may love where they live, but rising costs are making more residents question whether they can afford to stay and feel less hopeful about the region’s future, according to a recent countywide survey.
The findings come from the first San Diego Vital Signs Survey, a collaboration between University of California, San Diego political scientist and polling expert Tom K. Wong and J. Walcher Communications. The survey aims to give residents a voice in conversations about the region’s future while establishing a baseline to track whether concerns such as affordability, housing, and quality of life improve or worsen over time.
“No one is seeing what San Diegans think on a regular basis and so much of the data that we're getting is from state or nationwide sources,” said Sandy Young, CEO of J. Walcher Communications, during a press briefing about the survey findings. “So, it doesn't truly represent how San Diegans think and feel, and the best way we all know to make informed decisions is with good data.”
Researchers surveyed 800 San Diego County adults in September using online panels supplemented by telephone interviews. They weighted the responses to reflect the county’s adult population.
Affordability stood out as one of the biggest concerns, Wong said. More than half of residents identified cost of living, housing, or homelessness as the county’s single biggest problem, and only a quarter think the county will be better off in five years.
“There's just a little bit of uncertainty about the direction of the county, what the county is going to be like in the future, and affordability is just hitting residents really, really hard,” Wong said during a briefing on the results.
The financial strain is already changing how some households live. About four in 10 residents said they had cut back on basic expenses because of San Diego County’s cost of living, with groceries among the most common areas where people spent less.
That strain is hitting hardest among renters and lower-income households, the researchers found.
More than half of renters said housing costs were difficult to afford, and about one-third had seriously considered leaving the county because of cost — more than twice the share of homeowners who said the same.
About three-quarters of households earning less than $50,000 said housing costs were difficult to afford, compared with roughly one-third of households earning $200,000 or more. Lower-income residents were also much more likely to report cutting expenses or considering leaving San Diego County because of cost.
The survey does not show that affordability directly causes residents to feel pessimistic about San Diego’s future, but Wong said the findings show a strong relationship between financial pressure and how residents experience life in the county.
“I didn’t realize how many San Diegans thought that our county was headed in the wrong direction,” Young said in an interview with Daylight. “The majority do, and they seem generally pessimistic about the future, which in some ways is not surprising, but still interesting to hear directly from folks.”
The findings also showed residents are skeptical about whether local government represents their interests.
Nearly half of respondents said local government mostly works for wealthy people and powerful interests, while only about one in seven said it mostly works for people like them. Residents were almost evenly divided on whether local elected officials understand their concerns.
Those views differed depending on residents’ economic circumstances. Renters and lower-income households were more likely to say local government works primarily for wealthy people and powerful interests.
Residents also weighed in on immigration enforcement, with most expressing support for the region’s immigrant communities.
Nearly eight in 10 respondents supported the survey’s description of an earned pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants. A majority also supported notifying federal immigration authorities before the release of someone convicted of a serious or violent felony.
Support was much lower — around 33 percent of respondents — when they considered local assistance with federal immigration enforcement involving someone without a serious or violent conviction, and it was lower still for immigration enforcement near schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
The survey also found that concerns over immigration enforcement have affected some residents’ everyday routines. About one-third said they or someone they knew had avoided at least one everyday activity because of concerns about immigration enforcement. Hispanic and foreign-born respondents were more likely than non-Hispanic respondents to report that recent enforcement had affected them, their families or people they knew.
When asked about possible responses to homelessness, residents generally placed greater priority on treatment and housing than on citing or arresting people for camping in public.
Mental health and addiction treatment received the highest priority rating, followed by permanent supportive housing, affordable housing for extremely low-income residents and temporary shelters. Citing or arresting people for camping ranked lowest among the approaches tested.
The researchers will conduct another round of surveys in mid to late October. They intend to maintain the San Diego Vital Signs poll monthly going forward.
