Daily Business Report: Thursday, January 29
County unanimously approves more Tijuana River Valley pollution fixes
By Brooke Binkowski | Times of San Diego
The San Diego Board of Supervisors has unanimously recommended $4 million in reserve funding for infrastructure repairs at the Saturn Boulevard hotspot and critical public health studies.
The funding will go toward construction at a sewage hot spot on the Tijuana River along Saturn Boulevard and a concurrent medical study.
The board also approved releasing funds to offer more air purifiers to affected householdsin the South Bay region and established a new position within the county to centralize decisions around the crisis.
How Many Second Homes Are in Your Neighborhood?
By Will Huntsberry | Voice of San Diego
The conversation around San Diego’s vacation rental homes has been loud and heated for years. Meanwhile, an equally large part of the housing stock has received much less attention: empty second homes.
These are homes like the 13,000-square-foot Sand Castle in La Jolla, which listed for $108 million in 2024. They are not a primary residence. They are, in many cases, the vacation homes of the very-wealthy and they spend much of their time sitting empty.
There are at least 4,996 of these homes in San Diego, which is nearly the same as the number of short-term vacation rentals (5,648) on the market. They each account for roughly one percent of the city’s housing stock.
How Gavin Newsom’s California made homelessness worse
By Joshua Rauh and Benjamin Jaros| New York Post
California has about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but about 45 percent of the country’s unsheltered homeless population, at about 116,000 individuals.
That is down from 124,000 in 2024, but up 7% from 2019, when Gavin Newsom took office as governor.
The total number of homeless people, including those in shelters, was over 187,000 statewide as of 2024.
