In his State of the City Address, Mayor Todd Gloria shared a clear-eyed assessment of San Diego’s challenges and detailed measurable progress on building more housing, reducing homelessness, keeping communities safe, and fixing infrastructure. He described actions taken to address the city’s long-standing $318 million structural budget deficit, including spending reductions, consolidating employees, restructuring leadership, eliminating departments, and cutting contracts and management positions. These steps closed $270 million of the deficit in a single year, putting San Diego on a better financial footing for the future and closer to structural balance.
Building more homes took center stage, with Mayor Gloria pointing to housing as one of the clearest examples of San Diego’s transformation and its ability to govern at scale. The city has averaged 8,700 new-home permits annually over the past three years, more than double its average over the previous two decades, and completed community plan updates have added capacity for 105,000 new homes. Through programs such as Bridge to Home and Affordable Housing Permit Now, thousands of affordable homes have been funded or fast-tracked, with construction activity visible across neighborhoods, and a recent UC Berkeley study cited San Diego’s housing reforms as a roadmap for jurisdictions statewide.
The Mayor reported a nearly 14% reduction in unsheltered homelessness and highlighted continued progress connecting people to housing, opening the city’s largest Safe Parking site, and addressing the complex challenges of severe mental illness and addiction through coordinated action. He also emphasized that San Diego remains one of the safest large cities in America, with crime declining for the third consecutive year, alongside efforts to restore dignity and safety in neighborhoods, advance legislation to combat trafficking, uphold state law on immigration enforcement, and fix long-neglected basics such as roads and streetlights.
Watch the Mayor’s full remarks here.
At a time when our rights, freedoms, and futures are under threat, Democratic Mayors are showing the nation what real leadership looks like.
