For the past several years the City of Encinitas has struggled to pass a formal housing element plan that would put the city in compliance with state law that mandates a certain number of affordable housing units. The city spent over a year and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in drafting a housing element plan called Measure T that was defeated in 2016. During the development of that plan a city owned vacant parcel of land along Quail Gardens Drive was closely investigated for inclusion on the Measure T plan. It was referred to at the time as L-7.

The HOA is expressly prohibited from engaging in any political activities and/or contributions that involve anything outside of the physical bounds of the community. This is spelled out in our CC&R’s under Article 4.5.3. This however does not prevent individual homeowners from forming their own groups or committees to take certain actions or positions on matters outside of Encinitas Ranch proper.

The state is still requiring that the City of Encinitas pass a formal housing plan that includes affordable housing. The city has formed a Housing Element Task Force and they provide regular updates to the city council. At last week’s city council meeting on November 8th (they are normally held every Wednesday night at 6 PM in City Hall) we learned that the city is current conducting an inventory of all potential sites in Encinitas for housing units. Their current goal is to identify and gain agreement from the residents of Encinitas in the fall of 2018. Below is a link that will take you to the City of Encinitas web site and the agenda for the November 8th meeting. Agenda item 10a is related to the Housing Element Task Force. You may want to read and/or watch the discussion.

http://encinitas.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=7&clip_id=1623

If you are interested in staying current on activities related to this work you might consider reading several free local publications. Below are links to the Coast News and the Encinitas Advocate. Both do a very good job of reporting on local activities such as this and can be found on many streets and in stores in the city.

Coast News: http://www.thecoastnews.com/city-encinitas/

Encinitas Advocate: http://www.delmartimes.net/encinitas-advocate/

There is an expectation that the city will finalize a list of sites for such housing in the next six months and the Quail Gardens Drive parcel is still being carefully considered.