When seniors moved into the Paul Downey Senior Residence affordable housing complex in Clairemont, they say they were promised three things: affordability, parking, and safety. After a year of living there, the seniors say that everyone involved has failed them in all three areas, including renting taxpayer-subsidized housing to a registered sex offender and former elementary school teacher (500 feet from the nearest school).
The senior residences are part of a 404-unit apartment complex at Mount Etna Drive and Genesee Avenue that also includes multi-family units. Mayor Todd Gloria, San Diego Housing Commission, District 2 City Councilmember Jennifer Campbell, and County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe tout this project as a huge success and say it’s a model they’d like to replicate throughout San Diego.
SDHC’s role is financial and programmatic. It administers affordable housing funds, awards development loans, allocates rental housing vouchers, and may support multifamily housing revenue bond financing tied to specific developments, such as Mt. Etna.
A Resident Reverses Course
SDHC prominently features Paul Downey resident Georgia Hornback as a success story, front and center on its website and its YouTube channel. But Georgia has had a change of heart after her first year living at the apartments. In addition to a rent increase after seven months, she is gravely concerned about safety. The registered sex offender (who passed away last week) lived on her floor.
“I had more neighbors come to me asking, ‘What are we going to do [about living near a sex offender]?’ And I’m like, ‘Keep your doors locked and stay away from him,” said Georgia. “And just yesterday, three cop cars pulled up to the building, and they stayed a good 45 minutes.”
Promises Made, Promises Not Kept
Prior to completing their first year of residency, the seniors were notified on Thanksgiving Eve that their rent would increase by 8.8%, more than triple the Social Security cost-of-living allowance of 2.8% they receive annually. The assigned parking spaces they were promised never materialized because there simply aren’t enough parking spaces to accommodate all residents’ cars, so it’s first-come, first-served parking instead.
Explore Clairemont reached out to SDHC, Chelsea Investment, Hyder, ConAM, Mayor Todd Gloria, Jennifer Campbell, City Council President Joe LaCava, and Serving Seniors with a list of questions. SDHC responded to one of the questions, noting that the others fell under Chelsea’s purview. Chelsea, Hyder, and Serving Seniors issued a blanket statement that didn’t address any of the questions.
“SDHC is only responsible to monitor the affordable housing units at these developments for compliance with the affordability requirements set for each respective property. Property owners are allowed to increase rents as long as the units remain affordable at the specified Area Median Income (AMI) level for the unit and are within local and state maximums,” said Scott Marshall, Vice President of Communications at SDHC.
Related Public Records & Litigation
This reporting also reviewed campaign finance filings, labor enforcement records, and ongoing litigation connected to entities involved in the project. Read the supporting article below this one.
During the public planning and community outreach phases, developers and city officials explicitly pitched 465 parking spaces to address neighborhood concerns that nearby streets could not absorb the massive influx of cars. However, the legal framework shifted mid-stream when the San Diego City Council, under Mayor Kevin Faulconer, passed Transit Priority Area (TPA) parking reforms in March 2019, completely eliminating residential parking minimums for properties near major transit lines.
Following this policy change, records show that when Chelsea signed the January 2020 Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) with the County, the project’s garage obligations were tied to “applicable parking requirements,” alongside provisions allowing the developer to seek efficiencies in the overall footprint. Later, during the ministerial permitting phase, Chelsea used these 2019 TPA reforms and density-bonus waivers to quietly reduce the final garage count to 240 spaces for the 404-unit campus, establishing a final ratio of 0.59 spaces per apartment.
And security at the complex? It consists of a single camera at each entryway, but the seniors say they aren’t all operational and don’t monitor hallway activity. One resident experienced someone aggressively banging on her door in the very early morning hours, frightening her, and there was no video to pull since there are no cameras in the halls.
Senior Residents Hope for Power in Numbers
The residents say they have reached out to all parties involved about their concerns: Chelsea Investment Corporation (the developer), Hyder & Company (property management for the senior complex), ConAm (property management for the family complex), SDHC, and Serving Seniors (a nonprofit that provides meals and social services on-site). They say the response has been tepid at best. They tried to negotiate a rent increase to align with their cost-of-living allowance and were denied. Several residents have moved out because they can no longer afford to live there.
Fueled by frustration, many of the seniors banded together to form a coalition they call the Senior Residents Council, in hopes that, together, their voices will carry more weight. Bill Joyce and David Moody are the council’s chairmen and handle most of the communication with the aforementioned parties.
“We have about 12 to 15 members who come consistently [to meetings], and it’s always open to the public,” said Bill, as he pointed to the wellness center where Serving Seniors staff post up during daytime hours. “We used to have meetings in there. It’s listed as a common space in the lease, but we can’t be in there unless a staff member is in there.”
Now, he said, they meet on the rooftop deck, where there is no restroom, it’s windy, and there’s traffic noise. “A couple of times we had to meet in the hallway because it rained,” said Bill.
Bill and his wife, Barbara, moved into the senior complex last year, excited about the new venture.”We thought we were moving to our forever home,” Bill said.
But Bill explained that the excitement quickly wore off when he and Barbara began experiencing frequent hot-water outages, feeling unsafe walking across campus with cars speeding by, and struggling to find parking. For 173 senior units, Bill said there are 5 accessible parking spaces, and a total of 12 for the entire complex. While the number of accessible parking spaces does not violate any code, given the senior population, many of whom have physical disabilities, it is inadequate.
“The word I’m tired of hearing from the city and the property managers is ‘compliance,'” said Bill, as he made air quotes and noted the responses he receives are ones where they tell him, “We’re in compliance.”
This is where the lines between being moral and ethical versus being compliant blur. The rent hikes and reduced parking are legal, but communication was characterized by omission rather than transparency, leaving tenants and nearby residents in the dark about plans.
Shared Frustrations Countywide
This situation is not limited to the Mt. Etna campus, but appears systemic. At another Chelsea Investment affordable housing complex, St. Teresa of Calcutta Villa, residents filed and settled a lawsuit over continuously broken elevators. Residents of Chelsea’s Mesa Verde property in San Carlos, managed by ConAm, have created a petition with complaints about safety, pests, and maintenance. Neighbors of Carlsbad’s Windsor Pointe project have threatened legal action over safety concerns they say have been ignored.
Seniors from other Chelsea projects, such as Little Italy’s Kettner Crossing, have also formed councils to address concerns they say aren’t being heard.
On and Off-Site Violations
Areas that do not appear to be in compliance but rather in violation of code include speeding, daily parking violations on campus and on residential side streets, and water runoff.
Residents in nearby homes are seeing spillover in front of their homes, with cars parking daily in front of a fire hydrant, blocking driveways, parking in red zones, and parking well beyond the curb. There have also been regular incidents of stormwater runoff from the campus, traveling thousands of feet through neighborhood streets. When hundreds of residents publicly opposed this project, parking and security were major concerns that are now bearing out.
A nearby neighbor, who did not want to be named, stated, “Ultimately, we are concerned about the illegal parking that people are doing along Mount Etna and Mount Castle. Pedestrians and drivers are unable to see oncoming traffic, and fire hydrants are being blocked. There are many neighbors who are being impacted by this.”
Regulatory Background and Density Changes
Billed as San Diego’s largest multigenerational affordable housing development, the Mt. Etna project grew significantly from its initial scope. Following a 2018 County Request for Proposals for the 4.09-acre former Crime Lab property, initial community discussions centered on a 150 to 200-unit development.
After Chelsea Investment Corporation was selected as the master developer, initial planning submissions used density bonuses to request up to 454 units, then reduced the request to 404. This final scale was approved by City Council despite a 14-1 vote against the density by the Clairemont Mesa Community Planning Group and hundreds of public comments opposing it, raising security and parking concerns. Fewer than five residents supported the project in public comments.
The project scope called for rezoning the property from commercial mixed-use with roughly 116 units to a City Council-approved Community Plan Amendment, which shifted the site’s baseline residential density from 28.36 to 98.78 dwelling units per acre (du/ac). Once this discretionary rezone cleared, subsequent project phases used local and state affordable housing streamlining policies. This allowed final building and design permits to be issued by ministerial action, bypassing additional public hearings or discretionary votes.
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Public Safety Concerns
First Responder Challenges
Under California Fire Code Section 505.1 and San Diego Fire-Rescue Fire and Hazard Prevention Services (FHPS) Policy P-00-6, multi-family structures are required to display contrasting numerical street addresses visible from the fronting roadway to facilitate emergency vehicle dispatch. Management documents indicate that a single perimeter directory monument sign satisfies campus-wide compliance guidelines.
However, residents say addresses are not clearly visible on all buildings, and there have been numerous occasions when San Diego Fire-Rescue has been unable to locate their buildings. To add to the confusion, the senior residences have a Mt. Etna address, but their units are not accessible from Mt. Etna Drive. They are accessible only from Genesee Avenue. The Senior Residents Council requested more numbers six months ago.
Ill-Equipped for a Fire Emergency
A San Diego firefighter who spoke off the record said San Diego Fire is ill-equipped to handle a blaze if it breaks out at the Mt. Etna campus. He pointed out a 2010 audit by Citygate Associates that stated San Diego needed nearly 29 new fire stations. It has built only seven. And the population has grown by 100,000 since that report.
The firefighter said that cities comparable in size to Clairemont, such as Newport Beach and Santa Barbara, have eight fire stations. Clairemont has three, with only one additional east Clairemont station proposed in the City Council’s recently passed updated Clairemont Community Plan.
He also said firefighters are exhausted and stretched thin, answering up to 20 emergency calls per shift, up from 6-8.
Policy Outcomes vs. Lived Experiences
For city leaders and housing advocates, these projects represent a successful deployment of density tools to address a regional housing shortage. But for the residents managing restricted parking ratios, no on-site security, and a lack of building signage, the focus on statutory compliance has created a living environment that stands in sharp contrast to the success story presented to the public.
The Senior Residents Council, in coordination with San Diego United Communities, will hold a press conference in front of the complex located at 5257 Mt. Etna Drive, on Saturday, May 23, 2026 at 10 am. They are asking members of the community to join and support.
Article well written. We lived in Clairemont for several years and still have friends there, so we go there frequently. The vicinity of Balboa and Genesee is a nightmare. Parking for the medical offices is also impacted. For our City government to do this to Seniors is disgraceful! I hope we can vote them out. I’m also glad I found out about this before donating more money to Serving Seniors
It truly is very disturbing. I hope this article will shine some daylight on the issue.
Thank you Ms. kropf, hopefully voters, boycotts, and protests change this abuse soon…. haven’t in my 23 years here!🤔😔
Please continue to support Serving Seniors as it is the component that provides a daily hot meal and bagged breakfast free or for a small donation to the seniors who live there and also seniors in the community. It is not part of the problem; it is just located there. I have a friend who lives in the neighborhood and her only source of food now is through this program and some food stamps. Please continue to support this vital program.
This is the tough part, because they do provide much needed food and services, but they have also been causing some of the friction with the seniors at the complex.I heard this firsthand from the residents. It’s a tricky situation.
But be aware, they are contractors, and not-for-profit…getting lots of tax dollars to do their work. Just being honest. But at same time many ARE being served, there are some very good workers at MtEtna Serving Seniors, especially food prep & services workers, Bingo Workers, UCSD program operators, and secretarial staff.
Thank you to Explore Clairemont and Tanja for highlighting this important issue.
We are seeing massive changes pushed onto our neighborhoods in the name of “affordability,” yet here we have seniors living in deed-restricted affordable housing still being priced out of the very solution the state and city continue to sell us.
That should concern all of us.
This is a real example of why we are not doing enough. Housing policy cannot just look good on paper. It has to work for the people actually living there.
We need real affordability. We need accountability. And we need rent relief for seniors who helped build these communities and deserve stability and dignity.
Thank you again for bringing awareness to what’s happening in Clairemont and nearby neighborhoods. People deserve to be heard.
Thank you for making this issue a priority, as well. Hopefully we will be too big together for them to ignore all of us.
Good elections & recalls can work, but better representatives could easily make it better! Vote early, and long. Stat involved, call-out & document BAD & dangerous behaviors!!
Bravo – extensive, detailed reporting. Such living conditions are unacceptable. Additionally, residents from the complex are also using the medical building lot across Mt. Etna, usually making parking for those patrons unavailable.
Thank you Gary. This one took a ridiculous amount of research, and it’s a deep rabbit hole that I’ve only scratched the surface of with this article. I was actually going to pop into the medical offices to ask them if residents were parking there, but I didn’t get the time. I assumed they were, as well as the Aldi lot. Hopefully you can make it Saturday at 10 am!
Note there is no easy way to access other Retail & Medical establishments from Senior & Campus property. Walking not easy for Seniors/elders & handicap/other blessed.
The seniors on mt Edna housing should get the media involved all channel’s
At the press conference on Saturday in front of the building, they are expecting media to show. Hopefully you’ll make it out, too! 10 am at the Paul Downey Residence by Aldi.
The lack of parking and fire safety for these units is criminal. I don’t understand why there aren’t common sense laws in place. Citing “compliance” is simply not an answer.
Adding to the storm water drainage issue, I personally have followed the storm water drain off from the apartment complex and will you believe that it leaves on Mt Etna, travels West, turns left onto Mt Everest, travels that entire huge block, then turns right on Mt Casas until it finally ends up in the drain at the corner of Mt Culebra near Mt Durban. WHAT?!! How can one drain support ALL of that extra water?
I was just out walking my dog and the water is running again. I’ve put in a report to the city’s stormwater compliance officer and am emailing him right now with the latest video. I saw the same exact travel route you mention. It happens at least once a week.
Excellent article. Sad, also sadly not surprising with the rapid growth & lack of oversight. Thank you for bringing it to light.
Happy to bring it to light. It needs to be known.
The date for the press conference is confusing. Saturday, May 23rd or Friday, May 22nd?
It’s the 23rd! Thank you for pointing that out. Typo.
Hi Tanja,
Margaret Verissimo from San Diego United Communities let me know of your protest and I will put it out to my Email Group and see if we can get some folks to show up and help with the protest.
Thank you so much for publishing this information to get it out to the public and once again SHAME on our City Leaders, San Diego Housing Commission and the Development & Management Companies they are letting get away with abusing our seniors
Thank you. Hopefully we’ll see you there.
Has been happening for decades since I ran for D-3 in 1999, when infrastructure deficit was only $480 Million dollars for City of San Diego…reports by Save Our NTC(wanting Veteran Housing & more public use of former Navy Training base).
I’ve been following Chelsea Developments for over 20 years since I used to frequent a small farming community called Holtville in Imperial County East of El Centro, CA. Their Senior Housing project in the early 2000’s caused the town to go in debt for $10’s of Millions! And few Senoirs were being housed and many units were out of compliance of policies & rules for affordable Senior Housing units! Which were highly needed as Mobile home/Trailer parks were closing down due to land value changes & more development. Yes, major development in a back-country small farming town/region in IMPERIAL County! Chelsea harassed Holtville to pay off financing with a high interest rate, that was much higher than typical return on investment funds. Interest generally were low, but here with Senior Affordable Housing. And we’ve seen this across San Diego proper and SD County for years now too! County likes property tax revenues, but constituents flip the bill with everything else raising prices to compensate for High Taxes/expenses, and for ever increase lease rates on commercial property, property where we buy things at…equaling a never ending upward tornado of inflation!🌪️🌀…plus the run around to even get into the “Senior & Affordable” units. The SDHC Section 8 list(NOW CLOSED) has over a 18 year wait time to be even considered for a unit! Even though most qualified for the much needed assistance for decades! Over 300+ unhoused people died on SD County St.s last year, and year previous. While the Statistics state more & more percentage on unhoused are Seniors, Handicapped & Veterans even! While Billion dollar profiteering Real Estate holders & developers make event higher percentages of profits, and more & more tax credits and way to avoid paying taxes need to fund community parks, trees, sidewalks, shared public parking, or schools//fire/police stations!
PS Clairemont plan is 10,000 new units, just like Mission Valley flood zone area to do near the same! 40,000+ new residents in a dense and already infrastructure deficit neighborhoods!!!
You deserve better, you’ve worked & paid your taxes, but Big biz/& developers are shifting tax burden to constituents & current residents of these area, small, large & HUGE community & municipalities.
Don’t let them harm your loved ones, Elders, and/or neighbors…
Please.🙏🏼
Unfortunately SD is just interested in investors and $$$$ Nothing is about the wellbeing of its citizens specifically in many underserved areas of SD. Buildings keep going up with no parking, high rentals, many are empty and the spaces for low income. Housing are super limited. They are also building micro units. They call it housing but it’s nothing but tiny little kitchen were not two people can even walk around let alone a family. Many don’t even qualify for Studio size.