San Diego's second homes tax: Which neighborhoods voted for it - and against it

In the days following the June primary, as election results trickled in, backers of San Diego’s proposed second homes tax were buoyed by the shrinking lead of Measure A’s no votes. Maybe, they hoped, their intense face-to-face campaigning in the central city neighborhoods and university areas had paid off after all.

In the end, the final batch of election results certified last week by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters showed that the empty homes tax had indeed lost. While disheartening, supporters say encouraging signs have emerged, most notably the measure’s strong appeal in neighborhoods like North Park, Golden Hill, Normal Heights and City Heights that tend to be more diverse and populated with younger voters than many of the city’s other communities.

A Union-Tribune analysis of precinct-level data from the registrar reveals strong support for Measure A in mid- and central city communities, compared to a decided antipathy for the second homes tax in some of the city’s more upscale, northern suburbs.

Yet overall, there wasn’t a clear geographic pattern or income divide, given that a number of communities in the southernmost part of the city and also in southeastern San Diego cast no votes for Measure A, and several precincts in north San Diego supported the tax on non-primary homes.

In some areas, like North Park, Golden Hill, South Park, Hillcrest and Normal Heights, the level of support was especially robust, reaching 60% or more. At the opposite end of the spectrum were communities like Del Mar Heights, La Jolla, Loma Portal, Scripps Ranch, Rancho Bernardo and Encanto, that heavily opposed the tax, with as many as 65% of those voting casting no votes.

“Even though we didn’t win, these results give us a lot of hope because of who was voting and how they were voting, and the voters who were more representative of the city and its diversity were voting yes,” said Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, which helped oversee the Yes on A campaign. “And that for us is a clarion call to move boldly for big change, and it’s also an opportunity for us to take another stab at this, or something like this, in upcoming elections.”

Had the measure prevailed, it would have imposed an initial annual tax of $8,000 on second homes that are deemed to be unoccupied for more than 182 days in a single year. In subsequent years, the tax would rise to $10,000. For corporate-owned housing, there would have been an initial surcharge of $4,000 that would increase to $5,000 thereafter. The City Council’s hope was that the hefty tax would incentivize owners of many of the more than 5,000 non-primary homes without a full-time resident to either sell their properties or rent them out long term, thereby expanding the available housing supply.

While it may be premature to draw broad conclusions about why various precincts and neighborhoods voted the way they did, there are some noticeable dynamics that suggest that more renter-heavy neighborhoods favored Measure A than homeowner-dominant communities. Part of the messaging of the No on Measure A campaign, which outspent supporters by more than four to one, raised fears that homeowners could potentially be subject to the tax even if they didn’t own a second home or had one they used full-time.

“There is very likely a correlation between renter-heavy areas supporting Measure A and homeowner-heavy areas opposing it, but proving that requires precinct-level analysis that has not yet been fully published,” said Carl Luna, a visiting political science professor at the University of San Diego. “Based on the election returns and the geographic and demographic patterns of San Diego, the relationship appears strong, though not absolute.”

San Diego public advocate Shane Harris, who was the spokesperson for the No on A campaign, believes it’s too simplistic to suggest that the voting pattern reflected a clear divide between wealthy residents and lower-income communities. That’s borne out, he said, in communities like Encanto, a lower to middle-income area that voted strongly against Measure A.

“One of the more interesting takeaways is that this wasn't simply a story of wealthy neighborhoods versus working-class neighborhoods,” Harris said. “Some of San Diego's longtime Black and Latino communities, including Encanto, also voted strongly against Measure A. To me, that suggests the campaign resonated across racial and economic lines because the issue wasn't wealth - it was trust. Residents from very different backgrounds shared concerns about whether City Hall had earned the public's confidence to ask for another tax amid ongoing budget challenges.”

Still, it makes sense that Measure A would resonate with many of San Diego’s communities that have high proportions of renters, given that they tend to be more supportive of policies aimed at increasing housing supply or taxing vacant properties, while homeowners are more skeptical of new property-related taxes, Luna theorized.

Citywide, more than 53% of housing units are occupied by renters. But working against Measure A’s proponents is the propensity of homeowners to turn out for an election at higher rates than renters. That, in turn, would dilute the stronger support of an empty homes tax by voters who are renting, Luna noted.

“The hypothesis was that Measure A was advanced to try to make it easier to increase home affordability,” Luna said. “But in part, the way the real estate industry framed their Measure A anti-argument was that if you do this now, it will keep you from one day having a second house, and also once they’ve done it to the second houses, they’ll go after the more valuable houses like yours.”

While there are instances where votes favoring the second homes tax line up with renter-dominant communities, there are many precincts that reveal mixed results for some communities. For instance, some parts of Point Loma, Nestor and Encanto have significant percentages of renters, but they tended to vote no on Measure A. That pattern, however, did not show up in other precincts.

“People have a lot of thoughts about taxes in general and who should bear the costs of government,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “And so this is not perfectly predicted by homeownership. People tend to vote their individual economic interests, but the only people who really had a stake in this were, by and large, not residents of the city of San Diego.

“So this wasn’t so much a pocketbook issue, because people were being asked to tax someone else. And taxes on someone else are usually very politically popular.”

Except when the opposition hugely outspends the supporters, argues San Diego Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, whose office was behind getting Measure A on the ballot. The inability of the supporters to counteract messaging that he said sowed doubts among homeowners was a big factor in the measure’s loss, he argues.

At the same time, he does see some strong correlations at the neighborhood level that he thinks help explain the strong support in particular communities.

“There’s a lot of younger folks in these (Measure A-supportive) communities that have been shut out from being able to buy a home, and that was clear from the work we did ahead of it,” Elo-Rivera said. “You’ve got young people in San Diego who are well educated, doing what they were told that they were supposed to do in terms of getting a good job, but homeownership feels unattainable, and renting a home large enough to start a family for many of them also feels unattainable. So the idea of a home sitting empty during much of the year is just something that they find offensive.

“These are also very progressive parts of the city, and I think if you could go all the way back to 2016, I’d guess that a good number of these strong performing precincts supported Bernie (Sanders) over Hillary (Clinton), right? And probably Biden over Trump. These are also communities that supported Measure B (allowing San Diego to charge for residential trash collection) by a wide margin.”

Guerrero of Alliance San Diego points out that the Yes on A campaign deliberately targeted what she describes as “low-information” voters who were less likely to turn out without information about the ballot measure. That turned out to be a winning strategy in the central city neighborhoods ringing Balboa Park, but the campaign, she said, didn’t have the financial resources to do the same door-to-door campaigning in southeastern San Diego, as her nonprofit has done in previous elections.

Voter turnout, she said, was most notably an issue in areas like Encanto, where 29% of registered voters cast votes, she said, compared to North Park, at 47%.

“While there is not a straight-line correlation between turnout and Yes on A votes, there is a downward trend in support in areas where there was lower turnout, which we believe accounts for some of the difference in places like Chollas and Nestor versus North Park and South Park,” she said.

To get a true demographic profile of those who supported and opposed the empty homes tax would require deeper analysis that could include cross-referencing age, educational attainment and party affiliation, Luna believes. There are innumerable factors that likely influenced votes in a measure as emotional and divisive as Measure A, he said.

“In political science terms, Measure A appears to have produced a cross-pressure vote, meaning that homeownership mattered,” Luna said, “but ideology, race, class, and attitudes toward taxation also mattered enough that some renter-heavy precincts voted no and some homeowner-heavy precincts voted yes."

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published July 3, 2026 at 6:19 AM.