Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera joined Politically Speaking to explain why the San Diego City Council approved a slew of recent rate hikes and fee increases, and how he hopes to ease the burden on San Diegans by placing more financial onus on tourists and corporations.
A transcript of the full interview is below.
Safchik: Let’s start. Big picture. Why are these rate hikes and increases necessary?
Elo-Rivera: Well, before I start there, I want to start by saying I understand why people are mad. Nobody wants to or likes paying more for things. They certainly don’t like paying for things that they haven’t paid for in the past. The public is pissed. And to be totally honest, I’m pretty pissed alongside them as well. We’re here because things were not paid for in the past, and we are paying the bills of bad decisions and irresponsible leadership of previous years. And that’s not an excuse. But I want to make sure that San Diego becomes a city that it can and should be. That the people here see a future for themselves. And not just any future, good future. I want my son, who’s growing up here and playing in our parks and in our beaches, to believe that he’ll be able to do that with his friends and with his kids when he grows up. And, obviously, affordability is key in that, but it also means having a city that functions. It’s not crumbling under our feet. It has the services that folks want: the libraries, the public safety workers that we need. And those things do require resourcing.
Safchik: You bring up a good point, and it’s something I’ve thought a lot about this year. Did you feel caught between a rock and a hard place when the options were either to slash library and parks and rec hours, or to start charging San Diegans for some things that have been historically free?
Elo-Rivera: Yes, but I also was frustrated because we could actually see this coming a couple of years ago. And so that’s why my advocacy has been so consistently about charging non-residents. By failing to make non-residents and the most profitable corporations in San Diego pay their fair share, the burden is being felt by everyday San Diegans. That’s not fair. Everyone should be mad about that. And because we didn’t do that, because it wasn’t done for years and decades, and we pretended like infrastructure doesn’t cost anything, and these things could continue to be kicked down the road, it came to a head this last budget cycle. And when we had thousands of people show up and say, ‘Keep our libraries open. Keep our rec centers open. Don’t limit the hours at our parks.’ This is how we responded. And again, I’m super frustrated because I do think that if we would have taken action earlier and focused on revenue from non-residents, we wouldn’t be here today asking for residents to pay more. Which again, I’m very, very frustrated alongside of them that we’re asking them to do.
Safchik: Yeah. A large part of your platform as of late has been about asking tourists to pay their fair share. But a lot of these fees and increases impact the residents of the city. How do you justify that?
Elo-Rivera: Well, there’s two – I don’t want to focus on resident fees. I don’t want them to be paying more. That’s why I want to start with non-residents. And again, it’s not just tourists. It’s also the very powerful corporations who make so much money off of San Diego and pull money out of San Diego. It’s asking them to pay their fair share as well. We’ve got, you know, a corporation like Airbnb that is certainly driving up housing costs. That is, you know, part of the reason why housing is so expensive here in San Diego. They’re making a lot of money, pulling money out of San Diego. We’d like them to pay their fair share. So I think by having powerful corporations pay their fair share, by having tourists who are here on vacation pay their fair share, we can have a better city for everyone and not do it on the backs of everyday San Diegans.
Safchik: But the reality right now is the trash fee, the water rate increases, parking at Balboa. All of that is on the backs of San Diegans. So what do you say to them?
Elo-Rivera: I say that I’m frustrated right alongside them. But what I don’t want to do is lie to them. And if I were to say that, you know, we can have the things that folks are asking us for but not pay for them. I know that that’s wrong. I know that that’s dishonest. The easiest thing in politics is to say, ‘Yes, you can have everything you want, and you won’t have to pay for it.’ And the biggest scandal in the city’s history is based on that exact lie. That’s the big lie of San Diego, that it doesn’t cost money to provide a great city, that we can have big events here, that we can be a place that tourists come, and then it’s not going to cost anything. So it’s going to have to be paid for. But who are we going to ask to pay for it? That’s the question. And I am adamant that it should be powerful corporations who extract wealth from our community, and it should be tourists before it should be San Diegans. And the sooner that we stop allowing the big corporations to dominate the conversation, and we stop catering to folks who are aiming to serve tourists before residents, it’s going to continue to fall on residents one way, one way or another. And that will either be through increased fees, which I do not want, or reduce services or lesser infrastructure. And that’s not right. So there is a choice to be made here. There’s a path to pick, and I want to pick the one where residents have more and it’s a better city. And we do that by asking those with so much to just simply pay their fair share.
Safchik: Right now, the reality is you have voted in favor of these rate hikes and fees. What work is happening behind the scenes to deal with these corporations and lower the cost of living that way?
Elo-Rivera: Yeah. So I mean, again, for three years we’ve been advocating for non-residents to begin paying their fair share. And by doing that, we would have addressed our revenue issues earlier on, and that would have been a better situation last budget cycle. So part of it, this is not a new issue. We’ve seen this train coming down the tracks, and we’ve been advocating, and there was not movement to address that. In terms of making corporations more accountable, I think we’ve done a lot of work this year to address that. We banned the practice of large corporate landlords using technology to, to, to, to gouge renters and fix rent prices. We’ve made sure that corporations are not using city utilities to profit off renters like they were before. We’ve made sure that our tourism industry is actually paying their workers a fair wage. Every tourism worker is going to get a raise next year because of our work. So we’re trying to address this. We’re trying to take this head on. We’re not shying away from any fight. We have a proposal right now to tax vacation homes and short-term vacation rentals, again, because people who own four or five or six homes, people who are renting out homes and treating them like hotels instead of the houses that they should be for San Diegans, they need to be paying their fair share and held accountable. So we’re fighting that fight. We will not stop fighting that fight.
Safchik: Is it David and Goliath?
Elo-Rivera: Well, yes and no. There are more of us. There are more ordinary people. There are way more people here in San Diego, who are working hard and trying to get by. I cannot stress this enough. San Diegans are underrated in how hard of working people we are. People who are working, not just one job hard, but sometimes two or three. I just left a picket line where nurses are standing out there on a holiday week, begging their employer to pay them enough to keep a roof over their head and food on their table. That’s not right. And at the same time, their CEO is taking home bonuses. So, there’s way more nurses, there’s way more everyday workers than there are CEOs. The question is, and this is a local question and it’s a national question, at a certain point in time, are we going to say enough is enough? It’s time for those with the most to pay their fair share. We’re not going to grow this pie just so the people who have the most can eat more and more and more. The whole idea of growing the pie is so that all of us can eat enough. And right now, that’s not happening.
Safchik: Is all of that work enough to offset what you’re asking of San Diego residents right now?
Elo-Rivera: Well, we have to deliver more. I mean, that part’s obvious, right? So what we cannot do is ask people to pay more than they’ve paid, to pay for things that they haven’t paid for, for and for them to see the same results. That’s unacceptable. I’ve said that repeatedly. There needs to be improvements in service that needs to be improved in the physical infrastructure that they see. All of that should be demanded and expected, and the city needs to deliver on it. What I want to be honest about, though, is that that will not happen without resourcing. And I think that’s the lie that’s been told, is that, ‘Oh, you know, we can just tighten our belt and tighten and tighten and tighten and things will somehow get better.’ All that does is kick the can down the road. We’re still paying millions and millions of dollars for politicians of the past, feeding that lie to San Diegans in previous years.
Safchik: On that note, Balboa Park parking is expected to generate a lot less than originally projected this year at least. But San Diegans are still being asked to pay and then could see city services slashed anyhow. What do you say to them?
Elo-Rivera: Well, at the park, because those fees have to stay in the park. So again, I recognize, I’m frustrated alongside them. My preference was non-residents only pay the fees. Part of the reason why residents are paying is other folks wanted to provide discounts to people who weren’t residents, right.
Safchik: When we say non-residents, we’re talking about our neighbors from La Mesa and National City, though, right?
Elo-Rivera: We’re talking about everyone. So, I know that there are regional parks here in the county of San Diego. There are beaches in other parts of the county of San Diego that ask San Diego residents to pay a non-resident fee. I think it’s only fair for us to make sure we’re adequately resourced. Look, San Diego residents are subsidizing the play and the profit of way too many people. And they’re doing that at an increased cost to themselves, and they’re not seeing the results that they deserve. So again, this is why I keep talking about asking non-residents and the most profitable corporations to pay their fair share. And by doing so, it’s much less likely that the city comes running to residents to ask, you know, for an increase in fees or taxes. The vacation home tax that we’re proposing, this needs to be said, 99% of San Diegans would not pay that tax. That’s fair revenue for the city of San Diego. That’s a fair, a fair plan. It’s not asking everyday people to dig even deeper into the pockets and find what they don’t have. It’s asking those with the most, the 1% of San Diegans who own multiple homes and are choosing to use those not as permanent homes and or permanent as long-term rental properties, but instead as de facto hotels. The people who live there, the Texas billionaire who owns a vacation home in San Diego, asking them to pay their fair share. We can do it that way. But we have to stop buckling to the corporate pressure and demand that those folks pay their fair share.
Safchik: Why wasn’t that explored before parking increases?
Elo-Rivera: We’re exploring it now. We’re working on it right now.
Safchik: Now, we’re also looking ahead, shifting to possibly charging for parking at the beaches and bays. Do you expect city residents to be on the hook for that?
Elo-Rivera: Absolutely not. That’s a nonstarter for me.
Safchik: You would not proceed with it?
Elo-Rivera: I will not support San Diego residents paying for parking at the beaches and the bays. And apparently, I wasn’t explicit about it, explicit enough about it with Balboa Park when that conversation started. So now knowing that, we need to be 100% clear, that is a a resource for San Diegans. They absolutely should not be paying to park at the beaches and bays. That’s a nonstarter.
Safchik: Where do these increases end?
Elo-Rivera: Well, the increases on residents should end as quickly as possible. The increases in revenue. Again, this is the big part that I want to avoid us falling in the traps of the past. The city needs to be better resourced. If we are not adequately resourced, residents pay the price. So I want to focus on non-residents and, most especially, the most powerful and wealthy corporations, most powerful and wealthy individuals who have run this city for way too long to make them pay their fair share, so the city is adequately resourced. For 20 plus years, every independent analyst who’s looked at our budget from a non-ideological perspective isn’t trying to score political points, and has said the city has a resource problem. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Option one, ignore it and pay the price down the road. Option two is to have residents bear the burden. I don’t want that. Option three is to make those with the most pay their fair share. This is the most beautiful city in this country. All of us have gone somewhere at some point in time and told someone we live in San Diego and had that amazing response that people give. Or they say, ‘I love San Diego. I wish I could live there.’ But how’s that working for San Diegans? It’s time for tourists to pay the sunshine tax. It’s time for corporations, wealthy corporations to pay their fair share. And it’s time to stop asking everyday San Diegans to subsidize profit and subsidize vacations for other people.
Safchik: But right now, we seem really stuck on option number two, right? That has been the storyline this year. So how do you ensure San Diegans that this isn’t lip service?
Elo-Rivera: I think I’ve been 100% clear on this, right? And what I’m trying to do is have this honest conversation, and I will always and have done this with community members that I’ve known for many years and worked in the community with, present them the options and see what they prefer. And I understand the pushback again. Joey, I completely understand it. I think this next budget cycle, we’re going to have a really important conversation with San Diego residents about where we’re at with the budget and what keeping certain services in place and maintaining certain programs, what that will actually cost and where that money can possibly come from. I’m going to continue to advocate that it comes from powerful corporations and wealthy individuals who own multiple homes and don’t live in the city of San Diego. There’s significant resources there. We could close our budget gap by passing that tax. Or, we can continue to pretend like we can have it all and it not be paid for. I’m not going to do that because it will, it will eventually be paid by San Diegans, whether that’s today or tomorrow. And I’m not okay with that. It’s dishonest. It’s not real. So let’s make sure the city’s adequately resourced. There’s no reason why a city this beautiful with this many people of, who attract visitors from across the country, who attract investment from across the country, that everyday San Diegans should be struggling to get by and be asked to bear the burden while they continue to skate by.
Safchik: You’ve alluded to this throughout this conversation, but it’s no secret that this city council was dealt a really difficult financial hand. Are you confident that you all will be able to right the ship?
Elo-Rivera: I think we can. I think the question is, will we be willing to look those powerful interests in the eyes and say, ‘Enough is enough. You’ve rode the coattails of San Diego for too long. It’s time for you to pay your fair share.’
Safchik: So the fact that you have voted in favor of some of these increases that impact residents, do you feel like you’ve been backed into a corner?
Elo-Rivera: I do, yeah. And I think that the question is, is, knowing that we can only maintain those services and the programs with, with funding. Look, I’m going to be honest, Joey. I think that if, I think that all of our colleagues know the consequences of not having passed some of the revenue increases that have come, some of the fee increases. We need five, typically, for these things to pass. And, I’m sure there’s some folks who are breathing easier knowing the revenue is there because of the conversations that we would have had to have if –
Safchik: You’re saying folks who voted against.
Elo-Rivera: I think so, I think that’s the I think that’s fair to assume. I haven’t seen an alternative proposed for and that’s the thing. Like, I’m all for ideas, right? We’re proposing one that’s going to be paid by less than 1% of San Diegans, by powerful corporations and wealthy folks from out of state who own multiple properties. If other folks have other ideas, by all means, we welcome those. But I think we do need to be more creative about thinking about revenue ideas that are not borne on the backs of San Diego. What I’m not OK with, though, is approving a budget, saying that we’re going to pay for certain things and then not putting the revenue there to pay for it, because what we’d do instead is either pull the plug on those programs overnight or have an unpaid bill, and that’s not OK for the city to do.
Safchik: What about housing costs? What work is happening to lower the cost of housing? I feel like that’s maybe gotten lost in the noise a little bit.
Elo-Rivera: Well, I think there’s a few different ways that we tackle that. It’s the top priority of our office. You cannot see a future in this city if you do not believe you’ll be able to afford to live here.
Safchik: Because maybe paying 150 bucks a year to park at Balboa isn’t that big a deal if rent isn’t such a strain every month?
Elo-Rivera: I mean, I think in this economy, paying to park at Balboa Park is always a big deal. Paying for anything is a big deal, and we don’t want to diminish that at all. What we’ve done is attempt to tackle this from a few of different directions. Most immediately is with tenant protections. We passed tenant protections that made it more difficult for landlords to kick people out of their homes when they’ve done nothing wrong. The second thing we did this year was pass a ban on the use of AI technology to rig rental prices. That was happening across the country. There’s already been some settlements. We banned the practice. Seven to 8% is the estimated artificial inflation that was occurring. That’s hundreds of dollars per year that some San Diegans were paying because the biggest corporate landlords in the country were partnering with Big Tech to rig rental prices. We banned that in San Diego. We were one of the first cities in the country to do that. We’ve also instituted a ban on the use, on landlords profiting off city utilities, which was something that was happening. So you get a water bill, for, for, your landlord gets a water bill for 50 bucks for the apartment you’re renting, charges you $75. That was allowed to happen in the past. We banned that from happening. And then we’ve also put forward a proposal to ban junk fees. Because we know that, again, many renters now are seeing new fees that they’ve never seen before. And it was a way to work around the limits on how much your rent can be increased. So we’re tackling this head on. We’ll not stop until we see housing costs either come down or flatten. There’s a longer term effort by making sure there’s enough supply. But I’m not going to. I can’t in good conscience ask you or other folks I know who are working here in San Diego so hard to wait five, 10 years for, for, housing costs to flatten or come down. That’s not fair to you. We have to do things in the immediate. It’s a crisis. We should act like it. So that’s why we’re taking on the corporate greed that’s artificially inflating costs. And we will not stop doing that until San Diegans have a fair shot to keep a roof over their head.
Safchik: Are you worried there’s going to be a political cost to some of these decisions until living here truly gets cheaper?
Elo-Rivera: I don’t worry about that. I worry that it’s the impact that it’s had on regular, everyday people. My job is to help govern the city and to lead the city into a better place. I truly, truly love this place. I’m raising my son here. I want him and his friends to see a future for themselves here. I want the people who I’ve grown to love here in San Diego to see a future for themselves here. And they cannot do that if they do not believe that they will be able to afford to live here. So that’s my number one priority. I want this to be a great city, everything that it can and should be. But I don’t want to pretend like everything is OK. Like we don’t know that infrastructure is crumbling, that we don’t know that there’s too many streetlights that are out, that we don’t know that we’ve continuously put library hours on the chopping block because we do know those things, and we know why we’re doing that. So let’s address the problem. Let’s address it head on. There’s multiple ways to do that. My preference is we tackle corporate greed. We leverage San Diego’s position as a global tourism destination to the benefit of its residents, not just those who profit off the tourism industry. And this becomes the city that it can and should be. So that’s where my focus is, making San Diego everything that can and should be. We don’t make decisions based on political impacts of the moment. We make decisions based on what the city needs to be the city that it should be.
Safchik: Let’s put a button on that conversation for now, and let’s talk about immigration. Are you satisfied with what the city has been able to do on that front, within its legal bounds?
Elo-Rivera: Not fully satisfied, but I think we’re doing some of what we can. Passing the due process and safety ordinance was an important piece. But again, that wasn’t just about immigration. That was about ensuring that all of our rights, whether you are a person who is, is, is seeking health care here in San Diego, whether you’re a reporter who’s trying to just tell the truth about what’s happening out in the world, whether you’re someone who goes to a protest or whether you’re an immigrant, that your your due process rights are adhered to in San Diego, in partnership with other cities from across the region, has has, you know, put policies forward to, to do just that. We continue to really lean into the community side of the work, to work with our community partners to make sure that we are communicating with one another, that we’re taking care of each other. We start this conversation about immigration from a place of wanting to protect our communities because we love our community. We love our family members, and we want to protect them. So what can we do to do that? And that doesn’t mean that, that means we need to use all the tools at our disposal. Some of those are legislative, some of those are budgetary. But more than anything, it’s about taking care of one another. And we’re working really hard with community partners to do that. But people need to know that there’s still some very bad things happening here in San Diego. We’ve seen upticks in the presence of ICE and Border Patrol, and then we’ve seen more and more people who are literally just trying to follow the process and show up for their show up for the appointments that they have, have the rug pulled out from under them and their families dismantled, and have done nothing wrong. And all of this while the law enforcement, the federal law enforcement who is making those arrests and tracking down just good, honest people who are important members of our community are doing that instead of tracking down child predators and people who are committing tax fraud. I think it’s a very twisted and and very, very, very enraging, way for our federal leaders to go about things. And San Diego needs to do everything we can to take care of folks.
Safchik: What more do you feel like you can do from your perch again?
Elo-Rivera: There will always be more that I can do in the community, and we’re going to continue to lean in on that side. We’re going to see how, the due process and safety ordinance, when it once it goes into effect and is being implemented, what impacts it’s having. And then we’re always open to ideas about ways for the city to do more to take care of folks. The reality is that immigrants are on the front lines because they have the least rights and they’re the most vulnerable. But almost always, what is being done to immigrants is an opportunity for the federal regime to create a template for what they can do, the rest of us, and we all need to keep that in mind. It doesn’t matter if everyone in your family has citizenship. It doesn’t matter if they came here on the Mayflower. Their rights are in danger. If anyone’s rights are in danger. And so, we’ll continue to hear from folks about what they need from us. We’re building a community. We’re supporting the community. We’re helping organize food drives. We’re showing up to food drives because there’s an economic impact when people are pulled out of their family. You’ve got folks who are working multiple jobs, sometimes the sole breadwinner or one of the primary winners for families. And now we have San Diego children who don’t have that income in their families. So, again, we come at this from a place of wanting to take care of one another. That means making sure everyone’s needs are met in all ways. That means their food needs are met, their health care needs are met, their emotional needs are met. Joe, you might have seen some of the conversation at council when we passed the due process and said the ordinance. The most heart wrenching part of that entire day was when young people were coming in and talking about the fear that they’re living with on a day to day basis. These are American citizens, American citizen children, who attend our schools, who are living in constant fear because they don’t know if they’re gonna come home to their parents. And so, as a community, we just have to really stick together.
Safchik: Is there anything else you want to mention on that front for you here?
Elo-Rivera: No, I think, look, just we just have to not become numb to this. We have to not become numb. That every day, Monday through Friday at the federal courthouse. Injustices are occurring that would make anyone who cares about the Constitution, regardless of party affiliation, enraged. That would make anyone with a heart make their heartbreak. Families dismantled just like that. And so people just don’t forget that that’s happening, right? Because there’s not going to be coverage of it every day. And I know actually, to your credit, NBC’s credit, you guys have done a good job of keeping an eye on this. But at this happening every single day, I’m on a text thread with some faith leaders who are showing up there on a daily basis, and every single day they end the text thread with, please pray for the families and they, they share how many families have been, were detained that day. And, it’s way too many.
Safchik: The last time you were here, which was in the spring, just as these enforcement operations were really ramping up, do you feel like the stakes are still as high now as they were almost six months ago?
Elo-Rivera: Yeah. They’re even. They’re even higher. As the president continues to fail to deliver on making life more affordable for San Diego and as he arbitrarily imposes tariffs, that makes all of our lives more expensive. As he’s failing, he’s going to become more desperate and become more and more desperate. He’s going to become more erratic. So we know, they’ve said what they want to do. They’ve spelled it out that none of this is a surprise. That’s why I’ve responded. Not just with what we’re seeing now, but with legislative ideas to address what they say they want to do in the future. They want to be able to prosecute political dissidents. They want to be able to prosecute women from other states who come to California for health care. They want to be able to prosecute members of our LGBT community who don’t abide by the very, very outdated way of thinking about the world that the Trump regime applies to things. So we’re trying to be forward looking and very clear eyed. And this is not a time for us to pretend like keeping our head low is going to keep any of us safe. We have to stand up tall to stick our chest out, and we have to fight fire with fire. And, because I love my community. Because I love the folks, who I represent. I will not stop fighting for them. And, we need as many people in that fight as possible. And fighting looks at a lot of different things. It literally looks like showing up to a food drive. It means, contributing. When folks are supporting a family who’s been impacted by an unfair deportation, all of us have a way of showing up. We’re going to light the Kensington Christmas tree this week. It’s one of my favorite traditions in the district. And, in the past, we’ve had, you know, hundreds of families show up to light this Christmas tree. And it’s a really beautiful event. And this year we’ve added a component of having folks, we ask people to bring canned food and diapers and groceries because every opportunity, every time we come together, there’s an opportunity to do good, to improve people’s lives. And we’re trying to lean into that as much as possible so we can have fun. We can do things together. We can build community, and we can make sure that we’re doing things to not forget about those who are worse off than us.
Safchik: Before I let you go, I know your office sponsored and passed a lot of legislation this year. What are you most proud of?
Elo-Rivera: That’s a really good question. I think what I’m proud of is what we’ve done in totality. It’s making sure that every policy that we’ve passed this year, it’s been putting San Diegans first. It’s trying to make San Diego work better for San Diego. And it’s been, with a willingness to take on corporate greed again, whether that was, banning that use of AI technology to artificially, artificially inflate rents, whether it was, making sure that our, our tourism workers earn a decent wage. The junk feed ban that we put forward, all of that are ways to try to make San Diego work better for everyday people and to be willing to take on the powerful corporate interests that are making life so expensive for so many of us. And I can understand the frustrations here at the local level, but we are operating within a system that is extracting enormous wealth from so many people right now. We’re fighting that fight. That’s what I’m proud of, that we showed up for the fight that we weren’t deterred, but we’ve never backed down and we won’t back down.
Safchik: Councilmember, thank you, as always, for your candor.
Elo-Rivera: Thank you.
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