For generations, San Diego State University students have lived in Pacific Beach and around Mission Bay, taking advantage of the beautiful weather, the surf and laid-back neighborhoods.
Currently, however, affordable student housing around Mission Bay and PB has disappeared, as investors and corporations buy up properties and vacation rentals. Rent prices have soared, reshaping the culture of the neighborhoods from family to tourist-centered.
In 2015, the average rent in the 92109 ZIP code, covering PB and the Mission Bay communities, was $1,757. By July of this year, it had nearly doubled to $3,500, according to Zillow. With San Diego renters now spending 33 percent of their income on housing, living in the PB or Mission Bay community has shifted from a student tradition to a privilege not many can afford. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, people shouldn’t spend more than 30% of their income (including utilities) on housing. If you do, it’s considered a burden.
“In 1983, we lived right on the boardwalk in Mission Beach… a three-bedroom apartment for $750 a month,” said Andre Desjardins, a former SDSU surf team president. “That was $250 a guy.”
Today, that same apartment would cost an average of more than ten times as much.
Desjardins, now a commercial real estate appraiser, says that students aren’t as lucky.
“San Diego used to be seen mainly as a military town, but the economy diversified,” he said. “You’ve got tourism, a convergence of tech companies, a growing life sciences market, and between all that, you get a lot of people making a lot of money, and you have a limited amount of real estate. They got priced out of the market basically, it’s supply and demand.”
Desjardins also mentioned that he remembers a leasing pattern that once favored students.
“Landlords did nine-month leases for the school year. Then they’d turn over to the summer renters, people from Arizona, and what they made from students in a month, they could make in a week,” he said. “Now you’ve got VRBO and digital nomads and all that. You take those units out of the long-term pool, and it shrinks the supply even more.” He called it “kind of a perfect storm,” with short-term demand piling onto a market that already had upward pressure.
City rules also permit significantly more whole-home short-term rentals in Mission Beach, where up to 30% of housing can be short-term rentals compared to 1% throughout the rest of San Diego. Although they are in a great location, this keeps long-term residents out of great location homes and drives up costs for students who want to continue the tradition of living by the beach.
The culture has shifted in tandem with the costs, as fewer students reside in the area.
“From the early ‘80s into the ‘90s, there were so many house parties in Mission Beach,” Desjardins said. “They would spill onto the sand, and you just don’t see that anymore. There would be the PB Block Party, and it would be total mayhem with thousands of people crowding the streets, but the police shut it down.”
For current students, the party days aren’t as widespread, but they still aren’t over, as some students find a way to make the high prices work.
“I live on Mission Bay, and it’s so beautiful,” said Zoe Gottlieb, 21, a communications major at SDSU who moved in August. “Our backyard is literally the bay and the beach, so it feels like a vacation every day. It’s also nice to be in a walking city, way more walkable than living by campus.”
When asked why she chose to live in PB/Mission Bay, she described it as following SDSU tradition.
“Even freshman year, I heard a lot of seniors move to PB,” She said.“My roommates and I all wanted to do it. It feels like a good transition out of college, you’re not just around college students. There are postgrads and families, so it feels like a step into real life.”
Gottlieb said that the going-out culture is still alive, but more condensed than it used to be.
“We usually start on Thursdays and go through the weekend,” she said. “PB definitely has a going-out scene, and the beach is a plus.”
Gottlieb’s condo has paddleboards, and she said that her roommates only have to drive ten minutes away for their favorite surf spots. She said that her commute to campus isn’t bad either, only having to drive 20 minutes on a normal day and 30 with traffic in the mornings.
Gottlieb said that her living arrangement barely makes the numbers work.
“We live in a condo, and we have a whole floor of a building,” she said. “It’s three doubles and one single. We doubled up because seven bedrooms wasn’t realistic, and doubling up makes it cheaper. Our total rent is about $7,800. I’m in a double in the master and pay $1,250; the other doubles pay $975. It doesn’t feel cramped; the rooms are big, but we’re definitely doing the roommate math. If everyone had a single in PB, people I know are paying almost double what I pay.”
Although she said that housing is expensive, many others like her make the high prices work out.
“There are a lot of young people,” she said. “College students from the University of San Diego and the University of California, San Diego, and a lot of post-grads. But in our building, the top floor is an Airbnb, and most of the buildings next to us are vacation homes or Airbnb rentals, so there are a lot of tourists. It’s mixed, but the short-term rentals are very visible.”
The city of San Diego tracks and posts vacation rentals on its websites, but because it only includes property owners who’ve filed their permits, it doesn’t capture the full picture of vacation rentals. Others have taken it upon themselves to scour the internet for illegal listings and compile their own map.
For reference, this is a map of San Diego’s official approvals for short-term rentals versus a map NiceNeighbors San Diego made of all the official and unofficial short-term rentals within the area.
Affordability shapes who gets to live in PB and who doesn’t, with rent prices making it harder for average students to live in the area. Older postings on the internet make the shift clearer.
“There is a Kamo Housing shared room for $650/month and a San Diego student housing shared room for $600/month,” a German exchange student wrote in 2010, saying the amenities included a pool, gym, and Wi-Fi. The thread is older, but still proves how much the housing landscape has changed in just over a decade.
“It used to be a lot more family-oriented, with college students and families with young kids,” said Tatum Roistacher, 20, who grew up in PB. “Now it feels more like millennials and transplants who aren’t from PB or San Diego, and the culture’s changing. It doesn’t feel like a place where people live anymore. It’s a vacation town, and with so many vacation rentals, you kind of lose that neighborhood feel.”
Roistacher said that she sees it continue day-to-day.
“Every time I go to a restaurant or coffee shop, it seems like people are trying to be micro-influencers,” she said. “It’s less about enjoying where you live and more about the aesthetic.”
In her neighborhood, she says that even the houses will get remodeled into the same modern style, making it look like there’s the same house on every street. She believes that the architecture matches the people, copying every latest trend and conforming to social standards.
“My parents bought a condo in Crown Point around 2000,” she said. “They’re both lawyers, and even they say buying a house in PB now would take everything. It’s insane who gets to live here.”
