San Diego – surprisingly – added more people to its population between 2022 and 2025 than any other county in the state except for Riverside. But has housing construction kept up with the population growth?
Well, yes and no.
On the one hand, San Diego County added more housing units during that three-year period –
about 36,000 – than any other county in the state except giant Los Angeles. That’s according to the latest figures from the demographers at the California Department of Finance.
On the other hand, San Diego lagged slightly behind the statewide average in the ratio of
housing built to population added. Between 2022 and 2025, California added one housing unit for every new resident. In San Diego, that figure was about three new housing units for every four residents.
Data: California Department of Finance. Chart: Bill Fulton/Times of San Diego
Still, that’s progress. Overall, San Diego County currently has about one house for every 2.5 residents, so the current rend represents a bit of a catch-up, which is showing up in the slowdown in housing prices.
As it does in population growth, the city of San Diego leads the way in building new housing in the region, with about 22,000 new units created between 2022 and 2025 – about two-thirds of the countywide total.
Every other city in the county – which together have about the same population as San Diego – added a little over 10,000 homes. And unincorporated San Diego County added about 3,600 units, even though, according to the state, the unincorporated population declined during that period.
Data: California Department of Finance. Chart: Bill Fulton/Times of San Diego
In percentage terms, the amount of housing added by each of the cities was all over the place.
Along with San Diego, the cities with the biggest percentage increase in housing were Lemon Grove, Poway, San Marcos, and Chula Vista – all cities representing different parts of the county.
The slowest housing growth, percentage-wise, came in Encinitas and Coronado, both cities known for anti-growth sentiment and longstanding battles with the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
Data: California Department of Finance. Chart: Bill Fulton/Times of San Diego
The other big trend underway is a move toward building apartments, rather than single-family homes.
Statewide, about 43% of new housing units were in multi-family projects. But in San
Diego County, that number was 60% – well ahead of the state as a whole but still behind other
large counties like Alameda (78%) and Santa Clara (67%).
Inland counties continue to build mostly single-family homes. In Riverside County, for example, only 12.6% of new homes were apartments.
Among local jurisdictions, the city of San Diego was again among the leaders, with apartments representing 66% of its new homes. But a number of other cities leaned even more heavily into multifamily, including South County’s Chula Vista and National City (which have focused on infill development) and Oceanside (which is just completing its huge multifamily-heavy transit center plan).
Among those jurisdictions with low multifamily construction were the unincorporated county (15%), Encinitas again (less than 12%), and tiny Del Mar (which added no multifamily units and only 59 houses overall).
Data: California Department of Finance. Chart: Bill Fulton/Times of San Diego
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course.
Many projects that were approved might never be build –or, at least, not built during the three-year time frame we have examined here. And in small cities, one large apartment or single-family project can skew the numbers.
But there’s no question that in San Diego and around the state, even as population increases slowly, housing construction is moving forward at a faster pace.
Bill Fulton is a professor of practice at the UC San Diego Design Lab and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He is also a fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.
