Opinion: Yet another housing fiasco at San Diego City Hall as 25 years of incompetence continues

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San Diego shined on a national stage 25 years ago, but has had a quarter-century of massive incompetence and mismanagement at City Hall since its decision to underfund the pension system to help pay for the 1996 Republican National Convention.

Wednesday brought the latest ineptitude to light.

The City Attorney’s Office said it is suing real estate brokers who advised the San Diego Housing Commission to acquire two Residence Inn hotels in Mission Valley and in Kearny Mesa last fall because they failed to disclose conflicts of interest and a financial interest in one of the deals. Kidder Mathews, a real estate broker, agent Jim Neil, and Chatham RIMV, the former owner of the Residence Inn on Hotel Circle, are targets of the city’s lawsuit. The hotels were bought to help shelter homeless people at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in February that the $108 million paid for the hotels was far more than the $92 million that the county estimated to be their value. The report noted local real estate experts were stunned at the Housing Commission’s failure at due diligence. But maybe they should not have been stunned, given the city’s lack of due diligence in its lease-to-own-agreement of a decrepit office building at 101 Ash Street — where the key broker also appeared to have a huge conflict of interest — which is also the target of a city lawsuit.

After 25 years of bad deals, San Diegans are used to feeling beleaguered and betrayed. Make it stop.