Everyone complains about the cost of housing in California. It is expensive to live in San Diego. I am consistently amused by groups that try to drum up outrage about something with the warning that it will lower property values. The people who want housing to be cheaper likely outnumber the people who want it to remain expensive. You’re much more likely to drum up opposition to AirBnB by claiming that it makes housing more expensive than by claiming that it makes it cheaper to buy a house. Those partying AirBnB guests bringing down the property values look like they’d be much more fun to have as neighbors than the old lady who is complaining that her house that has probably appreciated by almost a million dollars since she bought it many decades ago is no longer worth as much as she expected.

When I went to UCSD back in the 1990s, my apartment had neither heat nor air conditioning. This didn’t bother me. I had just moved from New Hampshire, so I could deal with the cold. And summers in San Diego (especially in La Jolla) were much kinder than the summers in New Hampshire, which I had also braved without air conditioning. Even on warm summer days I would ride my bike to Pacific Beach and make fun of the people who complained that 83 was “hot.” When I moved back here, I had expected something similar.

Is it still cool in the summer if one lives near the coast? Now I live a little bit further inland, about 3 miles from the bay, and I would be absolutely miserable if my apartment did not have air conditioning. The HVAC system in my apartment dates back to when the building was built in 1986, and it is not efficient. It costs me hundreds of dollars a month in electricity. Fortunately, I have a good job (and a cheap apartment), so I can afford hundreds of dollars a month in electricity. But I wonder how hotter summers will affect people in general.

The rule of thumb had been that if you lived east of the 15, you definitely need air conditioning. And it has always been cheaper to live further east. But as the hotter weather moves west, the cost of utilities goes up closer to the coast. Will people get priced out of the mid-city by utilities and move to East County? At what point will you need air conditioning if you live east of the 805? East of the 5? Anywhere?