Colina Park/City Heights

Colina Park is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the region, providing relatively affordable housing to San Diego’s immigrant and refugee families as they gain a toehold in the region.  However, when the University Avenue streetcar line first opened the area to development in the 1920s, Colina Park attracted well-to-do families retreating from San Diego’s central core.  At that time, Colina Park provided a bucolic setting with easy access to downtown.

Land use policies introduced in the mid-1960s forever transformed the community.  As property owners scrambled to build as many housing units as the new policies allowed, single family homes quickly gave way to multi-family apartments.  

The population surged, the property-owning resident base disappeared, and absentee ownership prevailed.  Meanwhile, the face of Colina Park also changed.  The end of the Vietnam War brought an influx of newly arrived southeast Asian residents to Colina Park, including Vietnamese and Cambodians.  The Latino population also swelled.  In the following decades, Colina Park became home to subsequent waves of new immigrant communities.  Throughout the 1990s, Somali and other east African refugees began settling in and around Colina Park.

Today, housing affordability and cultural connections draw people to Colina Park. But residents worry about rising housing costs.  Many have stemmed the tide by expanding their households with family and friends.  In fact, Colina Park's population increased by 28 percent between 1990 and 2000 (meanwhile, the housing stock grew by just two percent).  Residents worry that subsequent increases would put financial and emotional strain on their families, compromise the important role of this neighborhood as a gateway community, and threaten the cultural diversity that they see as their defining asset.