San Diego

The San Diego Housing Commission Monday adopted formal criteria governing the selection of new sites for public housing.

The new policy is adapted from federal and city standards that spell out criteria on such matters as the size and density of public housing complexes, the economic and racial makeup of neighborhoods and land costs. It calls for efforts to create four to 20-unit low-income public housing projects in middle-class and wealthier areas before attempting to place them in poorer areas.

The document formalizes practices that the agency largely has followed in locating sites over the past seven years, said Mike Brown, the commission’s manager for housing, finance and development.

“It’s the adoption of a formal policy so the City Council now has comfort that when we present sites to them, we have followed these procedures.”

The new policy, drawn up over the past eight months by a special subcommittee, will help the City Council pursue a 1972 policy of dispersing low-income housing throughout the city, Brown said. That effort has failed because of a combination of market forces and political decisions that have resulted in most public housing being placed in South San Diego.

The policy will be put to immediate use as the commission begins a search for sites for 50 new public housing units approved last month by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.