Out & About San Diego - De Anza Cove

 

I love exploring the world around me, especially if I find historic, abandoned places.

One of the most beautiful beach areas here in San Diego, De Anza Cove, has hundreds of properties lining the beaches that have been abandoned for a decade.

I went to look at them after I had read about them.

The story begins about 60 years ago and is really fascinating, especially for such prime beach properties.

Originally, De Anza Cove was supposed to be a mobile home community, and that actually is how it started. However, there was no oversight, and since the location is awesome and the views are magnificent, many people who had moved in sold their mobile homes and built rather nice houses. There was no oversight by anyone, so people pretty much did whatever they wanted to when building their new homes in this prime location. Since no one knew what was going on, many of the homes here were not even paying property taxes. Pretty much free rent in one of San Diego's prime locations.

Suddenly, at the end of the Great Recession, the City of San Diego decided that since they weren't making any money off of this prime location, they would kick everyone out and renovate the property. As can be seen in some of the pictures, people left a lot of stuff behind, including some pretty nice furniture. Many of the people had gone into significant debt building nice homes, never thinking that they would be kicked out. Consequently, many didn't even have enough money to hire moving companies to move that furniture, simply abandoning it instead.

Some sources say that the City wanted to built a huge hotel/resort complex, which would have spoiled the view. That never happened due to overwhelming opposition. Sadly, though, these homes now have been vacant since 2011. Campland-on-the-Bay was supposed to take over in January 2018, clean up the place, and make it part of Campland. Three-and-half years later, here we are with nothing done.