San Diego County remains difficult to enter for prospective homeowners, particularly for households working in lower-paid occupations. In 2025, 17% of county households could afford the median-priced home, according to the California Association of Realtors, with the same figure reported by KPBS. Affordability was 11% for both Hispanic or Latino households and Black households.
Across California, 19% of households could afford a median-priced home in 2025. The statewide median price for a detached home was $875,550, and the required annual household income was $221,200, according to the Realtors data.
The pay-home price gap
A ZipRecruiter estimate puts the average annual pay for a San Diego trash-truck driver at $59,743, or $28.72 an hour, as of Sept. 10, 2026. Its listed middle range runs from $41,900 to $70,000 a year.
Those figures describe an individual wage, not a household’s complete finances or eligibility for a mortgage. They nevertheless illustrate the scale of the challenge: the estimated average salary is substantially below the annual income the California affordability data say is needed for a median-priced detached home statewide. The comparison is a broad context measure, not a calculation of what every trash-truck driver can or cannot afford.
A longer-term measure of rising prices
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ FRED database shows the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller San Diego home-price index at 440.18045 in June 2026, compared with a January 2000 base of 100. The index is a measure of how San Diego-area home prices have changed over time; it does not measure trash-driver wages or establish the finances of any particular household.
One reported family example
The Los Angeles Times reported that Salomon Olea bought a three-bedroom Escondido house for $127,000 in 1998 after beginning sanitation work in 1994. The Times also reported that his son, Angel, is 33, drives commercial trash trucks for a private waste company, rents in Escondido and is saving for a down payment while raising three children…