[1] City Heights is notable as a home to refugees and immigrants, with significant communities of Vietnamese, Somali, Cambodian, Laotian, and Latino residents.

[4] In the 1880s, American entrepreneurs Abraham Klauber and Samuel Steiner purchased over 240 acres (0.97 km2) of unincorporated land northeast of Balboa Park, hoping to profit from the area.

[citation needed] Following the Vietnam War, many refugees from Southeast Asia arrived to the United States at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego.

Many Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Thai refugees settled in City Heights during the 1970s and 80s, due to the cheap rents resulting from disinvestment.

[8][9] By the 1990s, the area was described in the local media as one of the "urban edges where the inner city bleeds into the suburbs" and was widely portrayed as a crime hotspot.

Anti-gang programs implemented by police and city leaders targeted and often arrested Somali men for loitering in public or hanging out near businesses.

[7] In the mid-1990s, businessman and philanthropist Sol Price led and financed a redevelopment plan to create a multi-block "urban village," of which a new San Diego Police substation was to be the cornerstone.

[13] The Price-backed housing developments have received criticism for mainly serving moderate-income people, however, and the general sense of experimentation led some to dub the area "Guinea Pig Heights.

[citation needed] That year, the San Diego Indiefest music festival took place in City Heights' Urban Village.

[18] By 2019, the area had been designated as an "Economic Opportunity Zone," which qualifies investors for tax breaks and other forms of corporate welfare, a policy which may accelerate the displacement of low-income residents.

[19] Gentrification in North Park has been trickling up University Avenue towards City Heights, with new events and businesses drawing higher-income residents, many of whom are middle- and upper-class Hispanic professionals, to the area.

The community is bounded by Interstate 805 to the west, El Cajon Boulevard to the north, 54th Street to the east, and Home Avenue/Euclid Avenue/Chollas Parkway to the southeast.

The community is further divided into fourteen neighborhoods: Azalea-Hollywood Park, Castle, Cherokee Point, Chollas Creek, Colina Del Sol, Corridor, Fairmount Park, Fairmount Village, Fox Canyon, Islenair (a city-designated historic district), Teralta East, Teralta West, Swan Canyon, and Ridgeview-Webster.

City Heights is majority Hispanic and low-income,[20] with high rates of poverty, unemployment, child obesity, and asthma.

[20] The Little Saigon San Diego Foundation was established in November 2008 with a stated mission to "revitalize the densely populated Vietnamese business district of El Cajon Boulevard.