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Readers Write: Another ‘Business As Usual’ Fixer at City Hall Won’t Help the Homeless

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By Martha Sullivan / San Diego Housing Emergency Alliance

Longtime mayoral fixer, Kris Michell, returns to San Diego City Hall this week as Deputy Chief Operating Officer. She seems to be Mayor Faulconer’s “Jared,” with a wide-ranging portfolio:

“Michell was announced Sept. 28 as a top city adviser on homelessness, special events, corporate sponsorships, the commission on arts and culture and the city’s redevelopment arm, Civic San Diego.”

Michell returns to City Hall after several years doing much of the same as the head of the Downtown Partnership — the Business Improvement District for downtown. This city-sanctioned partly-funded entity has been a primary tool for persecuting unsheltered San Diegans left with nowhere to live, after the city’s replacement of 10,000 low-income housing units with market-rate/luxury development (mostly downtown) since 2010. This devastation started during her six years as chief of staff for Mayor Jerry Sanders.   [Read more…]

Protests Organized Against El Cajon Ban on Feeding Homeless

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The city of El Cajon has bought into the idea that harassing homeless humans will make the problem go away, and activists around San Diego are pushing back with actions possibly including civil disobedience starting on Sunday, November 19.

The East County city with nearly one in four people living in poverty and a soaring rate of homelessness has passed an emergency ordinance prohibiting food distribution on any city-owned property.

What this means is serving meals to groups of homeless people in parks and other public spaces is now against the law in El Cajon, along with panhandling, sleeping on the sidewalk and setting up encampments.   [Read more…]

A San Diego Vets for Peace Homeless Encounter

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Three of us, two members of San Diego Veterans for Peace and a guest, are jammed into a Prius — along with 20 new sleeping bags. We are driving slowly south, down 16th Street in search of people lying on the sidewalks.

Chapter members have been here many times over the past five or six years, and have distributed more than 3,200 bags to unfortunates on the street.

“There’s someone.”

We park some distance from the homeless person. Caution and intuition are at work now, tempered by experience. One of us stays with the car, while the other two make contact.   [Read more…]

Scheme Using Homeless Crisis to Expand Convention Center Rebuked by Alliance San Diego

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Alliance San Diego has been asked to respond to the Voice of San Diego story revealing Mayor Faulconer’s involvement in another effort to use the homelessness crisis as a lever to put an expansion of the convention center on a special-election ballot, which would contravene Measure L. We are responding to multiple inquiries all at once to make Alliance San Diego’s position clear.
1. The homelessness crisis is a crisis of Mayor Faulconer’s own making.
2. Measure L allows for special elections, not special interests.
3. We call on Mayor Faulconer to take immediate action to address homelessness.
See story inside for details…
  [Read more…]

Petition: Investigate Mayor Faulconer for Criminal Negligence in Hepatitis A Outbreak

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Has Ignored Calls for More Public Restrooms Downtown Since 2014

By Martha Sullivan

The San Diego City government, led by Mayor Faulconer, has been told for 3 years that more public restrooms are needed downtown. But the Mayor has consistently cried poor mouth — despite spending $2.1 million on an unplanned EIR for an upgraded Qualcomm Football Stadium during this time.   [Read more…]

Press Conferences on Homelessness In San Diego: Another Way of Saying “Let Them Eat Cake”

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When it comes to unsheltered citizens, San Diego serves as the poster child for what not to do in responding to a crisis. The City Without Pity has now attracted international attention for its failure to serve its homeless humans.

Hundreds of people have contracted Hepatitis A and sixteen are dead from the highly contagious disease. Handwashing stations have been set up after months of delay, sidewalks are being power washed with bleach, and the City has presented the press with a list of places where it thinks homeless humans should go if they need to use the toilet.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer held a press conference on Wednesday to announce he would accept $1.5 million raised by local businessmen. Three tents with services will offer a few hundred people the opportunity to get off the streets. In three months. Maybe.   [Read more…]

San Diego Housing Crisis Facing a ‘Perfect Storm’ | Video Worth Watching

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I’ve always thought it was perfectly appropriate to respond to the current affordable housing shortage in the way we respond to a natural disaster. It certainly is a disaster, but one that’s human-made rather than “natural”.

Extending the metaphor, just as weather forecasts provide us an opportunity to prepare for severe conditions, the current housing market forecast is giving us an opportunity to mitigate the effects of a brewing “Perfect Storm”. As KPBS News notes: San Diego is in the midst of its worst housing crisis in recent memory, with low vacancy rates, rising rents and a growing number of people living on the streets. As bad as things are… they’re likely to get worse. Thousands of homes set aside for low-income people are set to become market rate, meaning struggling renters could see their housing costs skyrocket. KPBS metro reporter Andrew Bowen says experts are calling it a perfect storm.   [Read more…]

Vapor Beds and Other Non-Facts

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Let me start with an apology. At the San Diego Select Committee for Homelessness meeting on July 24th, I made some comments in response to a report by the new CEO of the Regional Taskforce on the Homeless, Gordon Walker, which came out sounding critical and petty.

When I watched myself on the video, I wasn’t pleased with my scolding tone. I had been trying to meet with Mr. Walker for over a month and finally got a voice mail from him politely explaining that it would be some time before he had time to meet with me and he hoped that I would understand. While I hadn’t planned on publicly reprimanding Mr. Walker, it certainly came out that way and I’m sorry.

I could blame my response on my Sicilian heritage or my New Jersey upbringing, but it was really my frustration with what I heard in Walker’s well-intentioned report that rattled my cage. Maybe, if we had the opportunity to talk prior to his report to this committee, he might have been better informed about the situation here in San Diego from a different perspective than what he’s being given by the people he had time for in his first month on the job.

Right now, it appears he’s hearing from the same old good ole boys perpetuating the same old song and dance to serve their same old self-interests.   [Read more…]

Sending Homeless People to Imperial Beach is No Solution

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By Remigia Bermúdez

The June 30 Morning Report: San Diego’s Risky Homeless Diversion Project by Voice of San Diego’s Seth Hall calls the latest movida by San Diego’s elected officials right on the money — a “diversion.” It is truly a diversion of San Diego City Hall to keep passing the buck and pushing the homeless away from downtown.

The Voice’s article states:

“The city of San Diego wants to divert more homeless people away from the criminal justice system and into supportive programs that aid in recovery. To do that, city leaders came up with a program that helps people hooked on drugs and accused of a crime to enter into treatment and shelter,” identifying a “huge” grant recently received for it.

The city proposal to better serve the homeless with rehab services identified in said recent grant sounds benevolent — for a second. What smells fishy is relocating them to Imperial Beach.

This is a case of good intentions gone sour.   [Read more…]

Dreams for Change: Chipping Away at the Homeless Problem

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“Being homeless is exhausting!” said Ann Marie Christian, a retired caregiver who is disabled.

Both she and Randy Leighton, who said he was an out-of-work civil engineer and also disabled, sat at the outdoor table in the parking lot of Jewish Family Service. They are clients of Dreams for Change, a non-profit organization that works with homeless individuals and families who live in their cars.

San Diego has become a magnet for homeless people while shelters and government agencies struggle to provide help. Not only that, these are not “one size fits all” folks.

There are generational homeless, those who want to be on the streets for one reason or another, those with drug or alcohol related problems, or those who live in their cars with some but limited resources. For the latter, Dreams for Change strives to be an agency that can assist them.   [Read more…]

Solving Homelessness Can’t Wait Another Year

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I really want to believe that we are getting closer to a coordinated plan for housing people who’re experiencing homelessness. But I’ve sat through enough of these meetings over the last decade to justify my skepticism.

I’m not intending to criticize the concerted and well-intentioned efforts of the RTFH to craft a solid, viable plan for ending homelessness in San Diego. And this isn’t to trivialize the value of the work being put forth by Focus Strategies, a consulting firm from Sacramento, in crafting a plan based on data and metrics. But when I heard during the RTFH membership meeting that their plan won’t be completed for another year, my heart sank.

Surely most of the providers and advocates attending that meeting are close enough to the human beings currently experiencing homelessness to know what another year of waiting and planning and meetings will mean in human suffering. For many, a breaking point where they lose hope and turn to drugs and alcohol for solace. For others, another year on the streets will result in assaults and rape, loss of their children, loss of employment, loss of dignity and even entrapment in human trafficking.

For some, it will mean death.   [Read more…]

San Diego Is Not the Emerald City

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By Jack Doxey / Veterans For Peace

I belong to a group called the Veterans For Peace and we often walk at night handing out sleeping bags to people who are unsheltered and have little more than a thin blanket to keep them warm. The unsheltered might be sleeping next to buildings that are lit up all night, but they are denied the dignity of having a place to use a bathroom. They are treated as outcasts. This is not the Emerald City. It is a city where the stark contrast between wealth and poverty is alarming and tragic.

We are a city of conventions and a place where people like to come and enjoy themselves. Do not think that visitors do not notice.   [Read more…]

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