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Mayor’s Vindictiveness Trumps Solving Homelessness In San Diego

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Faulconer’s Veto Likely Dooms the Convention Center Expansion

June 5 to 9, 2017 will go down in San Diego’s history as the week Mayor Faulconer revealed the Trump wannabe lurking beneath his compassionate conservative disguise – tweets and all! From Monday to Friday, the San Diego mayor’s office went from sending out a press release declaring:

“Our homeless crisis is staggering and the struggles on our streets are growing as more people fall into homelessness. The time to act is now. Lives of so many men, women and children are on the line.”

to vetoing the teeny line item to fund a half-time consultant to support the newly formed Select Committee on Homelessness.

What could account for such a complete reversal of perspective?   [Read more…]

Bearing Witness to Homelessness in San Diego

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They are here, by the hundreds, by the thousands, the dispossessed among us. People having little in the way of the niceties of a comfortable existence that equates with the concept of “Home”. Many wear all the clothing they own, on their backs, day and night.

Some push their collection of meager possessions around in a shopping cart they have found or stolen, ahead of them in their endless wanderings to nowhere in particular.

Their days are twenty-five hours.   [Read more…]

There’s No Hiding It. There’s No Place for Homeless San Diegans to Go

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The numbers of homeless person in our region counted during the annual Point in Time Count (PITC) conducted January 29, 2017 were released this Thursday. This is the data that will be sent to HUD to determine how much funding will be provided to the County of San Diego for homeless issues, including emergency shelter and efforts to get people into permanent housing. Last year that amounted to $18 million but under the Trump administration those funds could be significantly reduced.

Despite their best efforts to highlight the sliver of good news (veteran homelessness is down by 9%) the numbers reported were a testament to failure. Despite considerable resources being expended this past year to remove the most visible evidence of homelessness – the tent and tarp encampments lining our streets downtown – by making life so miserable for homeless people that some assumed they would go elsewhere, the numbers of homeless people downtown rose by 27% and the number of tents and hand-built structures increased by 104%!   [Read more…]

Cruel Downtown Sweeps against San Diego Homeless People Have Got to Stop – Now!

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On April 5th, while I was in City Hall with other advocates for homeless people voicing our objections to the Mayor’s proposed ballot measure to increase the Transit Occupancy Tax to pay for an expansion of the convention center, with a few crumbs tossed in for “Reducing Homelessness”, only a few blocks away, some of our City’s most destitute citizens were being cruelly victimized.

Their tormentors not only took away everything they had left in the world, including what little makeshift shelter they had, but in one case documented in photos and a video by Michael McConnell, they even took a man’s pet dog!   [Read more…]

Hungry and Homeless in College

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Over the more than two decades I have spent teaching at the college level, the vast majority of that time at San Diego City College, I have seen a little bit of everything. From the homeless student sleeping in Balboa Park who ended up at USC to the single mother living in her car with her kids who still got every assignment in on time before transferring to SDSU, there have been far too many stories of triumphs against all odds for me to recount.

Along with those stories come sadder tales like the cab driver supporting his family who almost finished but got knocked out of the game by an unexpected financial challenge or the lost kid who, even though you tried to reach out, lost the battle to despair and commits suicide. When you work at a community college it humbles you quickly. No matter how well you teach, how hard you try, you soon realize that there are so many things out of your control, and that, despite your best efforts, you just can’t help everyone.   [Read more…]

Midway Planning Group Hosting Beach Community Planners Discussion About Homelessness in April

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By Geoff Page / OB Rag

The Midway Planning Group is devoting its entire April monthly meeting to an in depth discussion of one subject – homelessness. Councilmember Lorie Zapf has committed to attend as has Stacie Spector, the mayor’s “homeless czar.” The group had not yet settled on a venue as of its March 15 regular monthly meeting.

The Midway planners are attempting to find a place for the discussion that will accommodate an expected large group of people. The Peninsula, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, and Mission Beach planning groups are being invited to the discussion. The homeless population in the Midway area and the problems that it causes is a major concern for the mostly business oriented members of the group. Information on the meeting site will be provided in the coming weeks.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Homelessness Calamity: You Have Just Entered the Twilight Zone

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Say what you want about the faraway White House. But watch what you say about City Hall and the people we elect to local government – they’re practically family.

They live in our neighborhoods. We have coffee with them when they’re running for office. We bump into them at the movies or supermarket. We could hop a trolley downtown and collar them at work. We elect them to work for us.

Their job is to pave the streets, limit what gets built on that empty lot around the corner, keep an eye on the police department, get the trash picked up, and make sure there are enough fire stations to keep us safe and good air-quality levels to keep us healthy and enough libraries and parks to help make us happy.   [Read more…]

March for Safe Living Spaces, San Diego City Council Hearing on Homelessness

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March (and sing!) for homeless San Diegans on March 18, be an advocate for compassion and solutions on March 20

By Women Occupy San Diego

On Saturday, March 18, we envision a marching band led by the Euphoria Brass Band and the San Diego Women’s Drum Circle and community singalong as testament to the healing power of music — a gathering for the voices of our homeless San Diegans to be heard, amplified by the voices of housed San Diegans who believe every San Diegan deserves a safe place to live.

This March of Voices will occur two days before a special meeting of the San Diego City Council to hear solutions to homelessness on Monday, March 20, at 1 pm. at Golden Hall (Note time for Monday Council Meeting changed from 2 to 1 pm. )   [Read more…]

Volunteers Raise High the Roof Beams for Emergency, Very Affordable Housing in San Diego

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Amikas Emergency Housing Expo

The super bloom of wild flowers in the most inhospitable of places–the Anza Borrego desert– has captured the attention of San Diegans, who are flocking to get a glimpse of this short lived phenomenon.

Closer to home, an equally remarkable blossoming takes the form of the cluster of cabins that has sprung up like wild flowers at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in North Park. San Diego has been the most inhospitable of places for enacting solutions to our growing humanitarian crisis of homelessness. Volunteer activists from Amikas have stepped into the leadership vacuum, displaying what can be done to address the immediate housing needs of the most vulnerable among us.

The demonstration project that volunteers designed and are building on the church site represent one low cost, practical approach to providing bridge housing by way of small communities with safe sleeping cabins.   [Read more…]

Jewish Family Service and Dreams for Change: Doing Good Deeds Together

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Here in “America’s Finest City”, the weather is nice year round while rentals are very high, and many families live paycheck to paycheck. This situation is also the reason why there are so many homeless people in San Diego and worse yet- homeless families.

However, two very mensch organizations have paired up to help: Dreams for Change and Jewish Family Service. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of JFS, so this non-profit has been serving the community for a long time with its various programs that strive to help others by empowering individuals and families, sponsoring and supporting refugees, and fostering community connection and engagement. JFS’s mission is to build a stronger, healthier, and more resilient San Diego.   [Read more…]

Making It Easier to Build Won’t Generate Affordable Housing

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By Murtaza Baxamusa / Rooflines, the Shelterforce blog

It is often convenient to blame city planners for the affordable housing crisis. After all, those affected have no other public forum to vent their concerns, least of all toward those who are profiting off of the crisis on a project-by-project basis. Sadly, this blame is often misguided, because planners do not produce housing.

A case study of the profit-maximizing, decision-making that is driving the affordability crisis is downtown San Diego. Construction cranes are up all over, and a $6.4 billion development juggernaut is rolling through. Nearly 10,000 new units have been permitted by the downtown planning board over the last four years, and the fast and generous permit approval process is cited as a model by developers for other regions.   [Read more…]

The San Jose Solution for Emergency Shelter

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A state law allowing emergency sleeping cabins could work for San Diego too.

San Diego County / City of San Diego are in the middle of a serious emergency shelter crisis. The Point in Time Count numbers for 2016 for the county counted 8,692 homeless persons, with an 18.9% increase in the number of unsheltered individuals. Numbers from the recent count will not be available until April, but are expected to be worse. San Diego has the unenviable distinction of having the 4th highest number of homeless people in the nation – more than Las Vegas, Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco. By comparison, Santa Clara County / San Jose reported 6,556 homeless persons in 2015, and came in 9th for number of homeless people.

The San Jose Solution – San Jose took bold action to address the human crisis.   [Read more…]

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