San Diego Sandbags Efforts to Shelter Homeless People
City snubs California law for emergency shelters
By Jeeni Criscenzo
If the City of San Diego really wanted to solve the ever increasing problem of homelessness, they might be willing to try something more innovative than eliminating 98% of the areas previously designated as suitable for emergency shelter without a Conditional Use Permit.
I first became of aware of a map in the City of San Diego General Plan, Housing Element called Figure 1 Areas Suitable for Emergency Shelters – November 2006. Amikas, a non-profit I founded with four other homeless advocates in 2009 to work with homeless women and children with a focus on veteran women, was considering the Midway Post Office as a potential site for veteran housing. The map was required by California Senate Bill 2 (SB2) also known as the Cedillo Bill.
This Statute became effective January 2008. Chapter 633 clarifies and strengthens housing element law to ensure zoning encourages and facilitates emergency shelters and limits the denial of emergency shelters and transitional and supportive housing. [Read more…]
Compassionate Action Requires You to Give Something of Yourself
By Laurie Black
June 12, 2008, I stood in front of the mirror on my 50th birthday and was relieved that I survived a half a century of happiness, tragedies, joys, four children, and mother in laws, stretch marks, mortgages…and a joyous loving marriage of almost 3 decades. I simply knew, I had it all and was deeply grateful. Four days later, my beloved “baby” brother Brian Black was killed on Father’s Day in a car accident.
Brian had survived mental illness for over 25 years, which included more than 20 varied hospitalizations, a jump mid-span off the Coronado Bridge in 1988, numerous suicide attempts including a police assisted shooting (1993 he was shot 5 times) eventually, a court ordered “visit” to a locked facility with court ordered medicine, saved his life. After 2 years, Brian went back to school, received a certification to be a counselor for severely mentally ill, he married Judy and was working at Alpine Residential Home as a counselor when he was killed. [Read more…]
Why Does Homelessness Persist in America’s Finest City?
Housing is Not a Human Right in the US
By John Lawrence
Why does homelessness persist in the world’s richest nation? The simple answer is that having a roof over one’s head is not a human right in this society. Fortunate people, those with a home and a car and other assets will not vote to give others what they possess even on the most basic level. Article 25 of the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states:
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
‘Honey, Don’t Worry about Me. We’ll Find a Place Soon.’
Halina is dead.
The effervescent petite blonde with the ebullient smear of sky blue eyeshadow above her sky blue eyes died in a residential hotel earlier this year.
I met Halina over a decade ago while I was working at the information desk of the old Central Library downtown on E Street. She was in the library searching for information on how to replace a lost ID. On a return trip she was looking for the address of her daughter Jessica.
She was a memorable presence—that sky blue eyeshadow, the girlish laugh, her genuine gratitude with the assistance she received. Halina would return to the library to simply say hello or to request all over again information on how to replace her lost ID or find Jessica’s address. [Read more…]
We Need to Be Aware That the Homeless Are Human Beings
When I heard that there would be a “San Diego Homeless Awareness Day” my first thought was “Hooray” and then I thought about how “awareness” isn’t the problem.
I mean we know that there are folks who have no home, no place to stay, penniless, practically completely down and out.
We’ve heard over and over on the news about “rock gardens” being constructed on some streets where the homeless like to sleep; about the police destroying their encampments, places where they feel relatively safe trying to get a good night’s sleep. [Read more…]
We Can Do It Now! Tiny Home Demonstration part of San Diego Homeless Awareness Activities
By Amikas
On August 17, in coordination with San Diego Homeless Awareness Day, a model “Tiny Home” will be assembled on site at the North Park Community Park, on Oregon St. between Polk Ave and Howard Ave. and will be available for photographs and viewing throughout the afternoon.
At 12:30 PM, Jeeni Criscenzo from the non-profit group Amikas will join with a representative from the Open Architecture Coalition and former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña to discuss the importance of using “tiny homes” to provide low-cost emergency housing and storage to vulnerable homeless people currently sleeping unsheltered in San Diego.
They will also discuss why the City San Diego needs to come into compliance with state law and provide shelter for thousands of homeless San Diegans to avoid a lawsuit. [Read more…]
Holy Heatwave! July 2016 Sets Another Record
Another month has passed and another temperature record for the planet was set.
Results published on the NASA database yesterday indicated July 2016 was the 10th month in a row to break monthly temperature records, a measure obtained by combining sea-surface temperatures and air temperatures on land.
David Karoly, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne, told The Guardian this latest data means 2016 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year on record. [Read more…]
California Poised to Pass Momentous Civil Asset Forfeiture Reforms
SB 443 establishes stricter standards to protect innocent, vulnerable Californians from having police take and keep their property
ACLU of San Diego
A California bill to limit civil asset forfeiture abuses was approved on August 15 by the State Assembly on a 66 to 8 vote. The bill will now return to the Senate for a concurrence vote.
Senate Bill 443, co-authored by Senator Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblymember David Hadley (R-Manhattan Beach), provides individuals with stronger property rights protections by requiring a conviction in most state civil asset forfeiture cases. The bill also addresses a problematic financial incentive that has driven some California law enforcement agencies to bypass state law in favor of federal law, opening the door to abuses. [Read more…]
CA Insurance Industry Happy to Receive, But Not to Give
An industry trade group is trying to weaken Assemblymember Atkins bill on reporting reinvestment in California communities
By Paulina Gonzalez & Lori Gay / Capital & Main
Twenty years ago, the insurance industry narrowly escaped a requirement to reinvest its premiums in California communities. An alternative, voluntary program was created instead, the California Organized Investment Network (COIN) program. COIN was created at the request of California’s powerful insurance industry, instead of state legislation that would have required insurers to reinvest in the state’s underserved communities, similar to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) for the banking industry. But now insurance lobbyists are seemingly working behind the scenes to kill a reporting mechanism in this voluntary program — which begs the question, Why?
By making safe and sound investments in the COIN program, insurance companies can help promote positive social and environmental initiatives, including renewable energy projects, community affordable housing, economic development and small business lending, while receiving a reasonable rate of return.
[Read more…]
Is Anybody Judging the Judges? The California Legislature Wants Answers
A joint committee of the California Legislature has authorized an audit of the Commission on Judicial Performance, the only entity that can discipline or remove a state judge.
A coalition of two dozen groups reflecting a wide range of interests, led by the Center for Judicial Excellence wrote letters, made calls and sent emails to urge the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) to call for the audit.
“The Center for Public Integrity gave California an ‘F grade’ on its 2015 report card for judicial accountability, said Kathleen Russell, the executive director of the Center for Judicial Excellence in a press release. [Read more…]
Notes on the Dog Days of Summer: It’s Already Over for Trump
In late July, I was at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota watching Hillary Clinton address a hall of thousands of educators as a handful of #Black Lives Matters and assorted other protesters tried, unsuccessfully, to disrupt her speech, which inspired a few angry delegates to start yelling, “Get them out! Arrest them!” until a wiser soul chimed in with, “Aren’t we supposed to be different than Trump?”
For the most part, Clinton’s speech was a laundry list of interest group button-pushing, but I was pleased to see how far the primary seemed to have forced her to adopt Sanders-like positions and rhetoric on things like affordable higher education.
At least in that way, the left wing of the Democratic Party has had an impact on the campaign. But as the Democratic Convention later revealed, those gestures to the left are married to the usual triangulation with the right, complete with a safe, conservative Democratic running mate and homages to the military industrial complex worthy of a Republican affair. [Read more…]
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