Part 5
By Colleen O’Connor
How many ways? How many times? How many places? How many photos? Does it take to clean up the city?
This is the fifth attempt to get Mayor Todd Gloria and members of the City Council to leave their white tablecloth lunches and walk just 8 blocks from their offices to see what residents, visitors, businesses, postal workers and taxpayers must wade through every day.
It is a disgrace as these photos demonstrate. It is also a serious health risk amid both a COVID and monkeypox medical emergencies.
We should be appalled. In fact, most San Diegans are more than that. They are outraged.
All of the photos below were taken on last Saturday morning, August 13, amid the homeless tent encampments.
One private security guard watching over the entrance to a couple of high-rise buildings, complained,” I take the bus in the early morning to start my job and there are rats running on both sides of the street.”
Yes, rats.
Not a surprise if you walk there. Or work there. As the guard explained, “It has gotten worse every year for the past three years.” The streets are filthy. How hard is power washing these sidewalks?
Where exactly? Alongside the old, now abandoned, downtown library. On the back sides of the downtown post office. Pick any block nearby and look at the overflowing trash bins.
One homeless, elderly woman explained how she “tried to keep this corner clean,” but it is not enough. When asked why the City isn’t collecting the trash, her answer: “They pick up sometimes 4 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. Not enough.”
Another man nearby was washing gang graffiti off the back of City parking posts. And many establishments have hired private guards and erected rope lines to protect entrances.
So, look at the photos. And ask, “WHY?” in a rich city is this allowed to exist.
What good is the Mayor’s “Get It Done App” if this still isn’t getting done?
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
This is proof that building highrises are NOT going to solve the homeless problem at Midway or anywhere else!
It’s obvious that we can’t take of the people that already live and pay taxes here now. No extra people are going to help. (Homeless certainly won’t be able to pay the price of future homes.) This city is being destroyed! Our City Council should stop. No more stupid ideas! They need to get SDPD back up & rolling first & enforce laws on the books. Homeless, vagrants can not live on the sidewalk, the sand, our FAMILY parks, our yards, etc. it’s going to take years for our city to be free of feces again & that’s after the plague.
As you are aware, the cost of living is the main reason for homelessness. Not homeless people coming over here as has been disproven countless times so it’s fair to say, you yourself don’t really belive that it is. I don’t have an answer. I don’t know if more and dense housing will solve the cost of living issue or not. That’s become a heated debate where there will probably never be a consensus.
Yes our city IS getting destroyed, but if your solution is to pick up all the homeless and jail them, that’s not going to solve anything. If your solution is to pick all them up and bus them out the the middle of nowhere then you kind of deserve any negative impact their presence has had on you.
It’s fair to say you did not comprehend what I wrote. Who mentioned jail? You did! Who said pick them up & bus them? You did! Neither of those was my suggestion. Blame yourself for those thoughts. Do you have a solution, or just combing comments to lash out personally on others?
Yeah, Sadie, you did. Here’s you: ” They need to get SDPD back up & rolling first & enforce laws on the books. Homeless, vagrants can not live on the sidewalk, the sand, our FAMILY parks, our yards,…” Getting the SDPD “back up” to enforce the laws means jail time potentially for those “homeless vagrants.”
Just want to say that after using the Get It Done app about the many potholes on Midway Drive, I was very pleasantly surprised to find the whole strip of street between Pt Loma Bl and Rosecrans fixed up recently. Not trying to say the app is great or that is always works. But it can and does sometimes. I hope more people use it, for the trash situation above and in general.
There’s always two sides, but I think it’s fair to say that regardless of any successes of the app, it’s not working as well as people were hoping it would.
Im not surprised, I’m disgusted!!
America’s finest…..
Our tax dollars are being spent on bailing out our current Mayor. He and our city council sure are earning that double salary pay raise they gave themselves when they took over.
He’s right below C Arnold Smith…as far as our great leaders go.
Only 7 years to go! $$$$$$
The great blue wave at work…
Has your life been made better?
It’s curious why there are no sidewalk blocking tents in the block surrounding city hall.
Because houseless people have choices and they choose not to hang out amongst a bunch of politicians.
This is my favorite comment!
From a friend re: OB trash problems, etc.
“You should see Sunset Cliffs at night. One evening when my daughter was visiting, there was a spectacular sunset. We decided to go to the Cliffs to watch it. We couldn’t believe our eyes!! People… every inch of the cliffs. Some had set up BBQ’s, beach chairs & tables on top of their cars/vans. Some cook and eat, drink, smoke and more. When they leave, some use the trash cans in the parking lot, but they’re not big enough to handle garbage for a thousand. Trash everywhere, along with cans & plastics and the ocean is right there. It’s a place that used to be so peaceful. It was a meditative area. Now it’s party central for huge groups from Who Knows Where! I’m afraid our cozy, beautiful city is slowly being ruined. “
IDEA!!! From a friend.
We have a friend who lives in San Francisco. When Gavin Newsome was elected mayor he drove around the city with a news crew and pointed out things that needed correcting (trash, potholes) that didn’t need city council action. He was calling out the public works departments on the slow and ineffective responses they were giving to citizen complaints. It worked.
Sadie, and so your solution is? Is it Trump’s latest platform to create huge tent cities so “we can reclaim our cities”? You don’t want the homeless living on ‘your sand, your parks, your sidewalks”. Tent cities are certainly a third world, interim solution to removing the homeless and “their trash” from your city, but then what? For an answer to ‘then what”, just look around the globe. “Removing” these people from your eyes maybe solves your problem, but does zero for solving their problem. Please redirect your concerns towards a larger aim than ‘reclaiming the city”…
How totally off base! I don’t know why your mind goes so far south of reality. I think instead of building condo’s that’s they can’t afford, we need to build apartments, or rooms & put a roof over these folks heads. We need to have services available to help them. When they are treated humanely, life might be good again. Don’t need to be a retired botanist to see that.
Why are you inserting individuals into this conversation? It isn’t necessary & the hostility creates a situation where people are rude (you) and others may not participate.
Sadie said: ” They need to get SDPD back up & rolling first & enforce laws on the books. Homeless, vagrants can not live on the sidewalk, the sand, our FAMILY parks, our yards,…”
So, where are they to live? Right now?
(And you’re the one who is “inserting individuals” into the conversation by calling out commenter retired botanist a couple of times now.)
I said botanist once. If you read my response to whatever his name is, I offered my idea of what could be done. Not saying it’s the best idea, never mentioned putting homeless in jail for being homeless. I think we need to build safe, clean rooms for them & provide services to try to get them back on their feet.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. BTW, retired botanist is a woman.
Thank you.