The Rag Revisits Gloria’s ‘Hot Lot’ Homeless Encampment

By Geoff Page

It has been three weeks since The Rag’s story on the city’s homeless encampment at the city’s Central Operations Station. The hot lot. A return visit was in order to see if the facility was doing any better after all of the criticism in the media. Sadly, not much better at all.

There have been changes. During the last visit, the facility consisted a large fenced area with one interior fence. There was a large area for tents and a small area for a trailer, restrooms and wash stands. The trailer appears to be an office.

As reportedly previously, the trailer was not, and still is not, ADA compliant. It clearly is not a shower facility. There did not appear to be any shower facilities on the site.

The city created a smaller, fenced-in enclosure within the large area where the tents were set up. This area shared a fence with the pre-existing area that contains the trailer. There were 15+ tents in this new, interior enclosure. The reason for this may be to separate a specific population, such as perhaps women and children, from the main area.

Seven canopies in trailer area.

The rest of tent area outside this new enclosure had about 40 tents in it.  That would be 55+ tents altogether. Three weeks ago, there were 28 tents. The site is supposed to hold 131 tents. The city has only managed to add 27 tents in those three weeks.

The major, valid criticism for this location is the heat and a complete lack of shade. The Rag made an issue of this as did others in the media. Did the city listen?

There are four more 10 x 10 canopies in the large tent area bringing the total to five. There were none in the new enclosure. There were three canopies outside the new enclosure between that fence and the site fence. Oddly enough, there were seven canopies in the small area that contained the trailer.

That would amount to about 1,500 square feet of shade on a site of about 45,000 square feet.

Shade structure tarps interior side. All photos by Geoff Page.

There was something new that may be a shade shelter. It appears to be roughly 15 feet wide and about 100 feet long. As the pictures show, tarps are strung between the top of the exterior site fence for the city’s facility and the new interior enclosure fence. The exterior site fence is much taller than the interior fence creating a sloping roof. The better headroom is clearly closer to the outside fence than next to the low side.

The city’s exterior site fence has a green privacy screen on it. It forms one wall. This impedes the flow of breezes into the shade area and blocks any exterior views. The enclosure side of this shade area also has a privacy screen on it. Additionally, the roof tarps extend pretty much over the side of the new enclosure fence. Breezes are again impeded from this side and views are also blocked.

Shade tunnel entrance.

The end result looks like a dark tunnel with no view outside, except at each end, with less circulating air than outside. At the very least, the city should remove the privacy cloth from the fences, which would allow much better airflow.

Removing the cloth would also give people sitting in the shade the opportunity to look out on the sunny day and the trees in the surrounding hills.

The tents have no relief from the sun. There appears to be some reflective-type materials over the tops of some tents, but not many. This would not help with the heat coming up from the asphalt underneath all of them.

Lastly, there were four or five new toilets. But this is another shade problem — none of the portable toilets on the site, which are made of plastic, are shaded. After many years working outdoors in San Diego, this writer can personally attest to how almost unbearably hot these things can get out in the sun. They should all have shade.

The overall feeling is that the city has made very little real effort to improve the living conditions or to even fill up the available spaces. It may be that the city knows it has to be out of this location by December 28. Channel 8’s Dorian Hargrove discovered this when he obtained the site permits. The city is probably unwilling to spend any more than it absolutely has to.

The people caught in between are the people in those tents. The city has patted itself on the back for creating this place but it is all smoke and mirrors. Providing shade is not an expensive thing to do, it is not something to go cheap on.