Marti Emerald: ‘Don’t Fall for Kevin Faulconer’s Claim of Solving the Homeless Crisis’

by Marti Emerald / Times of San Diego / October 22, 2024

I know adults like to wear costumes in October. And there’s nothing wrong with indulging one’s fantasies. But I still cringe whenever I see Kevin Faulconer pretending he’s an expert on solving homelessness.

Talk about chutzpah!

I watched Faulconer’s ineptitude in dealing with homelessness for eight years while I was on the City Council. At the time, no one regarded him as successful — at anything. He sure didn’t fix the homeless problem. On his watch, it kept getting worse.

Fact: While Faulconer was mayor, the number of unsheltered homeless people in San Diego increased 124%. (From 1,016 in 2007, after his first year as mayor, to 2,283 in 2020, his last.)

Fact: During Faulconer’s final year as mayor, 2020, the population of first-time homeless people in the county went up 79%.

Clearly, Faulconer didn’t address the long-term problem or the short-term problem.

While this was going on, he was shuffling through a succession of “homelessness czars” and purchasing a skydiving facility to use as a “homeless navigation center.” That $7 million transaction was a boon for a Faulconer donor, but just another of his terrible real estate deals for taxpayers.

It seemed like whenever Faulconer claimed he was addressing homelessness, he was actually advancing another agenda.

Take the shortage of public bathrooms downtown.

By Faulconer’s third year as mayor, the lack of sinks and toilets for the growing homeless population reached its crisis. The unsanitary conditions fueled an outbreak of Hepatitis A that sickened 592 and killed 20, mostly homeless. San Diego’s failure was national news.

That tragedy might have been averted had Faulconer not opposed my effort, begun years earlier, to put public toilets downtown.

In 2011, I visited Portland, Oregon, to see firsthand an innovation in easy-to-manage public toilets: the Portland Loo. Numerous West Coast cities had reported success with Portland Loos. I wanted San Diego to join their ranks.

The obstacle: Councilmember Faulconer. He called me into his office demanding to know where I got the nerve to propose this project in his district — downtown San Diego.

“It may be part of your City Council District,” I replied, “but health in our downtown is everybody’s business, with the threat of disease spreading.”

The City Council approved the Loos despite Faulconer’s vehement objections and complaints from the Downtown San Diego Partnership, which represents downtown property owners — a big part of Faulconer’s political base.

Faulconer became Mayor in 2014 and by early 2015 the last Loo was removed — with lethal consequences.

Critics said the Loos were too expensive, but their costs paled in comparison with the emergency public-health funds that were expended once people began to die on Mayor Faulconer’s sidewalks.

This is relevant today because Faulconer is running for county supervisor and flooding the district with mailers touting his mythical success in fighting homelessness. In politics, money matters. Spend enough of it and you can convince people of almost anything, even transform a colossal failure into a seeming success.

The truth is, Faulconer’s first concern was always his image. We saw this in 2016, when San Diego hosted the MLB All-Star Game. Starting a month before the game, signs were posted and homeless people were swept from the vicinity of Petco Park. The dirt shoulders of an underpass where the homeless slept at night were paved with concrete and sharp rocks.

This made hosting the All-Star Game easier for Faulconer; no nasty questions about the folk sleeping in doorways. Once the national media left, the homeless were allowed back in. It was all just a game.

I observed the same phenomenon in Faulconer’s final year in office, when the point-in-time homeless count unexpectedly (some say improbably) dropped. For weeks ahead of the count, homeless advocates reported stepped-up police activity driving the homeless into canyons and hillsides where they wouldn’t be counted.

Lower numbers changed nothing. People understood that only the homeless count was reduced, not the homeless population. And the gambit did not pay off as intended.

The following year, Faulconer ran for governor, touting his big-city success reducing homelessness. California voters didn’t buy it. Once again, he failed spectacularly.

I urge San Diego voters to reject his claims again in November.

Marti Emerald, a former investigative reporter, served on the San Diego City Council from 2008 to 2016. She currently is a trustee of the Sweetwater Union High School District.