By Carolyn Chase
Sure would be nice to follow the money on the “homelessness” spending. With hundreds of millions of dollars going out the door, and let’s just say 10,000 unhoused – how much of that is direct help and how much is building rent-controlled units and how much is – as one activist put – the homeless industrial complex? I’m sure some has gone for good, but really…there doesn’t seem to be any serious analysis of what is a problem in Every City in the USA.
And you see it in Italy and France and the UK. Not so much in Scandinavia since not only do they generally believe that housing is a right, but they find ways to provide it. Austria also has an effective public housing program. Copenhagen in particular finds ways to provide affordable housing that isn’t bland and prone to low qualities of life, i.e. they are designed with green spaces and worthwhile architecture. It’s not rocket science – it’s design consciousness.
What we have around here in too many cases is cheap design and construction (not designed to last though the costs are definitely hard to manage) to support the bottom lines of the project. It is with some irony that San Diego is hosting the Design set this year. I’ve seen creative projects, but it’s the cheap attitude in how a project is designed that I resent. A little flair and long-term thinking at the design level can make a big difference later. Affordable housing does not need to luxe it — needs to be practical and designed with a sensitivity of the humans going to live there day-in and day-out.
What’s happening now is a retreat to the indoors – something the Mediterranean peoples figured out oh maybe a thousand years ago. The secure in society retreat to their private patios (clubs etc) leaving the poor and those who have to travel in cars – to fight it out over the streets. Into the social engineering fray bicyclists get killed and small businesses are left with another source of stress. Building a bike lane – if it’s used – increases problems for pedestrians. Oh – and I saw one used the other day. Some body in cruiser turned into the bike lane going the wrong way on 5th. I was surprised that the lanes are 1) designed to allow such a wide car to enter and 2) designed so that they can.
Planning is Dead and it seems to engineers designing things either 1) have never used a bike in a real city 2) have not had to use transit 3) Do not have any meaningful oversight /input from those who do. Maybe I could offer to lead a junket to Copenhagen etc. I bet that would have takers. But no, when you try and promote effective Best Practices you run into the Not Invented Here mentality.
The “Strong Mayor”
It’s not even sleight of hand anymore at the City. The structural change to the “strong mayor” system gave all the power to one person who is no longer required to attend public hearings and participate in a public discussion about what is happening and what should be happening. Furthermore they hire consultants to deal with the public, asking them to go to meaningless meetings, too often when the major decisions have already been made behind the scenes.
It’s part of the *legacy* of former Mayor Jerry Sanders who ordered employees not to answer questions from members of the public. I used to be able to call any department and get just about any question answered – straight up, over the phone. Since then, you can’t even get an honest reply to a filed Public Info Request – but they sure spent some bucks on the software to manage the public.
The wealth disparity has grown out of control, so we ave a large number of the population who no longer are within range of the American Dream, and incomes have also not kept up with housing and rent price increases since about the year 2,000. No one is looking at or at least talking about the root causes of homelessness; rather the focus is on build, build, build the wrong kinds of homes as the author or the article has stated. There needs to be some recognition and solutions for the internet that has put the real estate industry on super caffeine. Companies that buy up hundreds and thousands of housing units and maximize the rents must be reversed. Whole home short term rentals also energize the real estate industry causing a loss of housing as well as rent and housing price increases. For now, these need to be terminated in the highest rent areas near the coast and downtown. We the taxpayers are covering the cost of rehousing the homeless; we should have a greater say in trying to slow down the growth of that part of the homeless population that derives from the issues I have mentioned above.
Lastly, yes, we need a real manager for our $4.75 B budget. But for now, it is time to tighten the belt at city hall.