Month: June 2025

by Marisa Kendall, Aaron Schrank and Lisa Halverstadt / Cal-Matters / June 27, 2025

It’s been 12 months since a groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decision rewrote the playbook on homelessness, allowing cities in California and beyond to make homeless encampments illegal, even when no shelter is available.

Before the justices ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson, Los Angeles and other cities generally had to offer someone a shelter bed before punishing them for sleeping on the street. But that went out the window when the justices upheld an ordinance by the Oregon city of Grants Pass that banned camping on all public property.

Since the ruling, camping-related citations and arrests have soared in cities throughout California — everywhere from Sacramento to Los Angeles to San Diego and beyond.

In each of those three cities, police are citing many of the same people again and again. And while some have managed to move indoors, many others are still camping in the same places, racking up citations that ultimately make it more difficult to find housing.

We tracked down a few of those people. Here are their stories:  [For other California homeless stories, go here]

San Diego: Moving into a swamp 

Micah Huff for a time lost touch with a San Diego case manager who was trying to help him move to a city-backed homeless campsite as he sought to avoid police and encampment clean-ups.

By Arturo Castañares – Publisher / La Prensa / June 26, 2025

A New York judge last month ordered an appointed remediation manager to oversee the notorious jail on Rikers Island in New York after 40 inmates have died since 2022, yet more inmates have died in San Diego County jails without any substantial reform taking place.

46 inmates have died in San Diego County jails since 2022, including 19 in 2022, 13 in 2023, 8 last year, and 6 so far this year.

Those are more deaths per year than Rikers, a jail known as one of the worst -if not the worst- in the country, with stabbings, slashing, fights, assaults on staff, and high numbers of inmate deaths.

In comparison, Rikers has had 40 deaths since 2022, with 19 that year, 9 in 2023, 7 in 2024, and 5 so far this year.

And, before anyone complains about comparing apples to oranges, the jail population of Rikers is larger than the combined population of all seven of San Diego’s County jails, so the percentage of deaths per thousand is even higher for San Diego jails.

By Steve Rodriguez

Summer night event.
San Diego tradition.
Fireworks above

Sea World and the Bay.
Big blasts disrupt the silence,
erasing the calm

By Colleen O’Connor

A treat to behold. The annual Cabrillo Club #6 antique car show. With great live music and singers.

Organizers Sharon May and Ronni Madruga produced this year’s program.

Vintage cars lined the Portuguese Hall parking lot. A $5 dollar pancake breakfast with eggs and sausage greeted the onlookers. Free to look. $1 to vote the “best of show” winner. The proceeds of which go to the charity of that winner’s choice.

By Francine Maxwell / June 30, 2025

San Diego’s policing “restructure” under Chief Scott Wahl isn’t a revolution — it’s a remix of the same old playlist.

Wahl has created new departments for his friends, shuffled people up the chain, and called it reform. He has dropped four outreach officers with a badge and a badge number and then claimed the department is “listening.” But behind the scenes, nothing meaningful has shifted for the communities carrying the heaviest burden of policing in this city.

By Neighbors for a Better San Diego / June 27, 2025

On Tuesday morning, July 1, at 10:00 a.m., there will be a second reading of the amended ADU ordinance, adopted by the City Council on June 16, 2025.

While Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD) would have liked the Council to adopt our “Four is Fair” proposal, that motion was rejected on a narrow 5-4 vote, leading to the compromise that is before the Council for final approval.

NFABSD supports adoption of the amended regulations and will remain vigilant to ensure that the new regulations and other existing Municipal Codes are rigorously followed.

We have received inquiries regarding the difference between the adopted regulations and state law. Unfortunately, that target has changed since NFABSD started in 2021. As a result of state laws enacted after 2021, California requires cities to permit 2 ADUs and 1 JADU on every single-family lot:

Enjoy this short video of the Ocean Beach annual Street Fair of 2025 by Charles Landon.

Come inside.

By Kate Callen / June 27, 2025

In 2022, when San Diego Councilmembers Joe La Cava and Sean Elo-Rivera pushed for Measure B to levy trash fees on single-family homes, they sought to assure the public that all would be well.

They said the new fees would be an affordable $23 to $29 a month. They said this wasn’t a scheme to raise money for a cash-strapped city because the real aims were “responsible governance, local innovation, and world-class service.” They promised that the public would be fully engaged in every step of the process.

That was all false. Fees will be nearly twice the estimates, and they will get higher. The public was shut out of the process – and no, ushering people into conference rooms to look at table-top exhibits of tiny trash bins doesn’t count as “community engagement.”

And when they voted in the fees June 9 at a meeting packed with angry constituents, weary councilmembers finally spoke the truth: They felt they had to do this because they were desperate for money.

By Michael Smolens / San Diego Union-Tribune / June 27, 2025

Earlier this month, San Diego Catholic Bishop-Designate Michael Pham and Auxiliary Bishops Ramón Bejarano and Felipe Pulido reflected on the past and accurately predicted the future.

“. . . it has been experienced that the presence of faith leaders makes a difference in how the migrants are treated,” they wrote in a June 11 letter to fellow priests, deacons and parish leaders.

A little more than a week later, Pham led a delegation of faith leaders to accompany immigrants attending court hearings at the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in downtown San Diego.

The proceedings and scene in and around the courthouse on June 20 were calm compared with chaos and controversy in San Diego and elsewhere at other times when agents snatched immigrants on the way to and from appointed court hearings.

Too bad that sense of dignity, humility and, frankly, adult behavior brought by Pham and his colleagues couldn’t be cast upon other aspects of the immigration enforcement crisis, created by recent militaristic raids and aggressive government response to protests that sometimes have devolved into violence.

From Surfrider San Diego County

SAVE DEL MAR’S BEACHES FROM ANNIHILATION

Don’t allow SANDAG to derail our shoreline! This is serious. SANDAG recently backpedaled from their previous commitment to relocate the train off of Del Mar’s eroding bluffs. They’re now considering keeping the train in place indefinitely, despite over 20 years of costly, continuous, beach-killing bluff stabilization work to prevent the railroad from collapsing onto the beach.

Keeping the train in place would continue this unending struggle against Mother Nature, requiring deep trenching into the bluffs and building seawalls across almost 1.7 miles of beach. In addition to forever destroying the bluffs’ natural beauty, the seawalls would subject the beach to accelerated erosion and eventually, permanent beach loss, as sea levels continue to rise.

The current seawalls will be removed if the train is relocated, but leaving it in place means more will be added… permanently.

By Lisa Mortensen

While I encourage research on housing policies in order to find solutions for the chronic need for affordable housing, going to Austria to find out about government subsidized housing programs that work in that country appears a bit untimely. 

At a time when the County of San Diego, the City of San Diego, and our State all have deficits, this junket seems to be a pipe dream.  In addition, the urgency of this announcement made now is perplexing since next week is the County Supervisor election which would bring all 5 members into the discussion on this further.

However, what is really saying the quiet part out loud that calls this trip into question is the fact there is a $15,600 payment to Jennifer LeSar’s academy which is sponsoring this junket.