Category: Homelessness

by Mariana Martínez Barba / Voice of San Diego / March 24, 2026

Four years ago, researchers found that if the city opened a safe parking lot for 24 hours every day, it would be easier to connect individuals who live in their vehicles to services.

Those findings encouraged city officials to make a safe parking lot in Mission Valley available 24 hours a day. That meant people staying at the lot didn’t have to leave during the day and could access services with more flexibility.

Other city safe parking lots have curfews, which means people staying there need to leave during the day and return at night. That’s the case at a safe lot near the airport, known as H Barracks. The city is currently in a legal battle with homeless individuals over the lot’s accessibility.

One of the researchers involved in the previous study of city safe lots still believes it’s more effective to open lots for 24 hours every day. City officials maintain that H Barracks is working as is and are not considering changing its operation hours. Homeless advocates say extended hours could help, but San Diegans living in their cars aren’t sure.

Earlier this week, an opinion piece appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune, written by occasional Rag writer Jillian Butler, with the headline, “Why Ocean Beach needs ‘broken windows’ policing.” It decried the sad state of OB and complained of the graffiti, drug use and fights visible in public. Butler stated:

The 5000 block of Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach was once a cultural and business haven. Now, it is commonplace to stroll through the area on any day and witness individuals using heroin, openly selling drugs, defecating or masturbating. … However, as any business owner of an establishment on Newport can tell you, stabbings, druggings and brawls are no longer uncommon occurrences.

Butler states that non-violent offenses no longer are dealt with by San Diego police, OB needs what’s called “broken windows’ policing.” This is a community-based system of policing and caring for a community; repair the windows, cover up the graffiti to show that residents care about the neighborhood.

But drug use, graffiti and fights have been common in OB for decades. Yet, Butler raises the issue: has it worsened? Is Ocean Beach really getting this bad?

What’s your view?

Here’s Butler’s piece:

Why Ocean Beach needs ‘broken windows’ policing

By Jillian Butler

On the wall beside the CVS parking lot in Ocean Beach, a graffiti tag appeared months ago. Since then, more tags have followed. Drug use and fights in the parking lot are no longer unusual, and the sense that no one is responsible for maintaining order has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Criminologists call this the “broken windows” theory: Visible signs of disorder signal that lawlessness will be tolerated, inviting more serious crime to follow. Though critics dubbed this theory inequitable, my coastal San Diego neighborhood of Ocean Beach has become a case study in what happens when small crimes and public disorder are allowed to persist.

“My Brother Had a Name: Ryan Richard Taylor”

by Rachael Taylor / Voice of San Diego / March 17, 2026

When people hear that my younger brother died while experiencing homelessness, I can tell they want the story to stop there.

They want something tidy, contained and easier to process.

But my brother was not just another tragic ending on the street to be squeezed inside a statistic.

My brother had a name: Ryan Richard Taylor.

Last year, Voice of San Diego featured him in a story about people who received tickets over and over again because they were homeless. Authorities claimed their crackdown was reducing street homelessness. But Ryan continued to stay in Ocean Beach, where he felt most comfortable and at home, even after five arrests and nine citations for offenses related to homelessness.

He died in Ocean Beach on December 6, 2025.

By Jillian Butler

Within the Peninsula Community and San Diego as a whole, homelessness continues to be a pervasive topic brought up in social media discourse, political campaigns, and community meetings.

It is equally divisive as it is pervasive. Some argue for strict crackdowns while others worry about over-policing. Regardless of individual feelings, the homelessness crisis of San Diego is a problem that requires concrete solutions. Ocean Beach has always prided itself on compassion. But compassion alone hasn’t resolved the growing tension around homelessness in 92107.

The San Diego Regional Homeless Task Force estimated that there were no less than 9,905 homeless residing within San Diego County in 2025. At least 221 of those individuals are in the 92107 area code. The average age of those experiencing homelessness is 43 years old. The gender demographics are closely split with 51% being female and 49% being male. Racially, Black people of color make up 48% of the homeless population. Both senior (age 55+) and youth (age 12-24) homeless rates are consistently increasing.

By Pam Kragen / San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 14 -15, 2026

Stan Levin, a Korean War veteran who spent the later years of his life as a passionate anti-war activist and helping San Diego’s homeless population, passed away Jan. 8 at a local hospital. He was 96.

The longtime San Diegan worked as an acrobat, in airplane manufacturing, as a schoolteacher and in the real estate industry. But he became best known for his volunteer work with San Diego Veterans for Peace, a vocation that began around his 80th birthday in 2010. He participated in demonstrations, protested at the Miramar air shows, spoke at public events and wrote many essays and letters to the editor that were published in this and other local newspapers and on news sites.

Levin’s daughter Annie Revel said her father loved talking to people on virtually any topic, but over the past 20 years he increasingly became an outspoken anti-war activist.

“He was opinionated and very engaged in life,” Revel said. “He always had a twinkle in his eye and he had a great sense of fun. He was very curious and inquisitive and always learning.”

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 16, 2026

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said Thursday he will aggressively pursue a new sports arena project despite legal challenges and will revive plans to transform the downtown Civic Center, starting with new college classrooms.

Delivering his sixth annual State of the City address, the mayor also announced that San Diego had permitted 7,500 new homes in 2025 — the third year in a row that permits have been nearly twice the city’s long-term average.

The mayor also said he would try to increase national focus on the housing crisis this year as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the first time San Diego has led that group.

Gloria’s annual speech, delivered at City Hall on Thursday afternoon, touched on familiar themes but offered less ambitious proposals than he had made in addresses earlier in his mayoralty.

And as in last year’s speech, he continued to urge other government agencies to help San Diego solve its problems.

He called on Caltrans to expand efforts to clear homeless encampments under freeways. He called on the state to better fund a crackdown on retail theft. And he again called on the county to address the mental illness and addiction problems that he said contribute to the city’s homelessness crisis.

Hundreds of people were forced to flee a homeless shelter near downtown San Diego as floodwaters rushed through the front door just recently, leaving many with few belongings.

Officials evacuated Alpha Project’s Bridge Shelter, a massive gray tent near 16th Street and Newton Avenue on the edge of Barrio Logan, early New Year’s Day. About 325 men and women are now sleeping in the Municipal Gym in Balboa Park.

More than 2 inches of rain fell on San Diego County on New Year’s, breaking local records and causing multiple water rescues. The shelter was one of the first casualties.

Now Alpha Project is calling on San Diegans to donate items — and they’re asking people to deliver them to the Recital Hall in Balboa Park.

By Michael Smolens  / San Diego Union-Tribune / December 19, 2025

[Go to original here for links]

It seems there’s hardly anything good to say about reducing homelessness in San Diego these days.

Keep that word “hardly” in mind for a minute.

San Diego’s perpetually stressed rental voucher program faces rent increases for recipients, some of whom are at risk of becoming homeless. Some cities may no longer add people to their years-long voucher waiting lists.

Greater state and local cooperation to clear out encampments on freeway-adjacent property was cheered by some officials. But the subsequent surge in shelter requests was mostly met with a no-room-at-the-inn response at the packed facilities, as reported by Blake Nelson of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The safe parking program in Encinitas that gives homeless people a place to sleep in their cars may shut down at the end of this month amid a funding dispute.

The prospective rent increases planned by the San Diego Housing Commission are moving forward in anticipation of sweeping Trump administration cuts in homeless and housing programs that have yet to take effect. The other problems are largely independent of those coming reductions.

by Calista Stocker / Times of San Diego / Dec. 16, 2025

In 2017, the Metropolitan Transit System spent $1.4 million upgrading bus stop benches throughout the county. In addition to improved water drainage and material updates, the new benches came with dividers, which their contractor refers to as “vagrant bars.”

That was a year after the city of San Diego raced to install jagged rocks downtown under Interstate 5 in time for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Petco Park, and five years before the Downtown Partnership built a controversial bike rack/bench designed to deter lying down.

These are all examples of what urban designers call “hostile architecture.” Commonly referred to as “anti-homeless architecture” or “defensive design,” the concept is used to describe public infrastructure design intended to subtly (or not so subtly) change behavior.

San Diego-based urban designer Howard Blackson argues that hostile architecture reflects the hostility of human nature.

A group of up to 60 people gathered yesterday at The Wall, at the foot of Newport Avenue, to remember Tracy Condon. Candles were lit, words were spoken as her loved ones, friends, and strangers came together to commemorate the life of a homeless woman killed in a hit and run on Santa Monica Avenue last week.

One of her daughters was there as well as an ex and the pastor of a local church. TV station 7SanDiego was there and gave a touching news video.

A memorial is being planned by friends for Tracy Condon, killed in a hit-and-run incident this week in Ocean Beach.

She was reportedly sitting on the curb near the front of the OB Library or Post Office when she was struck by a truck and fatally injured. The driver initially ran away but upon his return 3 hours later, was arrested by police. Tracy was known for year as someone who handed out food to homeless folks in OB — only to then become one herself.

A memorial has been scheduled for Tracy, next week, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, down at the Wall at the end of Newport Avenue, at 4:55 p.m.

Here’s the definitive story — from the SD Union-Tribune:

A 24-year-old driver was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of fatally striking a woman sitting on a sidewalk in Ocean Beach and then running away, San Diego police said.

The collision occurred shortly before 4:45 p.m. on Santa Monica Avenue near Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Police said the driver, who was parked facing the north curb of Santa Monica, for unknown reasons accelerated forward while attempting to leave and struck a 59-year-old woman sitting on the north sidewalk.

The man got out of the truck and ran off, abandoning his vehicle, police said. He was arrested on suspicion of felony hit and run by officers about three hours later when he returned to the scene where he had left his 2002 Toyota Tundra, police spokesperson Officer Colin Steinbroner said.

The woman was transported to a hospital, where she died. Her name has not been released.

That’s the U-T report as of about 5pm Wed. Nov. 5.

In the meantime, the community has identified the woman as Tracy Condon. There’s a Moment of Remembrance for her on Wed, Nov 12 at 4:55 pm at Veterans Plaza (sunset), Ocean Beach Veteran’s Plaza.