Category: Homelessness

by Cody Dulaney/ inewsource / March 28, 2023

A Superior Court judge could undermine San Diego’s strategy to clear homeless encampments from city sidewalks and parks.

This afternoon, Judge Yvonne Campos is set to hear final arguments in a pretrial hearing for a misdemeanor case against a 59-year-old unhoused woman charged with encroachment. It’s a city law that was intended to prohibit trash cans from blocking a sidewalk, but San Diego police have increasingly used it to break up tent encampments that officials say pose a risk to health and safety.

Somebody was listening.

Late last week, we reported that the city was close to utilizing 12 or 13 of the trailers it had stored for 3 years, given to the city by the state for unhoused needy families. On Wednesday, March 15, the San Diego City Council‘s Rules Committee had voted unanimously to move forward a plan to open a safe parking lot in the Clairemont – Rose Canyon neighborhood for people who sleep overnight in campers or other vehicles.

We’ve been covering the “lost trailers” for the homeless for weeks in the hopes there would be some public and or media traction that would pressure the Gloria administration to get on the ball and put the trailers to the use that was intended.

California is now home to more than 171,000 homeless individuals, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 6.2% increase since 2020.

Roughly 67%, or more than 115,000 are unsheltered meaning that they’re living outside.

If all the state’s homeless individuals lived in one locale, they’d make up the 32nd largest city in California. This may not seem so much. But consider this.

After storing for 3 years more than a dozen empty trailers meant to be used by homeless people,  San Diego appears ready – finally – to utilize them for a safe parking lot in the Clairemont neighborhood near Rose Canyon.

The 20 trailers were given to the city by the state for the unhoused during the height of the pandemic. But for some reason, the city just stored 13 of them near the city’s Rose Canyon Operations Yard on Morena Boulevard — north of Costco. (It’s unclear where the other 7 are.) So, San Diego’s Trailergate — a minor scandal that no one really cares much about — may soon be over.

A tent is a tent, but for many it’s the safest, most private space someone may have while experiencing homelessness.

By Amy Denhart / SD Union-Tribune Op-Ed / Feb. 21, 2023

Imagine having everything you own taken from you at a moment’s notice and being forced to scramble to find a place to sleep night after night, week after week.

More and more of our unsheltered neighbors are subjected to this life as homelessness increases and housing costs skyrocket across San Diego. Our officials respond by ordering homeless residents to take down tents during daylight hours, a misguided policy intended to prevent encampments from forming.

The 20-or-so trailers that the City of San Diego received from the State of California 3 years ago for unhoused people and families are still empty and still stored on city property.

The OB Rag located 13 of the unused trailers adjacent to the City’s Rose Canyon Operation Yard at 3775 Morena Boulevard. Nice and brand new, the trailers are generally 8 feet wide by 25 or 30 feet long and are standard recreational vehicles that are towed behind cars and trucks. They have “pop-out” spare rooms and appear ready to receive needy people experiencing homelessness.

San Diego received the trailers 3 years ago under the Mayor Faulconer administration. Faulconer, obviously, did nothing with them. Then came Todd Gloria, who likewise has not done anything with them.

Apparently, for several years, the City of San Diego didn’t need no stinkin’ trailers. The City sat on 20 trailers provided by the State for short- and medium-term housing for people experiencing homelessness. For three years – and is just now readying 13 for a Rose Canyon site along Morena Boulevard that will serve households sometime later this year.

Some background: during the height of the pandemic, the California Department of Social Services created a critical program, Project Roomkey,that sought to provide housing to unhoused people outside the network of group shelters where infections were rampant. Project Roomkey allowed state officials to offer cities and counties more than 1,500 trailers that could serve as short- and medium-term housing for people

Because a recent audit showed the top two reasons a vehicle in San Diego gets towed typically affect low-income people, San Diego officials are proposing changes to the city’s vehicle towing policies. If adopted, the new policies will be more compassionate than current ones.

The city is exploring:

What’s the big deal with having a totally-Democratic City Council if they all start sounding like Republicans? That’s what’s happening in San Diego. The City Council now wants to start charging homeless people — and others — for using public restrooms.

City elected leaders say they could solve the shortage of downtown restrooms by charging users “a nominal fee,” as much as, say, a quarter or 50 cents. Plus, they claim unhoused people would be actually better off because they would have access to more and clean public restrooms. That’s more of a Republican view, isn’t it? Let folks pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and plug in a quarter or two to go to the bathroom.

Let’s have this discussion. San Diego needs to have it.

Bill Walton — probably San Diego’s most famous personage — and George Mullen, the CEO of Sunrise Ranch, have just penned an opinion showcasing their vision of a solution to San Diego’s unhoused.

They offer up something called Sunrise Ranch to be built as a camp for unhoused people on 2,000 acres of empty land at the Miramar Marine Corps Station, the former Camp Elliot weapons range.

They write:

The Regional Task Force on Homelessness has put out a call for more volunteers to participate in the upcoming 2023 Point in Time Count later this month.

The count — scheduled for Jan. 26 — is a federally required activity and a “crucial source of information and funding for homelessness across the county,” the task force said.

Michael McConnell, who has helped and advocated for the homeless for more than a decade, has set up a GoFundMe page in order to help unhoused individuals that lost their belongings from the rising levels of the San Diego River and the recent rain.

The continuous rain has flooded several areas in the San Diego Riverbed, which has impacted an estimated 400 people who call the San Diego Riverbed their home.