Category: Homelessness

It’s becoming all the more apparent to critical observers in San Diego, that here in our town, the homeless don’t count. The numbers of the houseless are surging and local government seems just to sweep their encampments from place to place, never really dipping into the real crisis or affecting the real numbers of our fellow humans who don’t have a shelter over their heads.

Lisa Halverstadt at Voice of San Diego peered into the abyss and wrote:

Street homelessness and the misery tied to it appear to be surging to new highs across San Diego.

An encampment of nearly 100 tents and makeshift structures along a section of Sports Arena Boulevard has been the home for many houseless citizens, but has drawn the wrath and concerns of local neighbors, businesses and the local planning committee – for valid reasons.

But Tuesday morning, Feb. 2, the city will send crews to the sprawling tent city, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced Monday. In a press release, Gloria stated:

“The situation on Sports Arena Boulevard in the Midway community is wholly unacceptable. The potential for an outbreak of disease and the threat to public safety compels us to act now. As we continue to provide shelter and wide array of supportive services to unsheltered people living in the neighborhood, we cannot wait for something terrible to happen before we take decisive action.”

The City of San Diego and Mayor Gloria were recently showcased in the parody/ satirical website, the Onion, which has a readership of 11.7 million readers on Twitter – many more than our own San Diego Union-Tribune (which many San Diegans called “The Onion” over the decades, ironically).

Here it is:

New Initiative Decreases Stigma Against Homeless By Making Majority Of People Homeless

SAN DIEGO—In an effort to decrease the widespread social shaming often associated with being unhoused, a new city initiative unveiled Thursday reportedly aims to decrease stigma against the homeless by making the majority of people homeless.

By Mathew Packard / Voice of San Diego / Dec. 22, 2021

As a not so casual observer of efforts to “end” or even effectively manage the daily impact homelessness is having on our city and on the lives of those experiencing it, I am struck by the pervasive and consistent lack of accountability for those in government responsible.

The San Diego Housing Commission in their 2014 homeless action plan, Housing First, pledged to apply “the power of its federal housing resources to achieve the goal of ending homelessness.” SDHC is a driving force of the national Housing First model (transitioning homeless individuals from the streets directly into permanent housing connected to supportive housing) in the city of San Diego. This year and over more than a decade, the commission has failed to meet this obligation.

Let’s review what the SDHC has done.

Submitted by Gilbert Field

The “Compassion Campaign” of the San Diego Veterans For Peace is again giving out free sleeping bag sets to the many homeless folks downtown who have no sleeping gear whatsoever. Each set consists of a new Coleman polyester sleeping bag and a nice nylon stuff sack to put it in when the client wakes up each morning.

Three (3) outreach trips took place in the last two weeks and they gave out 60 bag sets to folks who they personally confirmed had nothing at all to sleep under in these colder temperatures. Another outreach trip is scheduled soon, and they hope many, many more trips downtown at night will follow this winter, based on the continued support of the generous folks in San Diego.

Every government-owned parcel in the region should be assessed for its viability as a place where people can live or shelter safely temporarily.

By Tamea Kohler / San Diego Union-Tribune Op-Ed / June 8, 2021

Housing ends homelessness. While it’s a complex and layered issue, if we start every conversation about homelessness with the truism that if a person has a home, they are no longer homeless, other aspects can fall into their proper place.

By Mitchelle Woodson, Jennifer Felner, Megan Welsh / San Diego Union-Tribune Op-Ed / June 7, 2021

Last month, a bystander’s video of Jesse Evans’ encounter with San Diego Police Department officers in La Jolla made national news. Evans’ suspected crime? Trying to meet a basic human function — urination — while Black and homeless in one of San Diego’s whitest and wealthiest neighborhoods.

The SDPD’s response?

Editordude: The following post about homelessness in Ocean Beach was written and sent to us by Eliana Phillips, who is a senior at High Tech High International.

By Eliana Phillips

Homelessness in Ocean Beach has been a long standing issue but it has recently been getting more attention.

Local news boards criticize these people and discredit their situations. “The stench by the wall is overwhelming. I barely go that way anymore. So unfair to the actual residents! Come on SDPD-DO SOMETHING,” said one Ocean Beach local.

Join the the Ocean Beach Town Council at 7 pm tonight, Wednesday, March 24 for a facebook live video public meeting. They will have a presentation from PATH , an organization that has new homelessness outreach services in Ocean Beach starting up with new funding from the city.

Mayor Todd Gloria was in Ocean Beach Wednesday, inside the OB Rec Center touting a new approach to San Diego’s homeless population. The city, he said at a press conference, has put together a coordinated outreach program that will send out 12 outreach caseworkers into neighborhoods across the city to provide help to those living on the street.

The coordination will be through the People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) program whose team members will have the ability to connect the houseless with the assistance they need – that day. Gloria said:

“With this new coordinated outreach program, we’re acknowledging that we need to provide a whole toolbox of options to the people who interact with our homeless.”

In referring to the outreach team, he said:

“They will help them overcome the unique challenges, whether it’s drug or alcohol addiction, mental illness, physical health problems or other legal entanglements. We call it ‘person-centered, neighborhood-based, trauma-informed, housing focused approach.”

On Tuesday, Jan. 12, the serial killer of homeless men, Jon David Guerrero, was sentenced to four life sentences without parole, plus an additional 143 years to life in prison. One of those homeless men was an Ocean Beach man, Shawn Mitchell Longley.

Guerrero, 42, pleaded guilty on Jan. 27, 2020 to murdering four homeless men during a grisly serial killing spree in 2016. Four of the sleeping, homeless men were stabbed to death with rail spikes and two of those were set on fire.

Guerrero also pleaded guilty to five counts of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of arson. He agreed to be sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole and an additional 143 years to life in prison. This will occur on May 1. The charges stem from his attacks on 12 men and one woman over six months between February and July 2016.

Guerrero is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he had been treated at Patton State Hospital, then returned to court where he was recently pronounced mentally competent in order to stand trial. He has a history of arrests and mental competency hearings.

By Colleen O’Connor

What a day yesterday. Earthquakes everywhere.

No, not the 7.8 quake in Alaska. That is in the range of “normal.”

Not the confrontation between Florida Rep., Ted Yoho and New York Rep., Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. There, on the Capitol steps, the GOP congressman called AOC “disgusting,” “out of her freaking mind,” and a “f***ing b**tch.”

That, too, seems to be the new “normal.”

Yoho, in typical Trumpian fashion denied it happened, fudged some empty words, “apologized” on the House floor, where he accepted no responsibility, and instead defended his “passion,” and lassoed his wife and daughters into the mix.

All of which prompted AOC to righteously refuse to accept the non-apology apology. Trump’s promise to send more masked, unidentified, camouflaged troops into cities beyond Portland, into Oakland and Chicago doesn’t rank as an earthquake.