Category: Homelessness

By Murtaza Baxamusa / SanDiegoUrbDeZine

San Diego does not have a homeless problem, it has a housing bed inventory problem in comparison to other large cities. The region’s homeless as a percentage of the total population is 12^th in the nation, and the five-year trend is relatively flat when including both sheltered and unsheltered homeless. Yet, despite the public outcry, there are still about five thousand unsheltered homeless sleeping on our streets, sidewalks, canyons, riverbeds, parks and open spaces.

By Jeeni Criscenzo

According to the survey in the 2018 Point-in-Time Count (PITC) of homeless people in San Diego County, the four main reasons for becoming homeless are: Loss of Job; Money Issues; Cost of Housing, and Other. Abuse/Violence ranks lowest.

But this survey is missing input from thousands of families, as I explained in my prior column, so in reality, fleeing from domestic violence could be a major cause of homelessness. So too could deportation of the primary breadwinner be a factor, which is not even listed as an option, but is a contributing factor for some homeless families.

Underlying those four highest causes are specific failings in our current economic system, such as: jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the basics;

Being portrayed negatively in the international spotlight is never good, as the city of El Cajon recently found out. The east county city found international attention after it banned feeding the homeless in parks, and after about a dozen homeless advocates were arrested, cited and released for trying to feed homeless people in a local El Cajon park.

The city lifted the temporary order on Tuesday, January 23rd. They had enacted the ban – they claimed – as a safety measure after the San Diego County Board of Supervisors declared the region’s growing hepatitis A outbreak a public health emergency. The same day, last Tuesday, the County ended the health emergency over Hep A.

Faulconer Has Ignored Calls for More Public Restrooms Downtown Since 2014

By Martha Sullivan / Change.org

The San Diego City government, led by Mayor Faulconer, has been told for three years that more public restrooms are needed downtown.

But the Mayor has consistently cried poor mouth — despite spending $2.1 million on an unplanned EIR for an upgraded Qualcomm Football Stadium during this time.

By Jeeni Criscenzo /San Diego Free Press

Let me start with an apology. At the San Diego Select Committee for Homelessness meeting on Monday, July 24, I made some comments in response to a report by the new CEO of the Regional Taskforce on the Homeless, Gordon Walker, which came out sounding critical and petty.

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

Is the Regional Task Force on Homelessness (RTFH) really expecting people in desperate situations to patiently wait another year while we work on yet another plan?

Do we have so little confidence in our own ability to assess a situation that we need to bring in an expert from Sacramento to tell us what to do? Or are we so hamstrung by the same old vested interests that we can’t accommodate new ideas unless they come from outside and we pay lots of money for them?

I really want to believe that we are getting closer to a coordinated plan for housing people who’re experiencing homelessness. But I’ve sat through enough of these meetings over the last decade to justify my skepticism.

Homelessness San Diego; Photo credit Michael McConnell

By Stan Levin / San Diego Veterans for Peace

They are here, by the hundreds, by the thousands, the dispossessed among us.
People having little in the way of the niceties of a comfortable existence
That equates with the concept of “Home”.
Many wear all the clothing they own, on their backs, day and night.
Some push their collection of meager possessions around in a shopping cart they have found
Or stolen, ahead of them in their endless wanderings
To nowhere in particular.

By sloan ranger

Sometimes I don’t see him for weeks and I wonder where he is.

He must cover several miles daily, walking silently up and down Third Avenue, wearing his heavy black peacoat with a hood.

I don’t worry about him in the cold so much, it’s the blistering hot days I think of him most because he has the heavy coat on then, too.

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

The numbers of homeless person in our region counted during the annual Point in Time Count (PITC) conducted January 29, 2017 were recently released.

This is the data that will be sent to HUD to determine how much funding will be provided to the County of San Diego for homeless issues, including emergency shelter and efforts to get people into permanent housing. Last year that amounted to $18 million but under the Trump administration those funds could be significantly reduced.

By Jeeni Criscenzo /San Diego Free Press

On April 5th, while I was in City Hall with other advocates for homeless people voicing our objections to the Mayor’s proposed ballot measure to increase the Transit Occupancy Tax to pay for an expansion of the convention center, with a few crumbs tossed in for “Reducing Homelessness”, only a few blocks away, some of our City’s most destitute citizens were being cruelly victimized.

Their tormentors not only took away everything they had left in the world, including what little makeshift shelter they had, but in one case documented in photos and a video by Michael McConnell, they even took a man’s pet dog!

By Geoff Page

The Midway/Pacific Highway Community Planning Group regular Wednesday monthly meeting, held at the San Diego City College – West City Campus on Fordham Street on March 15th, was abbreviated because of a lack of action items and a number of government report no shows.

The only action item was a partial decision of the Midway community plan, a draft of which was coming out in March according to Vicki White from the Planning Department.

Small Parks Included in New Community Plan

White introduced a document that depicted areas of the Midway district that will be set aside as park land. Two small areas on the bike path along the river were the subject of the action vote. One area was designated “San Diego River Park Pathway” and the other was “San Diego Mini Park.”

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Say what you want about the faraway White House. But watch what you say about City Hall and the people we elect to local government – they’re practically family.

They live in our neighborhoods. We have coffee with them when they’re running for office. We bump into them at the movies or supermarket. We could hop a trolley downtown and collar them at work. We elect them to work for us.

Their job is to pave the streets, limit what gets built on that empty lot around the corner, keep an eye on the police department, get the trash picked up, and make sure there are enough fire stations to keep us safe and good air-quality levels to keep us healthy and enough libraries and parks to help make us happy.