Category: Homelessness

Has the City squirreled away millions of dollars in off-budget funds which could be used for affordable housing and housing for the homeless?

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

In the City of Palo Alto, if you make less than $250,000 a year, you’re eligible for a housing subsidy. The city council has voted to study a housing proposal that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.

Here in San Diego, the situation is not much better as teachers, police and government workers cannot afford to live in the city they work in. So if middle class, college educated professionals can’t afford to live here, how can anyone else lower on the economic ladder afford to live here either? In particular, those on the bottom most rung, the homeless, can’t even afford a foot in the door.

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Is it all coming together,
or all falling apart?
I can’t tell anymore.
I came with love,
but can’t find your heart.

I tried to explain how we could help get people off their streets,
by providing basic shelter in supportive communities.
We’d carefully thought out the plan,
Laid it out for them in ways they could understand,
how this would make life better for everyone.

But they came armed with one practiced phrase:
“Not in my backyard!”

Can it all come together?
Or is it already falling apart?
It’s impossible to tell
When we say we want peace,
but we’re fighting an uphill battle from the start.

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Quick— imagine a homeless person.

Did you conjure up the image of an utterly ordinary looking seventy year old white woman attending classes at SDSU? or a neatly dressed young Latino waiting at a bus stop? or a pregnant African American woman passing by your house? or a neighborhood kid who disappears and reappears and seems disconnected, rootless?

We don’t hear much about these men and women, young and old, who are homeless. Instead, we read about the uptrodden who have to deal with homeless people crapping on the sidewalk in front of their expensive condos downtown or the bad optics and shabby aesthetics of the tents and battered pieces of cardboard where the homeless visibly bed down every night, also downtown.

A not-so-common idea for a building that belongs to us

By Jeeni Criscenzo

For three years, 150,000 square feet of space in downtown, belonging to the citizens of San Diego, has stood vacant. Each night, for these past three years, impoverished human beings have spread their cardboard beds on the brass inlays of the terrazzo at the entrance of the old Central Library on E Street.

But any suggestion that this place could provide shelter for homeless people is dead on arrival, so I won’t be wasting words on that idea. But I do think we need to come up with a fair and just use of this building that retains the spirit of its original reason for being built. After all, it belongs to us, if we are willing to fight for it and put a little imagination into its transformation.

* Some Police Cameras Installed
* March 19th – Friends of OB Library Book and Yard Sale – Donations Needed
* Wife of Drowning Victim in OB Asks “What Was He Thinking?”
* Hess Brewery Dinged by Lack of Parking Citation
* Point Loma High Players and Fans Left in the Dark
* OB Elementary Principal to Kiss a Pig
* No Good Leads in Parrots Killings – Issue to Be Addressed at OB Town Council Meet
* New Construction Fence Around Former Doctors’ Offices – the Future “OB Plaza”
* OB Chili Cook-Off Contestants Needed
* Chapter One Tattoo Parlor Opens
* Hookah Parlor Closes
* Dog Lost at Sea Returned to San Diego Owner 5 Weeks Later
* Two Local Women Beaten Up by Female Traveler
* OB Picked as “Best” Neighborhood of a Large City

By Korla Eaquinta

The new fence around Cabrillo Recreation Center is finished. The community has been concerned about access as the gates have been locked up most of the time.

The following is an email from Alvin Nguyen, Center Director detailing the new procedure for the field to be accessible. (Please note that no one is allowed to be on school grounds nor on the field at the Rec center during school hours.)

Starting March 1, 2016, we will be following the procedure according to the above Cabrillo Gates Map.

I have listed a breakdown of the procedure below for your convenience:

By Geoff Page:

On Wednesday, March 2nd, OB Dude’s comment on the Rag’s camera story alerted me to a Channel 10 News story about transient-set fires in Ocean Beach. Here is the link posted to the story:

If you look at the video, you can see a four lane road with a median and an overpass. The only place this could be is Nimitz Blvd. and the overpass is Famosa Blvd. There is no overpass within the boundaries of Ocean Beach, this area is Point Loma.

The ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, along with 26 civil rights, social service organizations, and law firms on February 17th asked the Federal government for an investigation into the SDPD’s use of force when encountering people living with mental illness.

An inquiry by the ACLU, following the police shooting of a mentally ill man holding a pen, and the district attorney’s decision not to press charges against the officer, revealed what they believe was a disturbing pattern and practice of improperly handling incidents with people with mental illness or who are experiencing a mental health crisis by SDPD personnel.

By John Lawrence

I met Suzie at Panera Bread in Liberty Station. She is homeless but not vehicle-less. She used to have a nice home in Point Loma, had lived in the Point Loma – Ocean Beach area for years.

She has been homeless since last April when her boyfriend kicked her out of his apartment. When that happened, she got on Craigslist and bought an RV.

There are many levels and degrees of homelessness, and Suzie is on one of the better off levels. Some homeless persons live on boats in the harbor. So for some, homelessness verges on an alternative lifestyle, the key being whether or not they are forced into the situation or whether their situation is freely chosen.

As cities search for solutions to homelessness, Portland’s Dignity Village offers 60 men and women community and safety.

Katie Mays, the site’s social worker, stands next to villager Rick Proudfoot in front of his house. Photo: Paul Dunn

By Marcus Harrison Green / Yes! Magazine

On a frigid January morning in Portland, Ore., a tour through Dignity Village follows the same path its residents are required to travel. All were, or are, homeless.

By Jeeni Criscenzo

No question about it—being involved in a coalition to build a tiny village of tiny shelters for people who are without a place to live, is damn exciting!

I can’t put my finger on exactly why this is taking over my brain activity—from waking up in the morning ready to get online and share ideas, to dreaming about it at night.

Maybe it’s what someone at our community meeting last week said about it—tiny homes are sexy!

San Diego Has the Fourth Highest Number of Homeless in the US and that Doesn’t Even Count Most Homeless Families

By John Lawrence

I met a homeless woman at a coffee shop in downtown San Diego. She had emailed me to correct a few points in a previous article I had written about the homeless. Her name is Jingles, not her real name, of course.

That’s the name she goes by downtown. She’s tough, savvy, intelligent, resourceful, wise to the ways of the street. She is 55 years old with several health related problems and three small dogs.