Category: Homelessness

Screen shot: KPBS Homeless Babies and Toddlers Endure Tough Long Days on San Diego Streets (video)

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

Using school data, we can prove that close to 10,000 families in San Diego County are homeless and are not included in the Point-in-Time Count (PITC) that is conducted every year throughout the country to determine how to allocate HUD funds for homelessness programs.

[C]lose to 10,000 families in San Diego County are homeless and are not included in the Point-in-Time Count [used] … to determine how to allocate HUD funds for homelessness programs.

By John Lawrence

Amy Goodman did a recent show about the refugees living in a camp in Calais, France. She walked around the camp interviewing several refugees all of whom spoke good English.

Most of these people were sleeping in tents similar to the ones you see on the sidewalks of San Diego. Some had built simple structures.

As she walked around, I began to notice some facilities that they had there which are nowhere to be found for the San Diego homeless. First I noticed a dumpster. There’s no dumpster for San Diego’s homeless. The trash just gets left on the street.

By Vera Sanchez and Sunny Rey

December 25th, 2015 is the day we found Craig Miller dead. Most people celebrate Christmas by unwrapping surprises, with the smell of coffee, the sound of giggles, and the warmth of a crowded house. We were just two volunteers wanting to pass out sleeping bags; the season slump was to be uplifted in the streets of Ocean Beach.

An organization, The Urban Street Angels, had a goal of reaching 800 local homeless in the community by gifting them with newly donated sleeping bags. As fate would have it, we received an outdated flyer with an old starting time of the event, consequently arriving two hours late to an event that had longed past.

A wooden box is not a home…but…

Originally posted at San Diego Free Press on January 7, 2016.

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Part three of the quartet of storms pounding San Diego is in full force as I sit here at my computer. The alert goes off on my phone signaling a flash flood warning. The shade cloth over my neighbor’s garden has disengaged itself from two of the poles securing it to earth and is preparing for takeoff.

Peering out the rain-whipped, sliding-glass doors that safely separate me from the deluge outside on my patio,

By Jeeni Criscenzo

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently came out with a 55-page document titled:

“Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing: Defining “Chronically Homeless”.

I can only imagine the thousands of dollars spent to clarify that: agencies receiving HUD funds to serve chronically homeless people cannot use those funds for persons or households if any of the periods separating the requisite “4 separate occasions in the past 3 years” where they were homeless (according to the HUD definition of homeless) were less than 7 nights.

If that sounds convoluted to you, imagine being an underpaid, intake staff person at an underfunded homeless service agency, interviewing a homeless client to determine if they can accept him or her into the program without jeopardizing their HUD funding.

Homeless women and children undercounted and underserved.

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

It looks like the issue of homelessness will be getting some airtime during the 2016 election season in San Diego. That should be good news for anyone who is deeply concerned about homelessness in the region. Problem is that some candidates might use the issue to put forth solutions, without taking the time to understand the problem.

By feeding the electorate with misinformation that plays into their eagerness for a quick and easy fix to the city’s growing homeless situation, they will not only fail to solve the problem, they will exacerbate it.

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

A week ago, I was sitting in the Denny’s across the street from Howard Johnsons in Chula Vista, waiting for Tracy (name changed), an Army veteran Amikas had been assisting for almost a year.

The good news was that Amikas, a non-profit that I started five years ago to help homeless women and children, was going to cover the next five days at the hotel for Tracy and her three children. But I wasn’t looking forward to this conversation – where this family would go after those five days was anybody’s guess.

A memorandum – or actually, a Notice – was made available last night at the OB Planning Board meeting that indicates the City of San Diego is ready to move on the dangerous Orchard Cave, as it is now set to enact “emergency slope repairs” at the site in OB.

Actual repairs, however, are a month away, the Councilwoman Zapf representative estimated at the meeting.

This is the same cave in dangerous condition investigated by the OB Rag earlier this week – where it appears people are living – .

OB Rag Demands Immediate Emergency Mitigation of Dangerous Conditions at the Cave

By Frank Gormlie

Based on complaints heard at the most recent Ocean Beach Town Council meeting, the OB Rag sent a small investigative team out to the end of Orchard Avenue to check into reports that a cave with dimensions of 30 feet by 30 feet existed in the coastal bluff.

My associate, Shawn Drake, and myself set out on an overcast Tuesday with cameras in hand to investigate just what was there, who – if anyone – was there, just how dangerous the cave or caves were, and if the condos above were in danger themselves. What we found was both disturbing and partially reassuring.

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

A recent post on the Facebook page for Homeless News San Diego showed a letter from the Rock Church regarding a change in policy for feeding homeless people.

Part of one sentence was highlighted:

refrain from feeding homeless people on the streets, as well as distributing items such as clothing and blankets.

The post indicates there were 107 shares and 206 comments!

I can’t recall ever seeing an issue evoke such passionate responses from so many people with opposing, yet reasonable points of view.

By Tony de Garate

Oh no — not another meeting about homelessness?

No doubt that’s what some will say about the panel assembled by the office of District 2 San Diego City Councilor Lorie Zapf for a discussion on the topic at the monthly meeting of the Midway Community Planning Group June 17 at 3 p.m. in Room 205 of the San Diego Community College, West City Campus, 3249 Fordham St.

If anyone should be skeptical about efforts to address homeless issues in the Midway community, it’s Melanie Nickel, the planning group’s longtime chair. No other issue has been as chronic, pervasive and seemingly unsolvable in the 12 years she’s served with the group.

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

A few weeks back Rep. Darrell Issa (CA 49) tried to defend his statement made during a CNN interview, that “we’ve been able to make our poor somewhat the envy of the world.”

As someone who has dedicated my life to helping our poor, I am compelled to offer an opposing perspective. To be clear, this is not a debate between the left and the right, or liberals vs conservatives, or Democrats vs Republicans.