A meeting of San Diego County mayors to discuss homelessness this week featured two clear yet contradictory themes.
One was emphasizing the years-old notion that a unified, regional approach is needed to address what everyone agrees is a crisis.
The other was familiar criticism by mayors that other municipalities either hadn’t been doing enough or, worse, were pushing part of the problem into their cities.
The Monday summit hosted by the San Diego Rescue Mission came as San Diego City Council are being asked to take urgent action to find additional shelter space — with the clock ticking toward the elimination of hundreds of temporary shelter beds.
Meanwhile, an events project manager working at the recent Comic-Con gathering wrote a scathing, widely-circulated commentary about how awful conditions were in the Gaslamp Quarter, largely as a result of homelessness.
“I was shocked, astonished and horrified by what I witnessed during my recent visit,” wrote Damon Zwicker, who lives in the San Fernando Valley, in a column posted by The San Diego Union-Tribune on the same day as the mayors’ conference. “. . . To any and all visitors, I strongly advise staying away from the San Diego Gaslamp District for your own safety.”
The mayors, who met at the Loma Santa Fe Country Club, talked about the idea of taking a more coordinated approach on homelessness. But they weren’t going to overlook concerns about their neighbors.
Ironically, National City Mayor Ron Morrison referred to Comic-Con, but in a different way, saying it made homelessness worse in his city.
“Just a couple of weeks ago. . . we started getting things cleaned up, and boom! Here comes in a whole new wave of homeless because of Comic-Con,” Morrison said according to KPBS, suggesting that’s not unusual when big events are staged across the city line.
“They got pushed out of downtown San Diego and then we take on somebody else’s problem all over again,” he added. “We’re a small city, with very limited resources, and yet we’re being asked to take on these huge problems for other people.”
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria prefaced an appreciation of the mayors’ conference with a reminder of his less-charitable view of his colleagues’ efforts.
“I’ve been critical of other cities for not doing their fair share when it comes to stepping up on our homelessness crisis,” Gloria said according to CBS 8. “And what today resulted in was… mayors showing up and understanding this is the number one issue in our county.”
Gloria noted the city of San Diego has done far more than other jurisdictions in providing shelter beds and services; but then the city has a much greater problem than others in the region.
Rescue Mission President Donnie Dee expressed optimism about future collaboration – eventually.
“I do believe at some point, somewhere down the road… what’s going to come out of this is actually an 18-city strategic plan instead of 18 individual plans. That’s what we have right now,” Dee said.
The comments from the two mayors were reminiscent of what seemed like an arms race to enact homeless camping bans in smaller cities after San Diego did. While wanting to move homeless people from public areas, some leaders itted they were motivated in part to take defensive action, concerned that San Diego’s ban would send people into their cities by default.
The potential for that kind of jousting at San Diego City Hall is looming. Sarah Jarman, director of the city’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department, issued a memo last week asking each of the nine to identify possible shelter locations within their districts, as reported by the Voice of San Diego.
The director requested responses by Friday, with a council discussion scheduled for Sept. 9. Jarman also asked the city’s Independent Budget Analyst to identify two potential sites in each district.
The short timeline and requirements for prospective shelter properties could make the process a challenge.
For years, city officials have talked about finding locations for homeless shelters in each council district. Placing homeless facilities anywhere is difficult, given that proposals tend to run into immediate community opposition.
Meanwhile, the mayor has been focused on his disputed plan for a 30-year lease to use a warehouse northeast of San Diego International Airport for a 1,000-bed homeless shelter. The proposal has run into strong criticism from the Independent Budget Analyst and the City Attorney’s Office, along with growing skepticism on the council.
The city currently has a shortage of shelter beds and the situation could get much worse. San Diego could lose more than 700 of its 1,830 shelter beds by the end of the year, with additional temporary shelter space scheduled to close next year.
The pressure is on to find replacements, let alone adding 1,000 beds to the existing supply this year that Gloria pledged in his January State of the City address.
This year’s annual point-in-time count tallied more than 10,600 homeless people across the county.
Predictably, the celebrities and cosplayers at this year’s Comic-Con received plenty of attention. So did Zwicker’s alternative view. He described a dystopian landscape just blocks from the festivities at the San Diego Convention Center, contending a “lack of effective, systemic problem-solving to address these issues is a glaring failure of leadership and governance.”
“The streets are plagued by individuals evidently intoxicated, littered with glass pipes and needles,” Zwicker wrote. “Sidewalks are covered in feces and urine, trash is strewn everywhere…
“Adding to the horror, zombie-like people wander the streets in a drug-filled haze or stand doubled over at the waist, ‘nodding’ for extended periods, completely oblivious to their surroundings. Is this the image of a world-class city?”
Not exactly the kind of Comic-Con press city leaders were hoping for.
