Mayor Todd Gloria’s Brick Wall?

Homeless Warehouse on Hold, Journalism Group Disses Him

There are moments when I feel a fleeting sadness when watching San Diego’s City Hall telenova. It’s not the same as the melancholy following seemingly endless May Gray or June gloom, because then memory serves up the counter argument that the sun will come, eventually. Our municipal malaise has no track record over the past half century of curing itself as our city rights its course.

What’s a concerned citizen to do? The mayor keeps the political wolves of local politics at bay with promises he can’t keep. His predecessor’s bad mistakes continue to haunt city hall. And the perception is that his office all-too-often opts to shoot the messenger when it comes to bad news.

We should thank our lucky stars for term limits and remember the gloriousness of San Diego’s setting. (pun intended)

The latest news concerns yet another would-be “breakthrough” moment for the city’s response to unhoused residents. Mayor Todd Gloria's proposal to open the city's largest homeless shelter — a new 1,000-bed facility near downtown – has encountered what’s being framed as a temporary delay; based on past experiences, this likely means whatever ends up in that location won’t live up to expectations.

I say all this understanding that a bigger, better holding center isn’t necessarily in the best interests of its potential occupants. What’s happening here is a public relations event aimed at placating constituents angered by the presence of unwashed others throughout the city.

This is especially true when you consider that two current city shelters are scheduled to be closed accounting for 660 beds combined. Then there is the NIMBY-led rebellion against a planned camping site for 600 humans adjacent to Liberty Station. Maybe, just maybe, the city will end up with another lot for people living out of their cars to park at that location..

The initial bump in the road, the City Council’s desire to review the lease this week, has now become a bigger issue, as a consultant hired by the city's independent budget analyst's office raised questions about the deal.

This is no biggie, said the Mayor’s mouthpiece of the moment to Voice of San Diego: (yes Rachel Laing, you can put that descriptor on your business card):  

• “As fast as we want to move, we’re going to make sure we have everything in place,” Laing wrote in a text message. “As you know, we announced this at the literal earliest opportunity to do so in order to be transparent.” 

Maybe what’s happening is just a common sense pause before making a real estate deal. After all, Gloria has been saddled with the leftovers of former Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s blind eye toward the nuts and bolts of acquiring property. 

The city’s former director of real estate assets, Cybel Thompson –who some think was scapegoated for the 101 Ash Street deal– told the Union-Tribune she created a memo and created an acquisition checklist for real estate deals before leaving office.

• “Unfortunately this memo was never acted upon, and we continue to see major real estate transactions pushed through council, such as the Sports Arena, 101 Ash and CCP purchases and, most recently, Kettner and Vine,” she said.

• The mayor’s public announcements “do not provide even the minimum real estate industry standard details to enable City Council to make an informed decision,” Thompson said.

Regardless of the outcome of the latest shelter proposal, it’s my observation that any transaction involving the unhoused population will generate near-rabid opposition and a laundry list of excuses why whatever’s involved won’t work.

No matter what he does, it seems like San Diego’s Mayor runs into a brick wall.

Fixing the sad reality of people living on the streets involves truth telling to a degree that’s suicidal for any politician, starting with calling out those responsible for purveying fear and the understanding we have a societal problem, one that decades of bad fiscal policy set the stage for. It will take effort at every level of society in both the private and public sectors to right what’s wrong.

There is no magic wand, but there is one local policy change that could ease the price point of renting, namely, getting control of the short term rental (STR) market. The half assed and widely flaunted ordinance regulating air bnb-type properties is due for review in May.

An article in the Point Loma-OB Monthly* quotes Kevin Hastings, vice chairman of the Ocean Beach Planning Board who is leading a reform effort:

• “We have more [STRs] in the city than we have unhoused,” Hastings said. “So if you don’t think that number is a big deal, tell me that the number of unhoused people on the street is not a big deal.”

(*I came across this article via a story by Frank Gormlie at the OB Rag)

Hundreds of Tier 3 properties (whole homes rented less than 20 days a year) are operated as full-time STR’s. Although the ordinance limits licensing to one per person, a loophole enables as many as two thirds of STRs in neighborhoods like OB are owned by people with more than one license.

It took forever to get an ordinance regulating STRs, and during that time San Diego had a ‘wild west’ market with an attitude to match. The threat of those operators (and their marketing companies) operating as one kept local politicians neutered and provided the basis for Council member Dr. Jen Campbell to produce the ineffective ordinance in place.

I get it, the prospect of an advertising campaign presenting people as small business entrepreneurs fighting against the Big Bad Government, is something no politician would willingly face. You could say in this respect that all our city elected officials have a piece of the local unhoused human tragedy.

Fixing the STR problem (there are many owners who are in compliance) won’t solve the problem of people living on the street. This is an “all-in” problem; I presented an example of one thing San Diego’s elected officials could do.

One thing the Mayor’s office could also do would be to clean up their reputation for pugnaciousness when it comes to dealing with the press. A source’s lousy attitude translates into a less that nice vibe about whatever journalists are covering.

The local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists* has bestowed its Wall Award to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria. Trust me, this prize isn’t given out because journos want his picture on their walls; the person or entity who makes it more difficult to report the news gets this baby.

• The Mayor’s office has been busy over the past year coordinating responses to weather-related emergencies, grappling with an ongoing influx of migrants at the Southern border and creating new policies to address the burgeoning unhoused population in the city. Given all of the pressing issues affecting San Diego, we would expect the Mayor’s office to act with transparency by cooperating with journalists who are reporting on these urgent topics. However, we think officials have fallen short.

• The Mayor’s office has developed a reputation for contacting journalists in the wake of unfavorable coverage to downplay, dispute or undermine their reporting, claiming that their important work is promoting distrust in the community. In one of many instances experienced by San Diego journalists, the Mayor’s chief spokesperson described a news story about the city’s neglect of Black and Latino neighborhoods prior to an unprecedented flood as inaccurate, “dangerous” and “harmful.” We disagree. 

• Multiple journalists working in print, TV and radio said they have been unfairly denied access to interviews, press conferences and site tours involving the Mayor’s office. Some described situations where the Mayor canceled or delayed interviews after critical news coverage about his administration. As one example, La Prensa, a news outlet with a history of critical coverage of Mayor Gloria, was denied access last year to tour a city-sanctioned campsite for unhoused residents, while 12 other newsrooms were invited to attend. The Mayor has declined accountability interviews about his approach to homelessness, and his office has ignored questions from reporters about the recent migrant crisis. We believe the Mayor’s office should focus more on cooperation and less on reputation management.

• In addition, freelancers continue to have difficulties receiving press credentials from the San Diego Police Department, which is overseen by the Mayor’s office. Newsrooms also continue to experience issues accessing public records, a problem dating back years in the Gloria administration.

• Mayor Gloria’s refusal to attend debates during the primary election is another example of a lack of openness that is harmful to both journalists and the public as a whole. We hope that this award will remind Mayor Gloria and his office that hindering journalists only hurts the people he was elected to serve.

I really think the Wall Award should include a trophy of some kind, one that could be passed on to the next “winner” in subsequent years. A glass sculpture containing the word DENIED would do the trick.

(*Bias alert: The SDSPJ gave me 9 awards for reporting and opinion back in my days with the San Diego Free Press)

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Tuesday’s News to Think About

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Words and History - The Trouble with “Genocide Joe” by Fred Glass at The Jumping Off Place (Yes, I’m an editor, but this is a post worth your time)

• What the performative enunciation of “Genocide Joe” misses, in its virtue signaling, is the practical consequence that will follow a defeat of Joe Biden in November. Throughout the long reign of capitalism as world system it has assumed a number of political forms. It has demonstrated on any number of occasions that it can easily shed a democratic skin and replace it with an authoritarian one.  

• Trump is very clear: this is his plan. When the next Gaza arises—and given American imperialism, it will—the space for a mass movement to oppose it will be tightly constrained and likely violently crushed by the repressive force of a police state under far-right Republican control.

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Regional war - How Israel and Iran got here, and where it all might go by Johnathan Katz at The Racket

• The problem is that none of the players are, almost by definition, as clever as they seem to think they are. Each step along the way since Oct. 7, all the regional players have escalated while warning the others against further escalation. And unlike in the aftermath of Operation Martyr Soleimani, no one has successfully called timeout. Iran may have intended the April 13 missile barrage to be mostly signaling or a show; as it was, it appears the casualties were extremely limited: the only person who it seems was badly injured was a seven-year-old Bedouin girl, whose family says they were denied access to bomb shelters afforded to their Jewish neighbors.

• But if a single cruise missile or suicide drone had been misfired or slipped through, hitting perhaps an apartment building in the nearby city of Beersheva—if not Jerusalem some 40 miles to the north—there could have easily been a rushed and heedless Israeli response against Iranian territory that night. Reporting suggests that the Israeli government was considering one anyway, only to back away at the last moment. Now Israeli officials and the defense wonk sphere are engaged in a circular debate over how to perfectly “reestablish deterrence” and “credibility” without tripping into World War III, as if there are any better guarantees for missiles headed east.

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Historical markers are everywhere, but few note San Diego's Native American past via Amita Sharma at KPBS

• For some of the descendants of the four major tribes that once populated the San Diego region — the Luiseno, Cahuilla, Cupeno and Kumeyaay — the historical marker database snub is typical and met with resignation.

• “We’re used to it,” said Kumeyaay Community College President Stanley Rodriguez. “I view that as a form of hegemony that is based on a romanticized lie of what has taken place here.”

• Rodriguez said the indigenous people of San Diego endured three waves of encroachment: the Spanish with the missions including the first called the San Diego Presidio, then the Spaniards born in Mexico, followed by the Americans. Indigenous people were forcibly converted. Families were split and turned into servants.