A recent meeting of the Peninsula Community Planning Board featured a couple of hundred very concerned residents fearful of reports the City of San Diego was considering construction of a tent city / parking area for unhoused humans on a strip of land adjacent to Liberty Station.
The meeting received extensive local media coverage, featuring clips of attendees voicing safety concerns posed by placing unhoused people too close to schools and businesses.
There is no meat on the bones of these arguments. A bunch of people living in homes valued at an average of $1.5 million are acting like chickens with their heads cut off.
I’ve got mine, so screw you is the sentiment I hear. Where do WE put these discarded humans? Somewhere else is the answer. And this is exactly what the planning board suggests.
I’ll be the first to say encampments are bad. Bad for the health of people ‘invited’ to stay in them. Bad for the precedent set of herding humans into a state-controlled space. And bad for the false promises of hope for inhabitants.
They are a solution for elected officials who fear the wrath of the electorate angered by public displays of poverty or misery driven by the failures of our socioeconomic system. Saying capitalism sucks or some variant of the phrase is lethal for politicians.
The ‘excuses’ for homelessness - drug addiction, untreated mental illness, and the rent being too high can be connected to the ethos and fiscal policies of a society where 90% of the population is living with a downturn in economic status.
Despite decades of drug problems, the only ‘solution’ offered on any level scaled to the size of the affected population is jail. Mental health treatment –both in and outpatient– is difficult to obtain, even for people with gold-plated health insurance policies. A critical shortage of caregivers adds to the problem. And the wait for vouchers for rent assistance is 12 years.
So governments are settling on ‘interim’ encampments. And here we are, debating where such places are appropriate, hoping that ‘investors’ can solve these problems long term.
The city’s other encampment on the southern edge of Balboa Park (while not perfect) hasn’t unleashed hordes of drug addicts and mentally ill people on park visitors. Children still play happily at the nearby Pepper Tree Grove playground. And the incidence of visible encampments near or in the park has noticeably declined.
Here’s the City’s info sheet on the Point Loma Project.
Getting into this proposed encampment at Liberty Station won’t be easy. The SDPD are the primary gatekeepers; disabilities and a host of other screening measures mean no tent for much of the unhoused population. Outsiders aren’t allowed in. There is no mechanism for walk-ins.. And if residents can’t abide by curfews and other camp rules, they get dumped back on the street.
Since there aren’t local examples of doom and gloom unleashed by city regulated encampments, the vast array of rumors and falsehoods concerning “those people” has come into play.
The most common of these are claims that drug abuse and mental illness are the reasons why unhoused people have appeared on our streets. Or that the unhoused are immoral people who want to be living on the streets.
The firehouse of bullshit flooding NIMBYland is factually adverse, so trying to get a handle of what is really needed becomes more of an uphill battle each year. The bottom line is that all these false assumptions are really just excuses; excuses for being afraid, for being unable to express empathy, and for recognizing the larger problems.
For every fact presented in debate about homelessness there is an anecdotal comeback, challenge as to the source, or attack on the speaker. The ignorance of how government and elections work is simply astounding. None-the-less, I’ll add some of what I know.
For every 10 unhoused people in San Diego who obtain housing, 13 more become homeless each month so far this year. If drug addiction was a cause of homelessness, how does West Virginia fit in: highest drug deaths in US, high mental illness rate, low unhoused rate? If weather is a factor, why is homelessness increasing in Boston (+20%) and Minneapolis (+6%)?
This Voice of San Diego article exploring common assumptions about homelessness is a good place to start getting educated.
There are no easy answers here, but it would be a lot easier if people had the capacity to understand that homelessness is a complex problem, rooted in the socio-economic failures by the government over the past half century.
Another unreasonable line of reasoning is the oft-repeated claim holding Mayor Todd Gloria personally responsible for people living on the streets of our city. It’s true that our local elected officials haven’t “fixed” the “problem.” They have provided band-aid solutions to critical wounds in the socio-economic order. But none of them possess the kind of magic wand that would stop the pain felt on the streets of San Diego.
The underlying issues of a lack of housing all require solutions that are impossible to achieve in a short period of time. People who talk about supportive housing aren’t accepting the reality of the tiny numbers of such dwellings being built each year. The clinicians, nurses, and counselors needed to staff just about any type of facility do not exist in sufficient numbers. And then we face the wall of resistance led by people who are afraid their well-being is going to be taken from them.
On top of all those problems, solutions shown to be effective in resolving both homelessness and lower income housing (like social housing) are not on the table for consideration, thanks to the elevation of “marketplace economics” as gospel. Add to that, a heritage of racism in property law provides cover for obstructing government solutions.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: Article 34 of the California State Constitution.
The Bay Area City of Millbrae filed a petition with the San Mateo County Superior Court seeking to prevent the county from purchasing a La Quinta Inn and Suites for low income housing, asserting that Article 34 requires prior voter approval.
It was passed in the 1950s to prevent public housing from being built in California. The real estate interests behind Article 34 were looking to keep neighborhoods divided by race.
Here’s Michael Smolens, writing in the Union Tribune earlier this year: .
In a deep historical dive, Dillon of the Times wrote that the California Real Estate Association, the predecessor of today’s California Association of Realtors, argued that taxpayers should be able to vote on low-income housing because they were publicly funded infrastructure like schools or roads.
Newspaper ads paid for by the association also blamed “minority pressure groups” for pushing public housing. At the time, the organization’s code of ethics included a provision barring agents from integrating neighborhoods on the basis of “race or nationality” if doing so would be “clearly detrimental to property values,” according to Dillon.
Meanwhile, an official with the group promoted the ballot measure in a newsletter, writing that to stop “socialism that is gnawing at the vitals of America from within, the ballot box is your weapon...”
A ballot measure to repeal Article 34 will be voted on in the November, 2024 general election. It was put on the ballot following unanimous approval in the legislature. Its removal is supported by real estate interests.
You might think this a no brainer, right? You’d be wrong. Voters have rejected removal of Article 34 three times, with a minimum margin of 58% opposed in 1974, 1980, and 1993.
Even though “everybody knows” that racism is at the heart of Article 34, they also know the power of an electoral veto on local issues. A couple of cranks yelling about crime and safety is all it takes to keep “them” from moving in.
Any doubts you might have about the intentions of Point Loma residents should be resolved by knowing about the resolution the Peninsula Planning Board passed immediately following approval of a letter to the mayor on the Barracks H concept.
Discussion and approval of Letter of Recommendation to the City regarding community concerns for the proposed 700 Homeless Shelter at the H Barracks located in Point Loma. The area is bordered by Harbor Island and Esplanade Canal just along the Liberty Station community. (Approved 3-2)(Mandy Havlik)
Consideration and approval of Letter of Support for Sunbreak Ranch a non-partisan organization and efforts to address the homeless crisis in San Diego. https://sunbreakranch.com (Approved 5-0) (Mandy Havlik)
The idea of Sunbreak Ranch has been floating around San Diego for years. Once you get past the platitudes and promises of a “clean, healthy, safe environment for those who need it,” this is a proposed 2000+ acre property located in a non-developed area to warehouse unhoused people.
I’m sure former basketball player Bill Walton and concept creator George Mullin have the best of intentions; federally funded construction using surplus materials and U.S military personnel on a site leased for $1 a year, $275 million in funding from the billionaire class, and a plethora of county/city services on site.
Since proposed sites in Otay Mesa and Miramar haven’t panned out, east of San Diego is the way they’ll have to look. And once past all the freedom loving exurbs likely to go NIMBY on the idea, you’ll be looking at the desert. As humane as this concept sounds on paper, the bottom line is that nobody wants such a facility in their area. One sadistic commenter to coverage on Point Loma suggested the Salton Sea as a location.
There is one way Sunbreak could sort of happen; Donald Trump’s homeless tent city plan.
From Reason Magazine:
On April 18, former President Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account titled "Homelessness Plan." In it, Trump alleged that "the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged" had ruined America's cities, "turn[ing] every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs." He promised, "When I'm back in the White House, we will use every tool, lever, and authority" to "end the scourge of homelessness and make our cities clean and safe and beautiful once again."
How would he accomplish this? "Working with states, we will ban urban camping wherever possible…. We will then open up large parcels of inexpensive land; bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and drug rehab specialists; and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified."
Given the failure of the federal government under Trump to house immigrants safely and securely, I’m 99% certain that we’ll end up with facilities better described as concentration camps.
That’s the ultimate result of NIMBYism: get/keep those “othered” people somewhere else with somebody else taking care of it for no money.
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Wednesday’s Testosterone Issues
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Why Aren’t More People Marrying? Ask Women What Dating Is Like. Via The New York Times.
For as long as people have been promoting marriage, they have also been observing that a good man is hard to find (see: William Julius Wilson or early Nora Ephron). But what was once dismissed as the complaint of picky women is now supported by a raft of data. The same pundits plugging marriage also bemoan the crisis among men and boys, what has come to be known as male drift — men turning away from college, dropping out of the work force or failing to look after their health. Ms. Kearney, for example, acknowledges that improving men’s economic position, especially men without college degrees, is an important step toward making them more attractive partners.
But even this nod ignores the qualitative aspect of the dating experience — the part that’s hard to cover in surveys or address with policy. Daniel Cox, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who recently surveyed more than 5,000 Americans about dating and relationships, found that nearly half of college-educated women said they were single because they had trouble finding someone who meets their expectations, versus one-third of men. The in-depth interviews, he said, “were even more dispiriting.” For a variety of reasons — mixed messages from the broader culture about toughness and vulnerability, the activity-oriented nature of male friendships — it seems that by the time men begin dating, they are relatively “limited in their ability and willingness to be fully emotionally present and available,” he said.
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"Lock Them Up": Trump's Authoritarian Plans for 2025 Via Ruth Ben-Ghiat at Lucid.
As for conditions in Trump's and Miller’s detention spaces, Dr. Dolly Lucio Sevier compared those in Clint and McAllen, TX to "torture facilities" for their freezing temperatures, 24-hour lights, and lack of hygiene and medical care. Extreme crowding, a staple of authoritarian concentration camps, features in the reports of Texan Inspectors General of Rio Grande and El Paso del Norte. In immigration processing centers there, adults were held in “standing-room only conditions for a week” and cells were so crowded that “adults had to stand on the toilets to breathe.”
All of this would be scaled up during a second Trump administration. The recruiting of enablers and accomplices of future state persecution is taking place before our eyes. If Trump returns to the White House, we cannot say we were not warned. He is telling us clearly that he will finish the job he started in his first term: wrecking U.S. democracy
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A mask-off week for right-wing antisemitism Via Media Matters
Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist activist who has called for Jews to “get the fuck out of America” and dined with Trump last year, is similarly ecstatic. On his show, he praised Musk for agreeing with “what we were saying in Charlottesville. This is like when the Charlottesville marchers said, ‘Jews will not replace us,’ I mean, that’s like a summary of that.”
Surveying the week’s developments on the right, the prominent Holocaust denier added: “Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk are all regularly now talking about white genocide, anti-white hatred, and the role of Jewish elites, whether they're ADL or they're Zionists, and some even talking about this religious division as well between Christians and Jews.”
Those Point Loma NIMBYs have their heads up their collective asses. The proposed homeless location is separated from Liberty Station by a friggin canal for Pete's sake! It's one of the most isolated areas in the whole city. It's bordered by McCain Road, Kincaid road, Spruance road and Harbor Drive. On one side is the cell phone parking lot and next to that the airport. On the other side is a canal. You'd have to swim to get to Liberty Station. Has anyone even looked at a friggin map? On the west side of Kincaid road, near Harbor Drive, are 2 hotels and, further north, a bunch of nondescript, decrepit (probably unused) buildings. On the north side you'd have to go through Marine Corps property. Good luck with that. Is anyone pointing out the senselessness of identifying this location as a threat to Liberty Station? You can't get there from there.