Have you heard the ‘exciting’ news about San Diego’s latest response to the thousands of people living on the street?
There is room for 800, count ‘em-eight hundred (!), people at the city’s just-opened second safe sleeping site, located near Balboa Park and the Naval Medical Center.
The non-exciting news is that during the month of September, a total of 1,930 people experiencing homelessness requested a shelter bed for the night, and all but 393 were turned away.
Dreams for Change and the Downtown San Diego Partnership will be the service providers for the newest Safe Sleeping site, dubbed the O lot by city officials. Media outlets have been told residents will have access to restrooms, showers, laundry, and meals, along with a proposed shuttle enabling other services.
What users of the new site will ultimately find are 400 red insulated tents sitting on a three inch platform to keep them dry during rain. There were 21 tents available for the ‘grand’ opening, which was attended by local politicians and representatives of service organizations.
CBS8 interviewed an 80 year old woman who told them she was grateful about staying at the new site after struggling through some hard times. As much as I’m glad she is ‘off the streets’, it is outrageous that she was out there in the first place.
There is already a waitlist of over 120 people for the O lot, according to Voice of San Diego..
The number of unhoused people in San Diego has been increasing faster than those placed in housing over an extended period of time. In August 2023, the most recent reporting I could find, 1,475 people reported they’d become unhoused; 733 (out of the total homeless population) found accommodations.
The problem localities are facing goes way beyond illegal encampments and shelters that are unsuitable for many living on the street (due to age or health challenges).
An op ed in Monday’s UT (available only in the dead tree version, hence no link) by Claudia Sahm from Bloomberg opinion provides clarity on the larger picture as part of critiquing the state’s newly ensconced forced institutionalization policy:
But expanding programs like Housing First requires more housing — and building more housing in California is urgent. The high level of homelessness is the most extreme symptom of the current shortage, but the financial burden of housing extends to millions of families. In California, more than 3 million renters (over half of all renters) spend 30 percent or more of their income on rent. That’s the third-highest rate of cost-burdened renters in the country. More housing would also benefit the state budget and its tax base.
Critics of Newsom’s efforts point out that the almost $20 billion allocated during the past four years could have paid the rent for every homeless person in California. While that is a striking talking point, it omits the fact that the additional housing units don’t exist. More demand would push up prices even more, reinforcing the primary cause of homelessness. So, again, building is necessary.
The federally mandated Homeless Management Information System for the county shows 28,117 people using programs associated with serving or preventing homelessness in August. The largest single group –by a long shot– being served were Seniors (55+).
The city’s first camp site, a city maintenance yard at 26th Street and Pershing Drive opened in July. People living on the street who showed up at 20th & B Streets, the advertised address for the site, were left to trek another mile, up and over a hill. And unless they’d been referred to the campsite by an outreach worker or case manager they were out of luck.
As residents at the initial Safe Sleeping Program location told reporters, it was a better option than living on the streets. Unfortunately, it was a dead end for most people. An iNewsource story in mid-September said City sources identified just 8 people at the location who ended up with housing out of 220 registered households; 91 left the site for ‘various other reasons.’
The initial location will have to close at the end of the year, due to limitations on how land at Balboa Park can be used for extended periods of time.
Another site between the airport and Liberty Station, with the potential to accommodate 700 people in tents and a parking area is proposed for next year.
Let the whining begin.
Point Loma residents are up in arms about the possibility, with more than 800 having signed a petition against the proposal in just two days.
From NBC7:
The neighbors say they also have concerns with how close the site is to 9 area schools and the youth playing fields at Liberty Station.
"They [children] will be exposed to people having psychotic episodes or using drugs and that is horribly unfair to put children on the front lines of some of the biggest homeless issues our communities face," (not Kevin) Falconer said.
This egregious example of NIMBYism points to the propaganda campaign being utilized by reactionaries aimed at triggering people’s disgust mechanism.
It’s outrageous that a growing part of the population no longer able to afford shelter is being “otherized” with the tarred brushes of addiction and/or mental illness.
The “treatment solution” that the likes of El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells and Supervisor Jim Desmond are evangelizing about is really about creating a permanent detention system. Neither facilities nor the trained workforce necessary are available in the foreseeable future. The only option for the police enforcing ‘get off the streets’ laws will be jail.
The really sad part of this is that the interim solutions (ala Safe Sleeping) in the tool kits of elected liberals don’t necessarily have a different ending.
Local electeds are making choices from the options they see in front of them, influenced by an increasingly vocal part of the electorate who see themselves as inconvenienced by the poverty surrounding them. The hope is that eventually enough housing will get built… but as long as inequality grows, people won’t be able to afford even “affordable housing.”
Any arguments about how “humane” practices could be in effect in our internment camps of the future while “treating” the 60% of unhoused people without mental illness or addiction problems are disproven by humanity’s track record once the barbed wire goes up.
Our nation’s problems with mental illness and addiction go way beyond the unhoused population, as 90% of those surveyed told a CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation poll last year.
According the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 2021 report (latest available), 46.3 million people aged 12 or older (or 16.5 percent of the population) met the applicable DSM-5 criteria for having a substance use disorder in the past year, including 29.5 million people who were classified as having an alcohol use disorder and 24 million people who were classified as having a drug use disorder.
The number of people dying from drug overdoses is up to 111,000 annually as of last spring, as fentanyl has manifested itself throughout the illegal drug economy. Thus far, the only “solutions” are education (not working) and law enforcement (also not working), but that hasn’t stopped politicians of all stripes from proposing more of the same.
The real root of all these social problems cannot be addressed with more of the same. Homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues are all intertwined with the style of governance (bigger hammer) and economy (coddling for the 1%) we live in.
There is no (even partial) solution to these crises without getting a new toolkit and pursuing policies of national equity.
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Note: the lead image for his post is NOT a representation of any local facility.
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News Shorts Worth a Look
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What The Hell Is Going On With House Republicans? Via HuffPo
When Martin Van Buren created the mass party in the 1820s, it was “All for the party and nothing for the man,” and the idea there is some subordination — this was something Pelosi was very good at — that there is some subordination of individual ambition for the collective good of the party. The idea was that, in subordinating individual initiative, the party itself could gain power and distribute the perquisites of office to the members who then lash themselves to the mast of the party.
That is not the ethos of the contemporary Republican Party. When that is not your ethos, then the question arises: What is this party all about? It’s about the dominance of social forces that are behind figures like Matt Gaetz, but in ways that prioritize their own desires for chaos, troublemaking and betrayal narratives.
The creation of narratives that are themselves a justification for action. It can even be a justification for explaining betrayals when other Republicans are collaborating with liberals, who are the enemy. For a lot of Republicans, it is, “If we collaborate with McCarthy, who is passing bills with the Democrats, then we are complicit in the great crimes of liberalism. If we really, really want to own the libs, we cannot countenance the ordinary politics of getting a House in order that means the libs and Joe Biden, and behind him, the dark forces that are modern liberalism, are given legitimacy and power. We then need to take measures that are beyond what our lily-livered predecessors would have done.”
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Sheriff’s Department partly responsible for man’s fatal overdose in Vista jail, civilian review finds Via Jeff McDonald at the Union-Tribune
The civilian oversight finding that sustained a misconduct allegation against the Sheriff’s Department in the Bousman case was unusual. The review board last reached a similar finding last year after investigating the 2021 death of Saxon Rodriguez.
“The evidence indicated that either sworn (sheriff’s) personnel and/ or non-sworn SDSD personnel failed to prevent illicit drugs from entering the detention facility,” the review board said about the Rodriguez death.
Paul Parker, the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board executive officer, said Friday that he plans to sustain future complaints related to fatal in-custody overdoses if his staff concludes the drugs were obtained or consumed within the jails.
“We will include it every time,” he said.
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The House GOP's unlikely resistance fighter Via Public Notice (Rep. Ken Buck?)
Buck isn’t exactly an honorable man or a good legislator. That’s not surprising; it’s been some time since the GOP has been a party in which honorable people, or good legislators, are at all welcome. That means that opposition to Trump, within the GOP, has to come from people who are compromised, unserious, downright evil, or some combination of all of those things.
Republicans have spent a lot of time constructing a party that encourages members to be their absolutely worst selves. Perhaps Ken Buck is a sign that that’s changing, if only slightly. He’s a bizarre canary in the fascist coal mine — but at this point that’s the only type of canary the GOP has.
So chirp on, Ken. You’re not the hero we want. You’re not the hero we need. But you’re the very marginally less horrible Republican we’ve got.
I daresay that what Doug says about the situation here in San Diego, CA applies to any community in the USA struggling with solutions to homelessness. I am very worried that I will end up living in my car, depending on what happens with this House Speaker nonsense and the results of the 2024 election.
IMO, the City needs to seize property under eminent domain. In my neighborhood, there are properties with very large yards. Some homeowners have built apartment buildings behind their homes. The City could build apartment buildings and give homes to the unhoused.
I remain staggered by the lack of compassion, empathy, and sympathy constantly displaced by the NIMBYs.