Should We Name the First Homeless Concentration Camp After Bill Walton?
Long-time San Diego civic booster and former basketball star Bill Walton has always been available for a photo op or endorsement of liberal causes.
When the city’s right wing corporate types circulated petitions to force a minimum wage ordinance to the ballot box as a delaying tactic, Walton stood next to Qualcomm’s Irwin Jacobs and former Regional Chamber of Commerce Chairman Mel Katz to urge voters to just say no.
Lately he’s been in the news because of a public falling out with Mayor Todd Gloria over how the city is handling (or not) its homeless population. Walton’s mad as hell, and joined a press conference on Tuesday to call on Gloria to “step aside” over this issue.
From Times of San Diego:
“I have challenged Todd Gloria to prove me wrong. I have given him every opportunity,” said the 69-year-old UCLA and NBA champion at a press conference.
Walton said he had been harassed, chased and attacked while riding his bike in Balboa Park near a large homeless encampment he dubbed “Gloriaville.”
“Things are worse now that ever before. Our lives are being dictated by a large and unruly homeless population,” he said. “We want the homeless population off the streets, out of the parks, off the sidewalks and bike paths.”
The homeless population in San Diego is increasing. Walton’s right. They’re desperate and exist in a bubble of despair.
The former basketball star has reached his limit on empathy and wants somebody –anybody– to fix the problem. NOW.
So let’s take this line of thinking as revealed in front of the press to its logical conclusion…
…in my imagination (We’ll return to reality in a few paragraphs) …
…Mayor Todd Gloria resigns, fleeing before a furious mob to his bunker in Mission Hills. Carl DeMaio calls for a public shaming; long-time critic Mat Wahlstrom sets up a 24 hour a day picket line nearby with signage inspired by a kindergarten playground spat ala “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” and “Toad Gloria is a baby bubble gum.”
…City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera takes the helm at city hall and immediately fires most of the staff, singling out flack Rachel Laing as an undercover provocateur for the city’s notorious NIMBYs, who everybody knows are responsible for homelessness.
…KUSI broadcasts a press conference from in front of a no-tell Motel, where El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells, says “not enough,” and claims the interim mayor is part of the grand conspiracy to bus immigrants and the homeless to the east county…
…and so it goes… until patriots emerge for “The Storm,” the Q-prophecy of retribution against the Deep State. The homeless are revealed to be “illegal” and shipped off to wherever they came from.
The End.
That’s pretty silly, huh?
Except that it’s not far off from what could happen in this Walton-esque fantasy about “solving” the homeless “problem.”
Blaming the current situation on the Mayor, or any single politician, is a distraction. This isn’t to say that political pressure shouldn’t be brought to bear on elected officials. It is to say that the public’s ire needs to be directed at more politicians. Most of them, in fact. On a daily basis.
The notion that getting “homeless population off the streets, out of the parks, off the sidewalk, and bike paths” is doable under current circumstances requires some level of buy-in of the mythologies surrounding the unhoused population.
(There are lots of places on the internet where the myths surrounding unhoused humans are explained. None-the-less, they persist, driven by a combination of frustration and revulsion because people can’t/won’t see the larger problem when confronted by the image of somebody taking a shit on their front lawn.)
In other words: congratulations, Mr. Walton (et.al.), you’ve bought into a pack of lies.
Whether it’s the number one fable about addiction/mental health treatment as a cure or (my favorite) that the unhoused have moved here for the nice weather, as long as those falsehoods prevail, you’ll never see the real problem. And let’s not forget the #1 hit on community bulletin boards, the panhandlers who gleefully gather in local cafes to count their massive take at the end of the day.
All those lies enable simple solutions to a complex problem.
The homeless population isn’t going to diminish when clinicians in white coats flood the streets or when the police escalate arrests for petty offenses. In fact, the only solution possible based on these false-premises is to “round them up” and put them into camps.
Here’s a snip from perennial last place local political candidate Daniel Smiechowski’s letter to the editor today:
The citizens of this great city with their crocodile tears are delusional and playing the card of hypocrites. Nobody wants homeless people in their neighborhood. Yet everyone wants the homeless people in some other neighborhood. The homelessness fiasco can only be solved by criminalization, incarceration and, for the few willing, a benevolent helping hand out of their dilemma.
If it makes Bill Walton feel better about this solution, we can have a representative from the County Sheriff’s office promise that detainees will get the same five-star treatment currently offered in local pre-trial and correctional facilities.
And while we’re at it, I’m sure the public will feel better about themselves if the first such facility is named after the man who made it all happen: Camp Walton.
***
Homelessness is a systemic problem clouded by misinformation and people’s revulsion at being confronted with poverty.
Local government, institutions, and charities do not have the capacity to respond to the many problems associated with unhoused humans. There are not enough shelter beds. There are not enough mental health facilities. There is little-to-zero available low income housing.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Given all the rhetoric about the mental health and substance abuse problems with the homeless population, you’d never suspect that:
Even Non-homeless people with these issues can’t get access to treatment because our healthcare system –even for those of us lucky enough to have good insurance– doesn’t not have the capacity, the facilities, or (often) effective science-based treatment regimens to treat patients. (Supervisor Fletcher actually gets this)
Government funding for health-related matters in the population comes primarily from federal and state sources, and is funneled through the county. Any response to questions in this area that doesn’t go through the Board of Supervisors as an answer is simply misinformed.
Homelessnesss can be dramatically reduced in two ways: affordable housing (short term, then long term) OR an economy that pays people enough to live in the existing housing stock. We have chosen the “we can’t afford any of this option.”
***
There is good news on the horizon. Unfortunately it’s all “light at the end of the tunnel” stuff.
From the front page of today’s Union-Tribune:
The City of San Diego and the County Supervisors are taking time off from their decades long justicational disputes to at least discuss cooperation on low income housing.
The region’s housing crisis is prompting San Diego city and county elected officials to hold an unusual joint meeting Monday to spur construction of 10,000 subsidized housing units on public land by 2030.
The move comes after years of friction and lack of cooperation between the county and the city on a variety of issues, most notably the hepatitis A health crisis five years ago.
The joint panel will take the kind of leadership role typically expected of the San Diego Association of Governments, a regional agency that also includes officials from the county and all 18 local cities.
It will be the first time in more than 22 years that the San Diego City Council and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors have held a joint meeting, and only the second such meeting in nearly 32 years.
There are two reasons I say all local politicians should feel the heat (on a daily basis) on housing humans.
…the last county-city joint meeting [was] in April 2000, where Mayor Susan Golding and board Chair Dianne Jacob presided over a discussion about homelessness.
…Several cities have resisted state-mandated housing goals, with Coronado, Solana Beach, Imperial Beach and Lemon Grove unsuccessfully appealing the mandates to the state Supreme Court.
The revulsion to having lower-income residents (many of whom are assumed to be non-white) is ultimately no different than that fear or flight impulse driving all the anger at the people who are living on the streets. While it’s complex, you can always bet on good old American racism being part of any reactionary civic equation.
Above the story about City-County cooperation in today’s dead tree edition of the local paper is news about Gov. Newsom signing off on hotly contested legislation enabling the conversion of vacant and underutilized commercial properties into housing.
Housing advocates are particularly excited about AB 2011.
An August analysis by UrbanFootprint, a software platform that analyzes city data for urban planners and local governments, found that the new law could produce 1.6 million to 2.4 million new homes , depending on market conditions, including hundreds of thousands of affordable units.
“AB 2011 has tremendous potential to unlock ... a ton of land for development that was previously off limits,” said David Garcia, policy director for UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “It’s a huge deal.”
Next Up: Tomorrow I’m back on the election guide beat with commentary on the City Council contest in District 8.
***
Click on the underlined title to see previous voter guides
(More coming soon)
California State Officials
California’s DC Delegation
State Senate Races
State Assembly Races
SD County Supervisors
County Sheriff, Assessor, and Treasurer Races
SD Measure B: Cash Meets Trash
SD Measure C: Reach for the Sky! Or Else?
SD Measure D: Righting a Wrong to Build a Future
SD Measure H: It’s for the Children (And Their Parents)
CA Proposition 1: It’s About More Than Abortion
CA Propositions 26 & 27: Betcha Can’t Pick Just One
CA Proposition 28: Arts & Music for a Sane Future
CA Proposition 29: Regulating Dialysis Clinics and the Definition of Insanity
CA Proposition 30: A Poison Pill Concealed by Sweet Promises
CA Proposition 31: Tobacco Company Lawyers Are Scum
SD Democrats’ Scandal Inside a Scandal: Board of Equalization
SD City Council Races: District Two - Is Voting Republican a Mortal Sin?
SD City Council Races: District Four - No News Is Good News for Incumbent Montgomery-Steppe
SD City Council Races: District Six: It Depends on Your Definition of Neighborhood
***
Boards of Education Contests:
Analysis by Thomas Ultican
2022 School Board Contests, Part 1
The County Board, San Diego Unified, Sweetwater Union, Poway Unified
2022 School Board Contests, Part 2
Chula Vista, San Marcos, Vista, Grossmont
2022 School Board Contests, Part 3
Oceanside, Escondido, San Dieguito
2022 School Board Contests, Part 4
Coronado, Carlsbad, Escondido Union
***
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com