Todd Gloria Wants You To Know He Has Had It

By Scott Lewis, the Voice of San Diego

April 25, 2023

San Diego City Councilman Kent Lee has found himself on Mayor Todd Gloria’s shit list for a series of questions he asked the mayor’s staff last week during a hearing to consider a proposal from the mayor and Councilman Stephen Whitburn to prohibit homeless encampments in most public spaces.

Lee’s questions weren’t particularly savage or harsh. They helped reveal that we may be entering a new chapter of the ongoing, very sad story about homelessness in San Diego.

We could call this the “Mayor Has Had It” chapter.

The ordinance would ban homeless encampments within two blocks of schools or shelters, at transit hubs and other sensitive areas at all times. It would ban encampments elsewhere on public property only when there is shelter where people can go.

Whitburn and Gloria first proposed it as a package that not only would include the prohibition on camping but also major increases in the safe spaces and shelter where people could go. And they said they would soon present a ballot measure that would help make it all possible by cutting red tape. We’re still waiting on what the ballot measure would do.

It was not a new idea. We reported last year that former Mayor Kevin Faulconer was making calls to put something on the ballot that would force the city to provide more shelter for homeless residents and then to sharply increase the enforcement that would keep encampments from forming everywhere else. But Faulconer has so far been unwilling to say people who still tried to camp would face misdemeanors or worse.

Gloria was clearly trying to pre-empt Faulconer’s initiative, and he may have succeeded. Faulconer’s promised petition has not circulated weeks after he said it would start.

But as we’ve now seen in the last couple weeks, Gloria is also trying to communicate something new or at least differently. He’s trying to tell unsheltered people they are not welcome in San Diego. He just hasn’t quite mustered the motivation to say it that clearly. That’s what, however, he is communicating.

That’s what Lee’s questions revealed.

The most important exchange on this point occurred when Lee asked the mayor’s staff how a homeless person would know where they could camp. It was an insightful observation: The law would make it illegal to camp near schools, for example, at any time. But some areas of town would allow encampments as long as shelter is unavailable. So, how would a person without a home know when they’re allowed to camp there?

Would there be some kind of app that updated shelter vacancy numbers? Billboards? Some other way to know if camping was allowed one day or not based on shelter capacity.

“I’m wondering if by nature this would deter encampments in any public space. Simply because nobody would know if there’s any available space at any given moment,” Lee said.

Jessica Lawrence, the mayor’s director of policy, responded.

“It’s important to note that the existing municipal code bans encampments in all public spaces. What this ordinance will do is help provide clear rules of the road and help provide clarity on where people can and cannot be. The hope is that through additional signage education and training that there will be a deterrent in certain sensitive areas,” she said.

The city already has a law prohibiting encampments. What exactly are we doing here?

A city attorney sitting next to Lawrence confirmed her assertion and added that the new ordinance would clarify the city’s approach to legal settlements that, in short, prevent the city from enforcing its ordinance if there is not adequate shelter available. But they can prohibit camping in certain areas regardless of shelter.

In one exchange, then, we got the actual point of the ordinance. The point is not to create a new city law to prohibit camping. City law already prohibits camping. The point is to send a message: Do not camp here.

Lee’s questioning only clarified that the “here” in that message is essentially the entire city of San Diego.

This also helps explain another surprise. Many of us thought the mayor would present the ordinance as part of a package – a huge expansion of the safe places, shelters and homes to which people could move at the same time he ramped up enforcement of the places you could not be. Whitburn had presented the ordinance as packaged most prominently with a plan to set aside some major spaces within the city of San Diego where people could safely camp. He made no secret of the fact that he was eyeing Inspiration Point and its giant parking lot at the edge of Balboa Park.

In short, he was saying, ‘Yes, I’m going to make people leave encampments, but I am going to make sure they have a place to go.’ The city notoriously has far more homeless residents than it does shelter spots and more who have requested shelter than it has beds to offer them.

But the ordinance went to the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee without any new information on major increases in shelter capacity. The plan for Inspiration Point is obviously delayed. Whitburn’s staff listed the many things the city has done from converting the old Central Library to a temporary shelter to pursuing safe sleeping sites, which their colleagues and the mayor’s staff were working on “as we speak.”

That’s fine, turning a vast city parking lot technically on Balboa Park land is undoubtedly a complicated and challenging proposal to advance. However, it was supposed to all be part of the same deal. You can’t go here, you can go there.

To advance the ordinance that prohibits camping (more than it is already prohibited) without a companion “here are more places you can go” piece is further proof that all of this is meant as a message to both the housed and unhoused in San Diego.

And what’s that message? To the homeless it’s, you need to leave or find a really good hiding place. To the housed, it’s “we’re pushing them along and you’re welcome.”

Gloria is clearly feeling like the city is close to its max and he isn’t going to push hard for too many more safe spaces for homeless residents to go.

Last week he reacted sternly to a reporter’s query about why there were no major shelter spaces or safe spaces opening up in conjunction with this ordinance to (further) ban camping.

“I will not house the homeless population for every other city in the county of San Diego. A part of this enforcement ordinance is about making sure we are taking care of our people, because we are compassionate folks, but I’m not going to be mopping up the messes in other people’s cities,” he said.

He’s clearly frustrated that the number of shelter beds the city has added has not ameliorated the problem. And now it’s time to tell them to move along.

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