Walton Goes Public; Mayor Responds

By Scott Lewis, the Voice of San Diego

September 20, 2022

This post originally appeared in the Sept. 20 Morning Report. Sign up for the daily newsletter here.

We wrote Friday about emails basketball legend Bill Walton has been writing to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria about the homelessness crisis and his desire to see more cleanups and enforcement to sweep away encampments.

Monday, Walton posted his thoughts on Instagram: “I can no longer say that my hometown of San Diego, is the greatest place in the world, I can no longer say that SD is a safe, healthy, clean, and beautiful place, I can no longer urge my family, friends, tourists, and businesses to come to SD to live, work, and play, I can no longer say that our neighborhood for the last 43 years is still my dream, I am brokenhearted, Mayor @toddgloria —clean up our city, and let us reclaim our lives, we must fix our homeless crisis, we need engagement, rehabilitation, and constant enforcement, and we need it now.”

Gloria responds: In a series of posts on Twitter, the mayor outlined the city’s approach. “Homelessness is the City’s top priority. Our approach can be boiled down to outreach, shelter and housing. There’s also the need for significant mental health reform. We’ve made progress on all of these fronts over the last few days,” he wrote, to start the list.

Sports betting online would obviously help: If you watch any TV or online streaming, you’ve probably seen the commercials about Proposition 27 and its promises to fund homeless services and housing. The San Francisco Chronicle Monday explored why so many homeless service providers, though, are not supportive of it. The story featured Fran Butler-Cohen, CEO of Family Health Centers of San Diego.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in homeless services that actually thinks that we would realize a windfall from this, that we can instantly start building housing units and getting people off the street and getting them into mental health service,” said Butler-Cohen.

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