California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

San Diego Incentivizes the Homeless to Get Off the Streets

by John Lawrence, March 20, 2019

Some recent strides have been made in San Diego to solve the homeless problem. They have provided storage centers where the homeless can store their belongings. They have repealed a city charter provision outlawing sleeping in vehicles so now that's OK. The storage centers have let the city  revise a key legal settlement which has allowed city workers to give homeless San Diegans three hours’ notice – down from 72 hours – before conducting sweeps of homeless camps if there is space at the storage center. Providing more facilities for the homeless combined with increased law enforcement if those facilities are not taken advantage of is a step in the right direction. This incentivizes the homeless to get their stuff off the streets and allows the streets to be cleaned up.

This approach makes more sense than the ultimate solution which is getting the homeless into housing. Until and if that becomes a reality, the lives of the homeless and of those who share the streets with them can be ameliorated by relatively inexpensive means. Sanitation facilities have been provided in the past when there was an outbreak of hepatitis A. I'm not sure if they're still being provided but they should be. Everyone should have a basic right to sanitation and a place to store their stuff. Camping out doesn't need to be conspicuous or an eyesore which camping out on the streets definitely is. So places should be provided where people can camp out legally and securely. Some shelters have been provided by the city.

Lisa Halverstadt writes in Voice of San Diego:

Yet the pull remains for many homeless San Diegans for another reason: East Village and now Barrio Logan and Sherman Heights are places where they can access services. They count on free meals in East Village, check into the homeless tent in Barrio Logan or store their belongings in Sherman Heights.

“You go to other places and you’re not gonna have food as much,” said Sean Davis, who said he has bounced on and off the streets of East Village over the past six months.

City Council members Vivian Moreno and Chris Ward, who represent the Barrio Logan and East Village neighborhoods, and Greg Block, a spokesman for Faulconer, say they are aware of the strain that homelessness and drug activity have put on the neighborhoods.

Ward, who also chairs the countywide Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said he supports aggressive police efforts to address drug issues and has continued to urge investments in homeless-serving programs, outreach and housing across the city.

“We have to actually serve homeless people in other communities,” said Ward, who last year successfully pushed a resolution to build supportive housing facilities in every Council district.

Still, Ward said, homeless services remain in the East Village, Sherman Heights and Barrio Logan neighborhoods because many homeless San Diegans live there.

Block said city officials are now seeking out locations in other neighborhoods for safe parking lots and homeless storage but defended the city’s decision to add additional services in the eastern reaches of downtown. He said the city is serving homeless San Diegans where they are, and that police and cleaning crews have mobilized to respond to the neighborhoods’ concerns.

“We believe that what we’re doing is the right thing and that we’re helping a lot of people with the things that we’re doing,” Block said. “We can always do more and do better.”

The important thing is that the homeless have been incentivized to change at least partly their behavior by providing some facilities in combination with increased enforcement to actually get them to use those facilities. This method could also be used to reduce begging on street medians, freeway off ramps and street corners. Most homeless have access to some financial resources through General Relief or social security disability both of which pay them about $600 a month. They could be offered additional financial aid as an incentive to eliminate begging on the streets combined with increased enforcement. This would reduce the pull of on street begging if they could make the same money by not begging or if that money were to be taken away if they were caught begging. The idea is to clean up the streets while at the same time incentivizing better social behavior. The two things go hand in hand. This helps both the homeless and the rest of society which shares a common city with the homeless.

These ideas are contrarian to the Housing First philosophy which requires a significant investment on the part of society to build housing. Until that can be provided, society can at least incentivize the homeless to lead better lives by both positive and negative incentives. This can be done at minimal taxpayer expense. As far as drug use, this is a problem not only among the homeless but in society at large, and will always be until people are motivated to live better lifestyles. Only education and psychological and social services can help with this.

San Diego Vacation Rentals Take a Hit

From Voice of San Diego:

Councilwoman Barbara Bry at the San Diego City Council meeting July 16. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz

In a dramatic shift, the San Diego City Council voted 6-3 Monday to allow only residents who live in homes in San Diego to rent them out to visitors up to six months every year. Councilmen David Alvarez, Chris Cate and Scott Sherman voted no.

It was a huge win for Councilwoman Barbara Bry, who first proposed a framework like this last year but got very little support from colleagues, besides Councilwoman Lorie Zapf. The tide changed with Councilman Chris Ward’s decision last week to switch his long-held more liberal position on the matter. Ward recommended that residents with accessory dwelling units, aka granny flats, should also be able to rent those out.

That will have to come up later.

The Council rejected a carve-out for Mission Beach. And existing Mission Beach vacation rentals were not grandfathered in.

The Council decisively rejected Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s proposal that people be allowed to rent out their own place plus one other. Faulconer had also proposed the Mission Beach carve-out. The policy vastly changes what someone has to go through to rent out a home they own to visitors. Unless they find a loophole, it will eliminate all vacation rentals owned as second homes or investment properties.

City Attorney Mara Elliott cheered the move in a tweet. “Congratulations to the mayor and City Council for stepping up to regulate short term vacation rentals, an issue that dragged on 11 years.”

But it Depends on Enforcement …

Councilman Chris Cate said, in a written statement, a compromise would have provided resources to regulate the industry.

“Instead, the Council chose a path that is not only unenforceable and subject to legal challenge, but would drive the activity underground, resulting in the loss in millions of dollars in revenue that funds public safety officers and the repairing of city streets,” he wrote.

The mayor was optimistic: “As I’ve said repeatedly, the most important thing is that we have an established set of rules that protects neighborhood quality of life through increased oversight and enforcement.”

The losers: HomeAway, one of the platforms people use to rent out to visitors, said in a written statement it was “extremely disappointed” and hinted it may consider legal action.

Former City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, who was hired by vacation rental advocates to review the proposed regulations, argued Monday the city could face a fight in court over its decision to treat people with second homes in San Diego differently than those who spend more of the year here. The Constitution requires that all people be treated the same. Elliott had previously raised similar concerns and recently reiterated some of them.

Deputy City Attorney Shannon Thomas has said the City Council can apply different regulations to people but it must describe a legitimate purpose for doing so.

Last hurdle: The new vacation rental rules could face another major roadblock too. The California Coastal Commission, which has rejected multiple cities’ regulations, could take issue with a measure that significantly curtails rentals along the coast.

The City's Doing the Homelessness Money Shuffle, Again

From Voice of San Diego, May 9, 2018

 

Homeless people line up their belongings alongside Fault Line Park in East Village. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz

City leaders all seem to agree that key to solving the homelessness crisis is building lots – and lots and lots – of new housing.

That’s why many of them are wary of pulling money meant to fund permanent housing and diverting it to fund temporary solutions. But the city is looking to do just that – for the second time in six months.

The city is expected to tap San Diego Housing Commission funds meant to support permanent housing to finance short-term solutions.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s team is pledging to quickly replenish the funds to support more permanent solutions but the latest fund-shuffling move underscores the lack of certainty surrounding new funding and the lack of a strategy to address an urgent problem.

So what are the city and county’s plans to address homelessness? The answer: They don’t have an overarching strategy.

The Regional Task Force on the Homeless, a countywide group coordinating the regional response, last year paid a Sacramento consultant to produce a plan. (Here’s a cheat-sheet version.) The goal was to get local governments and homeless-serving agencies rowing in the same direction.

Gordon Walker is CEO of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. / Photo by Vito Di Stefano

But the plan for that regional plan has changed in the past year. Task Force CEO Gordon Walker says the group has since decided against having the outside consultant produce a more detailed regional strategy. The Task Force is, however, working on overarching suggestions laid out in the initial report that advocated a housing first approach. (Translation: Housing first means focusing on quickly housing the homeless rather than demanding they enter temporary programs first.)