HOMELESSNESS PROPOSAL STILL NEEDS WORK

On Tuesday, the San Diego City Council will consider a proposal from Mayor Todd Gloria and Councilmember Stephen Whitburn to ban camping on public property when shelter beds are available — and to ban camping completely at Balboa Park and shoreline parks and within two blocks of schools, trolley stations, transit hubs and waterways. In lobbying for the proposal they unveiled in March, the city leaders depict it as part of a comprehensive larger effort to address soaring homelessness by providing more shelter and more services. This was backed up a month ago when Gloria announced a plan that would allow more than 500 homeless people to live outdoors in tents provided by the city, along with services, in staffed camps on city parking lots on the periphery of Balboa Park.

Given the recent reports that the number of homeless people living in Downtown San Diego set a record in May — and that the number of homeless people in the city had increased by 32 percent from January 2022 to this January — the Gloria-whitburn proposal will please many residents tired of the squalor they see on San Diego’s streets. But while its superficial appeal is plain, The San Diego Uniontribune Editorial Board called it a “hollow gesture” in April. At a meeting of the council’s Land Use and Housing Committee, members questioned the proposal’s lack of written enforcement and operations plans and asked how it could be adequately enforced, among other concerns. Then they voted 3-1 to send the proposal to the full council with no recommendation rather than ensure it was fully baked.

In a Zoom meeting Friday with the editorial board, Gloria and Whitburn said they and their staffs had worked hard to address these concerns, including consulting with police leaders. But we remain opposed to the measure for several reasons.

It is premature. The outdoor tents expected to be available by the fall to shelter more than 500 homeless people in Balboa Park have strong positive potential. Many of the people who have resisted city help may prefer them to indoor facilities.

It has inadequate resources for enforcement. People deemed to be camping illegally can only be charged after three “touches” — encounters with outreach workers and police. Especially if the ban is applied equally across all nine council districts, as Gloria and Whitburn promise, how does an understaffed Police Department have enough personnel to handle this? It’s easy to expect some of the same inequitable enforcement patterns seen in studies of how city police deal with different racial groups. Also, where are the specifics about what these interactions will look like, and should officers with guns be the ones confronting a group with so many mental health and addiction issues?

It may violate a 2018 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that held police in Boise, Idaho, could not arrest people for sleeping in public if indoor shelter beds or housing were unavailable. The proposal before the council would allow for such arrests in any circumstances if homeless people were in parks or near schools and other areas. The City Attorney’s Office says the ruling does not prohibit camping bans “at particular times or in particular locations,” and Gloria and Whitburn say they expect their specific bans to be allowed because of public safety concerns. But this view may detect a nuance in the appellate ruling that doesn’t exist. It states that “the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter.” How much is unclear, but the complete camping ban would cover a large area.

Homelessness is daunting for many mayors, and Gloria has the additional headache of some county cities resisting helping their own homeless residents, which pushes them to more compassionate San Diego. But while the proposal he touts may become law because the same “compassion fatigue” felt by many residents is also evident at City Hall, it needs more work before we can support it.