LIVING IN SQUALOR IS JUST UNACCEPTABLE

Sidewalks and parks in Barrio Logan, East Village and other parts of the city are no longer recognizable to longtime San Diegans like me. Rows of tent encampments are making parts of San Diego unsafe and unhealthy — both for the people inside the encampments, and those forced to live and work around them.

San Diego can do better, one step at a time.

The first, crucial step was passing Councilmember Stephen Whitburn’s proposed Unsafe Camping Ordinance last month.

The law would prohibit tent encampments in all public spaces if shelter space is available, and in certain sensitive places — such as in canyons and some parks, near schools, trolley stations and homeless shelters — at all times, regardless of shelter capacity.

Letting people continue to suffer on the streets — typically in squalor — with no hope of progress toward getting housed is inhumane. It’s not fair to them or fair for the people who must live and work around encampments.

We cannot continue to have the children of East Village and Barrio Logan walk to schools and parks in their neighborhoods past blocks and blocks of encampments. We are better than this. If our offers of shelter and services are refused, there is no unconditional right to stay on public streets, sidewalks and parks. It is unsafe and unhealthy.

I know that enforcing a tent ban can seem like a bit of a gut punch, but these bans can only be seen as cruel if there is nowhere for people inside the encampments to go. That’s not the case here in San Diego. The city needs to create more and more shelter options for people experiencing homelessness. The city has created two new Safe Sleeping sites on the edge of Balboa Park and has committed to doing more.

The city is trying hard to meet people’s needs in their journey out of homelessness, but much more needs to be done.

In the past two years, Mayor Todd Gloria has added more than 700 shelter beds to San Diego’s homelessness response system — a nearly 70-percent increase. His administration has diversified city shelters to meet the needs of different segments of the population — women, seniors, families, folks with behavioral health challenges. It has expanded the Safe Parking Program for those living in their vehicles. It has launched and expanded an effective street outreach program that does the painstaking work of persuading folks to accept these services. If individuals accept help, they’ll be taken to a shelter.

Many of our unhoused residents

living in the encampments on our sidewalks and in our parks right now are not accepting this help. Some are fighting addiction and mental health challenges that are keeping them from taking the next step themselves. That’s where the Unsafe Camping Ordinance comes in.

Sometimes, change must be a push rather than a pull.

As San Diego’s former city manager, I have seen this approach work before. The recession in 1992 and 1993 hit our city hard, leaving thousands of San Diegans homeless. We had to act quickly to help get these newly homeless people off the streets. Back then, though, we had enforcement tools that allowed us to intervene even when people refused to accept shelter. After the police intervention, we would house people in single-room occupancy units and other temporary shelters. We worked to connect them to services and programs. And from there, we got most of them into permanent housing.

Now that most of San Diego’s SROS have been redeveloped into more expensive housing, I applaud the city for using hotel rooms in the same way. These rooms provide temporary shelter that is a big step up from where these folks sleeping on the streets are right now.

But all these efforts must be pursued with a higher sense of urgency. This is an emergency and must be treated as such. This is not a time for bureaucratic hand wringing. Every creative alternative must be pursued, including the idea that a group led by concerned citizen George Mullen has put forward about Sunbreak Ranch, a facility to provide rehabilitation services and shelter for the homeless.

Solving this encampment issue is all about taking small but critical steps in the right direction. We must push those living in encampments to take that first step off the streets. Leaving them to live and die in the squalor of encampments is simply unacceptable.

We cannot keep adding shelter without also adding enforcement measures. It’s time to enforce the Unsafe Camping Ordinance.