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A Place to Be
One of the most pressing problems for the homeless population is that there are no places that they can just be without being threatened by the police to move on. They have to settle into little vestiges of public property under freeway bridges or on public sidewalks or little strips of public grass. They need a place they can relax without the threat of constantly having to "move on." That's why the movement to turn parking lots into places where they can pitch a tent or sleep in a vehicle is a radical plan which is giving them some security from the police and illegitimacy of place. Vox reports:
The housing affordability crisis — most acute in the Bay Area, but stretching up and down the West Coast — has helped exacerbate a homelessness crisis in states like California, Oregon, and Washington. Many people who are no longer able to afford or find stable housing are now forced to spend their nights sleeping in the one major asset they have left: their cars.
California has about a quarter of the country's homeless population, with almost 130,000 people experiencing homelessness, according to estimates from one night in January (known as a "point in time" count) from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The state's neighbor Washington has just over 22,000 people experiencing homelessness, and Oregon has almost 14,500. Nearly half of all unsheltered people are in California, according to HUD statistics from 2018. In Los Angeles County alone, there are some 16,500 people living in vehicles. (Note that New York State has about 92,000 people experiencing homelessness, which is 17 percent of the national total).
"These folks by and large have not made any choice to experience homelessness," said Cassie Roach, the program coordinator and senior case manager at New Beginnings Counseling Center in Santa Barbara. "They haven't chosen to do drugs or make poor financial choices, and they're not all alcoholics or any of those biased and ignorant assumptions people make. It tends to be folks that are dealt a really difficult hand; they're making the best of a bad situation."
In Los Angeles County, for example, 71 percent of people who are first experiencing homelessness cite economic reasons, according to Gary Dean Painter, the director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute and a professor at the University of Southern California. About a third of people in the county pay half their income in rent, making them vulnerable to losing their homes when they have a negative shock to their finances. "I point a finger at the economy and housing market," Painter said.
People who live in their cars are more likely to have been recently living in permanent housing and have some kind of income, making them a unique population that may not require or be able to use the same types of services other people experiencing homelessness do.
"This is a population we should think strategically about," Painter said. "They're not a high cost population to serve, they don't have an accumulation of challenges, [but] they're experiencing something they've never experienced before in their lives, they likely don't know any of the services available to them."
Asset prices like real estate and the stock market have soared in price due to the Federal Reserve's policy of low interest rates and quantitative easing. This means that money, which is available only to the rich, is flooding into the markets. That money is used to by stocks and to bid up the price of houses and apartments. The result is that rents have become unaffordable for the average person. It takes two pretty hefty incomes in order to be housed in any kind of housing these days especially in California.
Jewish Family Services is sponsoring a Safe Parking Program in San Diego. This is from their website:
Every night, JFS operates a Safe Parking Program for unsheltered San Diegans living out of their vehicles, many of whom are experiencing homelessness for the first time. As these individuals and families work to lift themselves up out of a difficult situation, many are making a nightly choice between buying food or purchasing gas to get to work and school. Creating further barriers to stability are the isolation and lack of social support that so often accompany homelessness.
The Safe Parking Program provides a welcoming environment, meaningful resources and tools, and dignified support to help families stabilize and transition back into permanent housing. With holistic services focused on basic needs assistance, employment, family wellness, school success, financial education, credit repair, and housing, our goal is to create a pathway out of homelessness while being a support to people where they are now.
The program operates seven nights per week at three secured lots on Balboa Avenue, Aero Drive, and Mission Village Drive.
While government dithers, religious institutions are stepping up to the challenge. Government response to homelessness is to fund a study to see what to do about it. When I was a duly elected member of the CCAC (Center City Advisory Commission), the City of San Diego paid somebody $100,000. to study the homeless problem and come up with a report. That was 20 years ago. They've been writing reports periodically ever since. They refuse to come up with practical solutions like I've suggested many times. My solution would be a glorified Safe Parking Program which would be basically a campground cum parking lot with amenities. That way tents could be pitched as well as cars parked. Of course sanitation facilities would be provided.
I wrote previously:
Why is it so difficult to come to the same conclusion about homeless camping in America? They wouldn't have to sleep on public sidewalks in LA, San Diego or San Francisco if they had designated areas (parks) where they could rest in peace and security and with sanitation facilities. Part of the angst of the homeless is that they have no place to be, let alone call home, that is legally sanctioned and where they are not subject to being told to move by police and where they can rest assured that their belongings won't be put in a truck and hauled away to the city dump.
Government officials don't want to create a permanent underclass of homeless people. I've got news for them. That has already been created. The question now is what to do about it. Until public or subsidized housing becomes a reality, providing safe parking lots and campgrounds is the best way to go at the cheapest price for society in general. It's a solution that can be implemented immediately.
Posted at 07:32 AM in John Lawrence, California, Homelessness, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego: America's Finest Pothole City
by John Lawrence, December 27, 2019
As an Uber and Lyft driver, I try and remember where the potholes are. Otherwise, I am wrecking the heck out of my car. I scan the road in front of me and swerve to avoid them. The route from downtown to the airport along Harbor Drive and back is particularly hazardous, and, since I drive it a lot, I know where they all are at. The other day I hit an egregiously bad one at Sassafras and Kettner. Since it's a route I'm navigated through a lot, I made a special point to go back there and see exactly where the it was located because I never want to hit that pothole again. One of my riders said he hit one and knocked his car out of alignment in one fell swoop.
So why doesn't the city do anything about them especially on roads that all Uber and Lyft drivers and taxis navigate over on a daily basis? It's all about infrastructure, and this city as well as the US as a whole could care less about infrastructure. As far as the city is concerned, they probably care more about adding to the private economy of automobile dealerships in repair bills than to public expenditures of funds. My poor car is in the position of some poor person in India who can't afford his insulin rather than someone who has good medical insurance. Come to think of it, many Americans can't afford their insulin either. That's why the life span is decreasing and people are dying younger as time goes on.
The US ranks 13th in quality of infrastructure according to the World Economic Forum behind such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, U.K. France, Germany, Japan, Korea and Spain. America's infrastructure is desperately in need of investment, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. They estimate that the US needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the country's roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure. They gave the nation's overall infrastructure a grade of D+ in their 2017 "infrastructure report card".
Its the American way: let every public institution go to hell while privatizing as much as possible. Schools, drinking water, sewage systems are all underfunded largely to give private corporations the biggest tax breaks possible. Having given those who have largely funded public infrastructure in the past huge tax breaks means that there is little money left over to repair aging infrastructure much less build more modern and up to date, state of the art infrastructure. Far from building infrastructure, the Trump administration is hell bent on deregulating every protection of the environment in order to make corporations more profitable. With regulations in place corporations would have to clean up after themselves and this would decrease corporate profits. We can't have that. Better to let corporations dump their waste products in America's rivers and streams. This is the way you maximize profits.
Instead of eliminating coal and oil as energy sources in order to reduce global warming, Trump and his associates positively salivate over all the money to be made from fossil fuels. Other nations, namely Russia, are doing the same thing because they have enormous natural resources of coal, natural gas and oil. However, those resources need to go untapped if the earth is to be spared runaway global warning and become like its sister planet, Venus, which has a surface temperature of 900 degrees.
We have to keep 80 percent of the fossil-fuel reserves that we know about underground. If we don't—if we dig up the coal and oil and gas and burn them—we will overwhelm the planet's physical systems, heating the Earth far past the red lines drawn by scientists and governments. It's not "we should do this," or "we'd be wise to do this." Instead it's simpler: "We have to do this." However, the American government is spending billions of dollars a year subsidizing the fossil fuel industries. We're going in the wrong direction.
So are we as residents of planet earth willing to forego digging up or extracting what is estimated to amount to $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels still underground? Or will we maximize short term profits and say to hell with future generations?
Posted at 08:09 PM in John Lawrence, Climate Change, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Infrastructure, Lyft and Uber, Off the Top of my Head, Oil, Russia, San Diego, Trump | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Campaign Against Arms Trade
One of the most corrupt branches of the military-industrial complex is BAE System located in the US and the UK. The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is a UK-based campaigning organisation working towards the abolition of the international arms trade. It was founded in 1974 by a coalition of peace groups. It has been involved in several campaigns, particularly its legal challenge against the Serious Fraud Office's decision to suspend a corruption investigation into BAE Systems in 2007. BAE represents how the hand-in-glove military alliance between the US and the UK works.
BAE Systems formerly British Aerospace, is the world's second largest arms dealer. BAE's arms are sold around the world. It has military customers in over 100 countries and in 2010 it was listed by SIPRI as having 95% of its sales as military. CAAT has long campaigned against BAE, highlighting allegations of corruption and political influence, rebuking claims about jobs, attending AGMs as critical shareholders, and through legal action.
BAE is prominent in the San Diego port area which also houses General Dynamics' NASSCO. The roots of BAE Systems San Diego Ship Repair date back to the mid-1970s. They service US Navy ships at the shipyard, at the Naval Station San Diego, and at neighboring shipyards. They repair, overhaul, and modernize both U.S. Navy surface warfare ships and commercial vessels.
In September 1985 BAE was a signatory to the UK's largest ever arms deal, the Al Yamamah contract to sell and service military planes to the government of Saudi Arabia. This ongoing contact has evolved through several phases and by 2006 had brought them £43 billion.
Shortly after the contract was signed, corruption allegations emerged concerning bribes paid to Saudi officials through a £60 million pound slush fund. On 12 September 2003 the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation into possible corruption. There were also SFO investigations in BAE dealings in Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Tanzania. However, on 14 December 2006 the Government, under the personal intervention of Prime Minister Tony Blair, discontinued the Al Yamamah probe on the grounds that its conclusions might embarrass the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and threaten Britain's national security.
The US and UK are competing to sell arms to Saudi Arabia since the Saudis have tons of money to buy them so Brits and Americans are foaming at the mouth to profit off of arms sales to a big spender. Corruption ran rampant as certain high ranking Saudis including Prince Bandar were paid off in order to insure an arms and planes deal. These items were used to slaughter men, women and children in Yemen. The Guardian reported:
The arms company BAE secretly paid Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia more than £1bn in connection with Britain's biggest ever weapons contract, it is alleged today. A series of payments from the British firm was allegedly channeled through a US bank in Washington to an account controlled by one of the most colourful members of the Saudi ruling clan, who spent 20 years as their ambassador in the US.
It is claimed that payments of £30m were paid to Prince Bandar every quarter for at least 10 years.
It is alleged by insider legal sources that the money was paid to Prince Bandar with the knowledge and authorisation of Ministry of Defence officials under the Blair government and its predecessors. For more than 20 years, ministers have claimed they knew nothing of secret commissions, which were outlawed by Britain in 2002.
The US and UK and their arms dealers were anxious to profit off of Saudi corruption and maintain jobs in the arms industry. President Trump is all about selling military procurements to the Saudis, and he doesn't hide his motives. "It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States," Trump said in a statement. So selling arms to a human rights violating murderous regime is being justified on the grounds that it will provide wealth for the US - filthy lucre to say the least. The deal supposedly included a Saudi order for $110 billion-worth of US military equipment and weapons.
Corruption and human rights violations are at the core of US and UK dealings with Saudi Arabia. They are US and British allies simply because they have money to buy arms and create profits and jobs for these countries despite their abominable human rights record including murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This in and of itself makes the US and UK human rights violators one step removed. Some ally!
Posted at 06:00 AM in John Lawrence, Britain, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego, Saudi Arabia, The US | Permalink | Comments (0)
Another Plan to Help The Homeless
The City of San Diego has no lack of plans to help the homeless. When I was a duly elected member of the Center City Advisory Committee (CCAC) in 2004, it came up that the City of San Diego had given $100,000 to some woman for a plan to solve the homeless situation. I wonder whatever happened to it. No in 2019, the City is appropriating a $183,900 contract with nonprofit Corporation for Supportive Housing to establish an overarching vision for addressing homelessness that includes short, medium and long-term action items to better aid homeless San Diegans. I see that the price has gone up - inflation no doubt - for yet another plan to solve the homeless situation. That's a master stroke - keep giving money to well off people to solve a situation for those that are not well off and yet years go by, and the homeless situation only gets worse.
Lisa Halverstadt of Voice of San Diego writes:
As Mayor Kevin Faulconer has urged City Council members to line up behind an array of new city-funded homelessness programs, he's consistently encountered a demand from fellow city leaders.
Instead of approving one-off initiatives and projects, they argue, San Diego needs a clear, comprehensive strategy guiding all of its homelessness efforts.
"A lot of the programs that have been coming forward (are) reactionary, and I've not really seen a holistic approach in where we're going," City Council President Georgette Gómez said before a vote to extend contracts with shelter providers last year. "We're just reacting, having a piecemeal type of a program moving forward."
Faulconer seemed to take a shot at that approach in his State of the City address when he said, "I am not going to tell a veteran sleeping in a park, or a family living out of their car, that they should wait for the government to do another study while they spend another night in the cold!"
They want a clear cut vision of a way forward so staff can act on it. It's prbably yet another boondoggle. Anytime you see the word "staff" that's going to act on something, beware. Staff is going to feather their own nest and add more staff. Then staff is going to enlarge the staff's budget so they can"do more" and "solve the problem." There's only one way they're going to build more "suppoprtive and affordable housing" and that is to tax the genrral public to come up with the money. But then the NIMBYs will get active and not want to pay any more in taxes to support a bunch of "drug addicts and worthless people" - their words not mine.
"We requested that (the plan) contain not only general policies, but specific tasks that can be executed and adapted in order to reduce homelessness," Halsey wrote in a statement. "The report will not be the last step, and we are ready to keep taking action with our partners and find a sustainable source of funding to implement ideas from the report."
Another bureaucratic term to watch out for - "a holistic approach." This is just a bunch of bureaucrats who are making money off the homeless situation without a clue as to solve the homeless situation. Either you get a lot of money (through taxes) to build a huge amount of public housing or you create sanitary and secure campsites where the homeless can safely be until they can figure out how they can do something better. The campsite situation with portable sanitation facilities could be set up for a fraction of the cost of one "event" in this event happy city. At every event they have a ton of p[ort-a-potties, huge portable stages with audio systems, about 2 dozen semi trucks to haul all the stuff in and out so they can have some rock band for people to listen to and sell a lot of beer.
Meanwhile, bureaucrats dither. There is a March 2020 ballot initiative to raise the hotel tax to provide for the homeless and expand the convention center. There is no clue yet as to how they plan to help the homeless with the money so obtained.
While the hotel-tax measure defers to the mayor and other city leaders on decisions about how to address homelessness, the plan is designed to give Faulconer and others in-depth input from policy experts about how to improve the city's homelessness response.
Housing Commission CEO Rick Gentry has said that informing efforts that aim to pull in more new money to address homelessness is a key goal of the plan and that the plan can and should adjust as needs – and resources – change.
"Although this is a roadmap, it is not an atlas. It's a GPS and it's going to be variable based on road conditions and the biggest one is going to be what kind of money's available," Gentry said last month. "But what it will be will be a guide to local policymakers on what resources are needed and what we can do with the resources and of course, we can only do what we can do with the resources."
Yes, they can only do what they can do with the resources like hire more policy experts and create more plans like the one they spent $100,000 on 15 years ago.
Posted at 08:31 AM in John Lawrence, Homelessness, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
My Amazing Day
It started off with an email I received from Mike Wofford, who is a great jazz pianist, having to do with the plight of Betty Bennett, a jazz singer who was married to Mundell Lowe, a great jazz guitarist for 42 years. Mundell died a couple of years ago at the age of 95. Betty is 98 and she's run out of money, a plight that will become increasingly common as people are living into their 90s and 100s. Their money runs out before their life does. Betty's daughter had set up a Go Fund Me website for her to raise money so they could hire another caregiver to spell her daughter and so that she could stay in her own home the equity of which had been drained out. Another problem for older people especially when they get no break on property taxes which are considerable in California.
Betty was a WW II veteran, but so far she hasn't been able to obtain VA benefits. This is from her Wikipedia page:
Her first major signing was with the Claude Thornhill band in 1946, the band in which her husband, bassist Iggy Shevak, was playing. Shortly after her husband left to join Alvino Rey, Bennett followed him there. In 1949, she joined Charlie Ventura's band before going on to join Benny Goodman in 1959.
Her second album featured arrangements by Shorty Rogers and her second husband, André Previn. Bennett later married guitarist Mundell Lowe.
Betty had two daughters with Andre Previn who died last February 2019. Previn was involved in the music industry having worked on the music for over 50 films in his career. He won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings (and one more for his Lifetime Achievement). He was also the music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also a jazz pianist.
A little about Mundell's career: In 1965 he moved to Los Angeles and worked for NBC as a staff guitarist, composer, and arranger. He wrote music for the TV shows Hawaii Five-O, Starsky & Hutch, and The Wild Wild West, and the movies Billy Jack and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask. He recorded with Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan. During the 1980s, he worked with André Previn, Tete Montoliu, and the Great Guitars. He was a teacher at the Guitar Institute of Technology and the Grove School of Music. For several years, he was music director of the Monterey Jazz Festival.
So this extended family was as close as you can get to American musical royalty.
I donated to Betty's Go Fund Me campaign, and then I went on the road as an Uber and Lyft driver. Later that day, during my 4 hour break and after my nap, I spoke on the phone with my friend, Grace Rich, who is in a retirement home facility in Flagstaff after having had a several month serious bout with anxiety and depression. She used to give water and Vienna sausage to the homeless in Tucson. Thank God, she is doing much better and we plan to talk more after several months of being incommunicado. Then I Facetimed with my oldest granddaughter, Jasmine. It was so good to see her beautiful face and hear that she's going to community college and working. She looks great!
Then I went back on the road driving for Uber and Lyft. I had a long ride from El Cajon near where I live to Miramar Road up near Mira Mesa, then another from there back to San Diego. When I saw the woman's destination, it rang a bell. Wasn't that the street that Mundell and Betty lived on? See I knew their house very well because I had cleaned the windows there a whole bunch of times in my former career as a window washer. Sure enough we went right by their house before I dropped the woman off a few houses down the street. What a coincidence I thought! My daughter Justine said, "That was no coincidence, Dad." That was Mundell's way of thanking you. By the way I had presented Mundell in concert with the San Diego State Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Bill Yeager when I was President of the San Diego Jazz Society back in the 80s. The last time I had seen Mundell and Betty at their house, they were both in their 90s but in good health. Betty gave me one of her CDs, and then she went out walking.
After I dropped the woman off I dropped in on my good Swedish friends, Britt and Olof, who lived only a few doors away. I just turned off the Uber and Lyft which I can do any time at my discretion and convenience at least for now. That may be changing, however, since Governor Newsom just signed a bill making Uber and Lyft drivers employees rather than independent contractors. This means I could lose flexibility with my driving habits and lifestyle. Right now it's perfect the way it is insofar as it works for me. Britt invited me to stay for dinner, and we talked politics. She likes Kamala. I like Elizabeth Warren. Of course we all think Trump is an ignoramuis who wants to reduce California's stricter tailpipe emission standards so cars can pollute more. What a backwards shitass! We talked about how this Friday school children were going to walk out of class protesting climate change and about how the Swedish teen ager, Greta Thunberg, is leading the movement in which children, who will inherit the earth, are realizing that, if we don't step it up regarding climate change, they will be inheriting a hellhole.
Then I came home after an amazing day. I'm sure the close knit San Diego jazz community and perhaps the jazz community all over America will come to Betty Bennett's aid. Already after 3 days the Go Fund Me site had collected over $5000.
Posted at 08:07 AM in Elizabeth Warren, John Lawrence, Jazz, Lyft and Uber, Off the Top of my Head, Politics, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego Students Walk Out for Climate Action
The words "climate change" were always just another two words that our science teachers would throw around during the Earth unit and that we would hear during the documentaries we were forced to watch. They were always just another two words that we would occasionally hear on the news or at the dinner table. Many adults even told us that the whole concept might not even be real. But today, things are different. Today, the words "climate change" are just about everywhere you look. Because today, we are aware of the fact that we are in a climate crisis.
While we students are held to tough learning standards, there seem to be no grading rubrics to hold our leaders accountable for all the ways that our air, water, and land are being exploited. If there were, our leaders––and our society––would receive a failing grade, as Greta Thunberg has stated.
Stand with Greta: RSVP to walkout on Friday, September 20th to demand bold climate action!
Thousands of San Diego students like me will be walking out of our schools on Friday, September 20th, and we need you to stand with us — to walk out of work and join us at schools across the county to demand immediate and substantial solutions that will give life on Earth the chance to survive. We are the first generation whose futures are truly at risk, and we are the last generation who can make the changes that will save our planet before it is too late.
This isn't a question of whether or not we will face climate peril. Consequences have already manifested. Many of us, too young to vote, are being sentenced, but your support can shift course and prove that there is, indeed, hope.
RSVP now to walkout on September 20, stand with students and demand bold climate action!
Whether you're a fellow student, teacher, or parent, we need your help to demonstrate the urgency of our message. In the link below, please indicate if you can help with planning and promotion, and make a donation to support the walkout if you can.
Alyson Liu
Senior, Scripps Ranch High School
Ps. Join us at our upcoming art builds. We'll be making compelling banners and signs for the walkouts. Both are 10am - 5pm — come for the whole day or any part. Fun for all ages and skills. RSVP for September 7th in La Mesa or September 14th in Encinitas.
Visit our website or Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch! Email us with questions.
Posted at 07:45 AM in Climate Change, Global Warming, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
To the Mayor and City Council: You have to Do Something About the Homeless Crisis
by John Lawrence, August19, 2019
What's happening with the homeless in San Diego is not fair to them, and it's not fair to the tourists and residents that have to put up with it. You outlaw people sleeping it vehicles. Yet it's OK to live in tents on public sidewalks. As an Uber driver I picked up a lady who lives in a luxury high rise at Broadway and Pacific Highway. She regrets moving downtown because she can't walk her dog at night without being verbally assaulted by some homeless person or stepping in some poop. Uber navigates me sometimes through the worst homeless areas at 17th and Imperial so tourists are treated to the sight of people and their belongings sprawled all over the streets in "America's Finest City" supposedly.
Here, in my humble opinion, is what you need to do:
1) Set up one or more public campgrounds where the homeless as well as others can pitch their tents.
2) Provide minimal amenities such as sanitation facilities including port-a-potties, portable showers, lockers and security. You had a place like this in Balboa park. From the San Diego Union, October 2017:
"The first city-sanctioned homeless encampment is scheduled to open Monday in a public works yard near Balboa Park with tents, security, food, showers, restrooms and social services for more than 200 people, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and other officials announced Wednesday.
"Speaking at the city operations yard that will be used for the camp area, Faulconer said the site will be short-lived, with a plan to begin moving people out after the first of three large industrial tents to temporarily house homeless people opens later this year."
You were on the right track and then you blew it by making it temporary. Nobody wants to live in "three large industrial tents."
3) Provide transit passes so that they can get from wherever the campgrounds are located to downtown homeless services.
4) Allow pets.
5) Very low cost solution compared to actual housing.
6) Pass an ordinance making it illegal to sleep on public streets and sidewalks.
Homelessness is becoming a culture embedded in American society. Until this culture is changed, it is becoming a permanent part of American cities, a way of life. As far as drug use, it seems to be happening with impunity on public streets so it's a wash whether or not it would be happening at public campgrounds. Until this street culture is eradicated, HOT teams would have to be in the business of transporting homeless people to the campgrounds because they would probably prefer public sidewalks. After all that's what they're used to, and that's a part of the culture that's being embedded in society.
Forget about "shelters." You only need shelters in case of very inclement weather which we have little of in San Diego. Also don't worry about San Diego becoming a "homeless magnet." The improvement in the city's ambiance if the areas around 16th and 17th streets were cleaned up would be a guiding light for other cities to do the same, and it would promote the city as a tourist destination as in fact, "America's Finest City.".
Posted at 07:42 AM in John Lawrence, Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
A First Step in Solving the Homeless Problem
I envision a nice campground with ample parking space for those who want to sleep in their vehicles. It would be a lot less expensive than building public housing although that would be the long run solution. Shelters can be provided for inclement weather, but when it's nice out, a campground with amenities would be preferable for most people. First, it would be more amenable to pets which aren't allowed in most shelters. Second, sanitation facilities including rest rooms and showers should be provided. Not that expensive compared to housing. Third, security needs to be there and fourth, social workers to figure out how to help people with drug problems and problems getting a job and leading a normal life.Lockers could be provided for valuables. Otherwise, belongings could be stored in their tents. There must be access to transportation. There must be no restrictions on who can camp there so people who might use hostels would also have this option. The only difference is that people who can afford to would have to pay. So there would be a mix of people in residence and not only "homeless" which has become a subclass in American society. This would help to remove the stigma of being homeless.
If I were a billionaire, I would buy up some land and make this campground plus parking lot a reality. Maybe I would buy up two parcels or three so people would have a choice of where they wanted to be and were not stuck in one place. Why isn't some billionaire doing this? They are stuck in their vision of going to the moon or going to Mars. This is a false wild goose chase. First, why don't they try to solve some problems here on earth? Establishing a colony in some harsh locale is a fool's errand. Why not pick some inhospitable part of earth to do this? There are plenty of areas to consider. Like the Mojave desert or Greenland. Perhaps the Sahara or Antarctica. At least Elon Musk is developing technology like the Tesla that doesn't spew greenhouse gasses.
My campground cum parking lot cum sanitation facilities cum social worker access cum security idea would solve several problems related to homelessness. Number one: it would get the homeless off the streets. It would give them a secure place to be without the threat of having their possessions heaved into a dump truck by the local authorities. They would not have to worry about being told to "move on" or find some place else to lie down. Police are always telling the homeless they cannot stay where they are. They are always in the position of trying to find some minute public space to wedge themselves into temporarily until the cops or security comes and tells them they can't stay there. So they have to take their stuff and move on. I literally saw a security guard order a homeless person off the sidewalk in front of a business so they just threw their stuff a couple of feet to the sidewalk in front of another business. This insecurity of place is a constant problem. They are not welcome anywhere.
Police are always being called to deal with some problem involving the homeless. Having a campground where they can be without being hassled would be a first step solution. The other thing it would solve is the unseemliness of having people, their pets and possessions sprawled all over the streets where they urinate and defecate in a tourist town like San Diego, supposedly "America's Finest City." Right next to the gleaming high rise condos, Petco Park and upscale restaurants, you have what amounts to a homeless settlement. It's pretty unseemly to say the least. Businesses don't appreciate it when the homeless are sleeping in their doorways. The HOT team could be responsible for transporting the homeless to one of the campgrounds that the billionaires have provided.
The HOT (Homeless Outreach Team) is a presently constituted service of the City of San Diego. Here's what they do. City police officers team with a County social worker and a Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT) clinician to assess the problems of homeless persons and identify how to help them from a range of solutions. One HOT team focuses on downtown and another on the beach area. HOT provides field assessments for eligibility to public entitlements, crisis intervention, comprehensive case management, drug/alcohol rehabilitation placement, and psychiatric/medical treatment placement. Sounds pretty good, huh? Why not provide this at a campground? Basically they are trying to clear the streets of the homeless when they get a complaint from a citizen or a business owner. But the net result is that the homeless person(s) involved just move to another public space where they wedge themselves in until the next police officer or HOT team arrives to tell them to move on.
If there were a campground as I'm suggesting there could be a City ordinance that these one or more spaces were open to the public, were in fact public spaces but ALL OTHER PUBLIC SPACES IN THE CITY WERE OFF LIMITS TO TENTS, TARPS AND LOITERING. The police and HOT teams would have to decide who was just going about their business and who were loitering. This would be a somewhat arbitrary decision, but so be it. It should not really be that hard. Little Italy already has a team that just gets the homeless out of Little Italy, but they don't provide services or an alternative place to be.
In the final analysis, the homeless need a place to be. There should also be places not to be. This would clean up the city for tourists and "homed" residents alike and make it a safer place for everyone while showing compassion for those in desperate circumstances for a price that would save the city money on police services and emergency room services in the long run. If I were a billionaire ... Won't some billionaire step up? You don't need to provide housing to solve 90% of the homeless problem both for the homeless themselves and also for everybody else.
Comic-Con and the Homeless
Last week was the Comic-Con convention at the San Diego convention center. There were hordes and masses of people all over downtown. The conventional traffic lights were inadequate to control traffic so the City hired an army of human traffic controllers. Many streets were blocked off so any kind of egress or ingress was virtually impossible so that the denizens of virtual reality and 5G could have their annual party. A few blocks away were the denizens of homelessness but they might as well have been far away from the madding crowd.
San Diego's convention draws more than 130,000 people each year and is estimated to generate an economic impact of more than $140 million for the city. The only reason those numbers haven't grown is because the convention organizers cannot fit any more attendees into the exhibition center. So the dilemma for San Diego is to add to or build another convention center or else lose the Comic-Con convention altogether. While the city makes $140 million on providing every conceivable amenity for convention goers, the homeless sit sprawled all over the sidewalks without anywhere to go or anywhere to be. The City of San Diego cannot even afford to set aside one decent campground for them. Resourcefully, some have taken advantage of the hidden recesses of Balboa Park, but they must live under the constant fear of being found out and evicted.
In Balboa Park the old Sports Museum, which didn't make it financially, has been converted into a Comic-Con museum. There were hordes of people lined up there as well. A separate amusement right outside that museum allowed people to have the full Batman experience. You dressed up like Batman and then jets of air propelled you into weightlessness so you could fly like Batman and hover as well. The roar of the sound was deafening, but I guess that's the price you pay for a good amusement. I'm wondering what that cost for each individual participant. Balboa Park itself was overrun with tourists. Vacant parking spaces were non-existant.
Last week it was the Pride parade that brought hordes of tourists to San Diego. On the same day the Over the Line tournament, which is one big beerfest, was held on Fiesta Island in Mission Bay. Hordes were in attendance there as well. All summer Bayside Summer Nights is being staged by the symphony on Embarcadero Island. Semi-hordes are in attendance there. Parking lots and valet parkers are dismayed because so many are taking Ubers to these events so they don't have to pay outrageous sums for parking. As an Uber driver, I don't mind taking people from outlying areas to these events even though I get stuck in traffic. However, after dropping them off, I turn off my Uber or I would get calls from those parked a couple miles away where they can park for free and then call an Uber to get them to the event. The Uber driver then gets stuck in a lot of traffic in return for a very meager payout. Petco Park is another destination that a lot of people Uber to in order to attend Padres baseball games. Hordes are always in attendance there.
With all the "events" in San Diego happening weekly, you would think that the City could provide adequate resources for the homeless. The so-called "America's Finest City" should actually be called America's Finest Tourist City or America's Finest destination to go and amuse yourself. The homeless languish on the streets not far away from the convention center. Not that they aren't consuming their share of resources. The police are constantly being called to deal with some homeless situation. A fair share of police resources goes to dealing with the homeless. And then the medical system is spending tons of money as the homeless frequent emergency rooms to get basic health care situations taken care of. At the Bayside Summer concerts I have marveled at the 50 or 60 port-a-potties lined up for paying customers only, but not one port-a-pottie is available to the homeless. They have to hide out in the crevices of the city or sprawl in the "homeless neighborhood" on 17th street. Those taking the back way to Petco Park or the I-5 southbound entrance are forced to go through "homeless town." It's as distinct a neighborhood as any other. Tents and shopping carts abound. There is no money out of the millions the city makes off of events to provide a decent campground with adequate sanitation services much less an actual single room apartment.
The economic divide in America has produced those who are extremely rich and those who are extremely poor. Local, state and federal governments cannot even provide adequate facilities for those who can't afford a market rate apartment. They are afraid that, if they do, the homeless will all flock here even though studies have shown that a majority of the homeless were homed here before they became homeless. Did it ever occur to the City Fathers that a regional approach in which cities all over the West Coast might provide decent facilities might make the distribution of homeless more acceptable? In other words they wouldn't all have to flock here to get decent treatment. Or how about a national approach? Guess that will never happen The nation as a whole is only concerned about military might and a weaponized dollar. The American culture is more concerned with Bat Man then it is with solving the homeless problem or any other problem for that matter. We are literally Amusing ourselves to Death while climate change will eventually diminish the amusement of us all. The homeless will just have to continue fending for themselves unless and until they can hire a lobbyist to knock on Congresspersons' doors in Washington, DC. or get the Mayor and City Council to listen to them.
Posted at 09:21 AM in John Lawrence, Affordable Housing, Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego County Hit Hard by Climate Change
In Del Mar it's bluff erosion that's threatening multimillion dollar homes. In Imperial Beach it's low elevation plus the Tijuana River that is making the city uninhabitable, at least the el primo area near the Pacific ocean. The California coast is disappearing under a rising sea. So said an LA Times report. The Pacific is nearing the end of an unusually calm cycle that had lulled settlers into assuming that endless sandy beaches were forever. Therefore, infrastructure like highways and train lines were built right next to the coast. These gave travelers amazing views of the ocean, but now this infrastructure is being eroded and must be moved inland.
The LA Times reported:
But at what cost? Should California become one long wall of concrete against the ocean? Will there still be sandy beaches or surf breaks to cherish in the future, oceanfront homes left to dream about? More than $150 billion in property could be at risk of flooding by 2100 — the economic damage far more devastating than the state's worst earthquakes and wildfires. Salt marshes, home to shorebirds and endangered species, face extinction. In Southern California alone, two-thirds of beaches could vanish.
Not a pretty picture for those who are California Dreaming. Homeowners on the bluffs want cities and counties to shore up the shore line at public expense in order to save their real estate investments. Others want a managed retreat from the shore line. These battles are being fought out in Chambers of Commerce throughout California. What is happening in Pacifica pretty much tells the story:
"There's a public cost and a private cost in any choice that we make, and we need to start doing that cost-benefit analysis," said Charles Lester, director of UC Santa Barbara's Ocean and Coastal Policy Center, who has consulted for a number of towns, including Pacifica, on sea level rise planning. "If we don't start managing retreat now, how much is it going to cost later?"In hundreds of pages of planning documents, officials concluded that moving inland in future decades might pencil out to be the most cost-effective option for a number of neighborhoods. Seawalls keep failing, they said, and the ocean is winning. Much of the shoreline protection could be overwhelmed with as little as 1 foot of sea level rise.But many lambasted the proposal, fired up by a property rights campaign by the real estate industry. Homeowners flooded city meetings, knocked on neighbors' doors and plastered signs around town. The mayor became the town punching bag, and new leaders were voted in to help Pacifica stand its ground."'Managed retreat' is code word for give up — on our homes and the town itself," said Mark Stechbart, who worries that Pacifica, and in turn his own home's value, will be dismissed by future developers, insurers and buyers. "This is not just some intellectual exercise. These are real people and a real town at stake."
In San Diego County beach erosion is a serious problem. We need tourists to come and enjoy the beaches. Therefore, much public money has been spent to restore them.
In 2001, officials in San Diego County pumped about 2 million cubic yards of sand from offshore onto 12 beaches — the first large-scale attempt by California officials to add sand to disappearing beaches. It cost city, state and federal taxpayers $17.5 million.
The effort was short-lived. Most of the beaches had narrowed significantly by the following year. The extra sand, Griggs found, "was removed within a day when the first large waves of the winter arrived." A second attempt by the county — with twice as much money — yielded similar results.
In Del Mar the train tracks run along the eroding bluffs. It's the town where the turf meets the surf, where Bing Crosby and Jimmy Durante hung out. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a home there right on the beach. Movie stars abound.
Dry sand here was once abundant, the beach twice as wide today. Private seawalls now protect multimillion-dollar homes that early settlers had built right on the sand. On the southern end of town, train tracks run precariously close to the edge of rapidly crumbling cliffs.
But as word got out that those in charge were considering managed retreat, the town exploded. Relocating could mean allowing the ocean to claim as many as 600 homes.
If you start retreating, residents demanded, where do you stop?
"If you let the first row of homes go, the whole area behind it floods," said Jon Corn, a resident and attorney representing dozens of homeowners in the Del Mar Beach Preservation Coalition. "And then what about the next road? And the road after that? … At some point, everyone is going to say: 'No, we're not just going to retreat away from the ocean.'"
City leaders finally agreed and said they would keep an open mind about relocating the rail line, the fire station and other city-owned infrastructure — but took out any mention of private property. The land here is too valuable, they reasoned, and the threat of lawsuits too high. Adding sand will be the solution for now.
Terry Gaasterland, a data scientist who led the sea level task force and ended up running for office over the issue, said she's confident more studies and more time will uncover ways to coexist with the ocean and save the town.
Del Mar can afford to both protect homes and save the beach, said Gaasterland, who's now on the City Council. "We're not going to be packing our bags."
But if past sand projects are any indicator, Del Mar and its neighbors might be in for a surprise. For every jetty and breakwater that has helped keep Santa Monica and Venice wide and sandy, Dockweiler and beaches farther down the coast in turn needed their own supply of sand, which then disappeared and flowed onto beaches farther south.
Sand, although it might seem limitless, is not free. It's the most exploited and consumed natural resource in the world after fresh water. Federal agencies, states, cities and private companies across the nation are all trying to stake their claim.
And because sand is always on the move, adding more of it is anything but permanent. Erosion runs its course all the same.
In Imperial Beach the ongoing fight is between those who want to save the pricey oceanfront real estate and those who want to save the town. Imperial Beach is located right next to the Tijuana estuary and regularly floods with sewage from the Tijuana river. It's a place that once had low priced real estate, where someone could buy an affordable house along the beach. Lately more affluent people have moved in bidding up the price of once reasonably priced beach access homes.
The reptilian frenzy over managed retreat has overtaken Imperial Beach, as it has in other cities. Fear overwhelms reason. Conspiracy theories and misinformation abound. Some think the mayor, an environmentalist known for his history of preserving open space, just wants to turn the town into one giant lagoon.
With the city barely able to scrap together a $20-million budget every year, others say letting go of prime real estate means abandoning the whole town.
"If you get rid of the waterfront, the municipal tax base, how do you support the city?" said City Councilman Ed Spriggs, who lives along the water and questioned managed retreat as a strategy. He points to the city's first upscale hotel, which was built in 2013 with coastal defenses, as a sign that Imperial Beach has time to survive and thrive well into the future.
As chair of the coastal cities group for the League of California Cities, Spriggs sees what's been happening across the state and calls managed retreat an ideology being pushed by extreme environmentalists with no rules or standards.
As far as the City of San Diego is concerned, there seems to be hope that the city which is built right on the harbor can survive in some form although the popular beach areas of Ocean Beach, Mission Beach and Pacific Beach which are right on the ocean and depend on tourist dollars may have to make some adjustments like moving the beaches inland a few miles. For the present flooding is minimal and the sand is still there. San Diego downtown is probably better off than a lot of California coastal communities. The multimillion dollar houses on Point Loma are well above sea level for the most part. Those in lower lying Coronado, however, could be underwater in a few years. The really pricey real estate in La Jolla is high enough that it will survive unscathed.
Posted at 07:25 AM in John Lawrence, Climate Change, Flooding, Global Warming, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego's Land Barons Are Not Capable of Solving the Housing Affordability Crisis
by Doug Porter, Words and Deeds blog
The housing market in San Diego is just a few short steps away from being a disaster. Take the latest guesstimate (8,000) of unhoused humans in the county and city, multiply it by twenty five, and it's possible to visualize being just one stock market crash away from dystopia.
If your budget is highly stressed because of housing costs, you may as well make contingency plans for being homeless in San Diego.
This includes 28% of the renters (who pay more than half their income for housing) in San Diego County, according to statistics from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Multiplying the number of rental units by the average number of occupants and taking .28 of that number leaves us with roughly 397,000 humans facing homelessless.
Assuming half of those people can find another place, often by doubling up occupancy with others, we're still left with over a potential 200,000 homeless humans.
Obviously this is an extreme scenario, destined to be torpedoed by somebody with other statistics or insights that I lack. But the point I'm making about huge numbers of people living on the precipice of disaster remains.
An article in the business section of the San Diego Union-Tribune by Philip Molnar started me down this rabbit hole of housing despair.
Despite all the yammering about build, baby, build, the number of residential permits pulled locally is down 58% from last year. It's down 70% for multifamily units.
We're told the reasoning behind the slowdown is because rents are not increasing fast enough.
Real estate analyst Nathan Moeder is quoted in the UT account:
"Projects are having a hard time achieving feasibility, so it means a lack of new projects in the pipeline," he said. "Developers used to be able to count on long-term inflation of rents. But, we've pretty much hit a ceiling."
Rents had increased at a rate of 2.7 percent annually as of the first quarter, said real estate tracker CoStar. That compares to 6.1 percent at the same time in 2017 and 4.6 percent in 2018.
Moeder said he doubted San Diego County would return to the levels of homebuilding seen in recent years, despite calls by housing advocates to increase supply. Even Mayor Kevin Faulconer's latest proposal to increase housing density near transit stops, Moeder said, would mostly be smaller, in-fill projects — not the scale needed to address housing shortages.
According to the Payscale Index, wage growth in the San Diego metro area was a half of a percent (year over year) for the first quarter of 2019. That figure represented a .7% decrease in wage growth over the last quarter of 2018. And real wages nationally are 9% lower than in 2006, before the last recession.
So if wages weren't increasing as fast as the needed amount of rent charged by developers, the long term prospects don't look good for increasing the amount of available housing.
Added to the rent inflation/ability to pay factors are the rising costs of construction.
The Trump administration's tariffs on goods from China are the equivalent of a $2.5 billion-a-year tax on the entire U.S. home-building industry. Impacted are stainless steel and iron, molded glass paving blocks and tiles as well as lead, nickel, building stone, cement and copper. Items critical to HVAC infrastructure are also part of the new tariffs (from air compressors to heat pumps), as are interior materials for flooring, walls and furniture.
Matt Strabone's most recent Show in Progress podcast featured three guests with different perspectives on solutions for the housing shortage.
Jim LaMattery, realtor/spokesperson for anti-development group Raise the Balloon, argued for more forethought on changes making it easier to change zoning rules and build denser housing.
Maya Rosas, president of the YIMBY Democrats of San Diego County, advocated for building as much new housing as possible.
And Andy Kopp, described as "a public housing advocate," dared to discuss the third rail of NIMBYism, namely getting the government more involved in financing construction.
If you listen to the podcast, you'll discover that nobody was absolutist in their positions, meaning the usually irrational parts of such a discussion were left out.
While San Diego and California's housing shortage is driven somewhat by local ordinances and neighborhood opposition to new construction, there are bigger issues at play.
Nationally we have built 7 million fewer homes in the 10 years since 2009 than needed to break even. There is also a shortage of an additional 7 million units of affordable rental housing. It's no wonder prices keep rising: The law of supply and demand cannot repealed.
The way the economy is presently structured, with near-stagnant wage growth, even if those residential units had been privately built, they couldn't be rented/sold. Developers know this, which is why they're not building.
Where the private sector is incapable of solving a societal problem, it becomes necessary for the government to step in.
The elephant in the room is racism.
Public housing has been used as a weapon, its residents demonized to the point where even the discussion of such a thing is enough to create panic in some quarters.
So let's not call it public housing. Let's call it social housing.
Social housing is public housing, but only in the sense that it is government-financed. European social housing is subsidized yet serves middle-class as well as low-income households, thereby avoiding the stigma associated with America's public housing.
There are countries all over the world that do this successfully.
California suffers from the aftereffects of Constitutional Article 34, which prohibits the construction of public housing projects without a public vote.
Here's a quick summation, via Pacific Standard:
There's no better example of the tyranny of the ballot measure than Article 34.
An amendment to the California state constitution passed by public referendum in 1950, Article 34 states that: "No low rent housing project shall hereafter be developed, constructed, or acquired in any manner by any state public body until, a majority of the qualified electors of the city, town or county … approve such project by voting in favor thereof at an election to be held for that purpose, or at any general or special election."
It's California's original housing sin, a binding not-in-my-backyard clause that has forced municipalities to adopt creative workarounds to build low-income housing. That it was enacted before the Fair Housing Act or even Brown v. Board of Education raises questions about the historical purpose of the rule. But today, it's a powerful weapon for communities that want to keep low-income families out—a legal path to de facto segregation along race and class lines. When it comes to housing, California's progressive reputation doesn't apply.
Efforts are underway to repeal Article 34 via the 2020 ballot. In the meantime, as Andy Kopp explains in the aforementioned podcast, there are workarounds, things that can be started today.
What's true for California is true for the nation, as this excerpt from Smithsonian Magazine demonstrates:
In the early 20th century, a number of cities, particularly border cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, and Louisville, Kentucky, passed zoning ordinances that prohibited African-Americans from moving onto a block that was majority white. In 1917, the Supreme Court found in Buchanan v. Warley that such ordinances were unconstitutional, but not for racial reasons. The Court found it unconstitutional because such ordinances interfered with the rights of property owners.
As a result, planners around the country who were attempting to segregate their metropolitan areas had to come up with another device to do so. In the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover organized an advisory committee on zoning, whose job was to persuade every jurisdiction to adopt the ordinance that would keep low-income families out of middle-class neighborhoods. The Supreme Court couldn't explicitly mention race, but the evidence is clear that the [Commerce Department's] motivation was racial.
Jurisdictions began to adopt zoning ordinances that were exclusive on economics, but the true purpose was, in part, to exclude African-Americans. So they developed ordinances that for example, prohibited apartment buildings from being built in suburbs that had single-family homes. Or they required single-family homes to have large setbacks and be set on multiple acres, all as an attempt to make the suburb racially exclusive.
Ryan Cooper at The Week set forth some principles for what publicly financed housing should look like going forward.
1) Abandon the Stalinist, gigantic apartment block model. These are more expensive, require a lot more land and maintenance, and tend to be built on mad-architect lines with a total disregard for functionality. Worse, they concentrate poverty, a known factor for all manner of social ills.
2) Public housing should be ordinary. Though obviously it should be built efficiently, public housing ought to appear just like any other building. Abolish the "projects" stigma.
3) Public housing should be dispersed. Smaller buildings ought to be spread out all over the place, not just in the poorest districts. Though the super-elite residents of Georgetown would collapse in paroxysms of rage to hear it, there ought to be a good number of units there as well. Indeed, rich neighborhoods are particularly well-suited to public housing. Poor people need the high-quality services and schools a lot more than rich people do.
Again, this is only part of the solution. But while there is broad agreement that additional construction should be brought to bear on housing supply, advocating for public housing is typically met with scorn or sheer bewilderment. On the contrary, these are two great tastes that taste great together.
To those thoughts I'd like to add the caveat that social/public housing should not be run by government. History (think Chicago) shows housing agencies rarely get the funding or oversight needed to maintain safe and sane living spaces.
Non-profit or cooperative models are the way to go here. Making sure the people living in properties have a say in keeping them well run is smart.
San Diego has unbuilt land. I pass the San Diego Unified School District headquarters on a daily basis and dream of what good could be done there. They could find a way to facilitate a complex including their offices and affordable housing for educators and staff. It's more likely they sell it for quick cash and move the headquarters somewhere else.
WE can solve the housing problem. But as long as it's ME (Nimbys), ME (developers), ME (short sighted public officials) in control, nothing is going to happen.
I'll close with a few thoughts from Henry Kraemer and Peter Harrison at Data for Progress, published as It's the Housing, Stupid at Buzzfeed:
True reform to the American housing system would be incomplete without restoring our commitment to homes as places to live, instead of shelters for capital.
Doing that will take eliminating tax privileges for rental properties, dismantling speculative real estate practices, and encouraging alternative ownership models.
Federal tax subsidies for purchasing, operating, and reselling rental property attracts speculators eager to flip buildings, which raises rents and destabilizes neighborhoods.
Progressives should pare down rental property depreciation to just long-term building improvements or investments in decarbonization. Rent and the sale of the property should be taxed like wages to keep landlords from disproportionately benefiting from the rising property values that stem from public investment and land scarcity, and incentivize holding on to buildings and tenants for longer.
Posted at 08:40 AM in Affordable Housing, Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Despite Best Efforts, Homelessness Increases in LA
Here's the skinny in a nutshell:
In a hard reality check for Los Angeles County's multibillion-dollar hope of ending homelessness, officials reported Tuesday that the number of people living on the streets, in vehicles and in shelters increased by about 12% over last year.
The annual point-in-time count, delivered to the Board of Supervisors, put the number of homeless people just shy of 59,000 countywide. Within the city of Los Angeles, the number soared to more than 36,000, a 16% increase.
The homeless problem gets more entrenched with every passing day. Concomitant problems are trash piling up in public places and public urination and defecation. San Diego has turned parking lots into place where people can sleep in their vehicles overnight. San Diego now has 3 parking lots open where additional services are also provided. These facilities are overseen by Jewish Family Services.
The basic problem is a lack of affordable housing. Rents are seriously, extremely high and getting higher as real estate is bid up by corporate players and hedge funds. Single Room Occupancy Units (SROs) are being demolished and replaced by high rise condos and luxury apartments. San Diego is becoming a place that only the rich can afford to live in or be grandfathered in by virtue of having bought cheap real estate 50 years or more ago.
Homelessness breeds hopelessness and drug use to relieve the misery. It is a downward cycle with little hope of a positive outcome at the end of the tunnel unless social services intervene to help people get back on the right track. There are some people that can be helped if the right resources are available, those who are motivated to have a better lifestyle for themselves and their children. Others are chronically homeless and seemingly beyond help. They have adapted to the homeless lifestyle.
This growing phenomenon is not without cost for the rest of the population who must foot the bill for increased police and medical services with their tax money. Businesses find their walk in trade diminished if homeless are sleeping on the sidewalks blocking their entrances. Calls to police for removal of bodies have been increasing. Police are tied up just dealing with requests from business owners to get the homeless away from their businesses.
Funds from the 2017 Measure H sales tax reached full strength last year and expanded homeless services got more people off the street than ever before — a little more than 20,000 into some form of housing, according to the county. Yet the number of people becoming homeless outpaced those historic gains.
"Last year's count, we felt we were trimming in a way that would suggest we were getting our arms around this," Ridley-Thomas said. "And yet this year we are pretty well stunned by this data."
As people are being helped by social services in record numbers, record numbers more of homeless are showing up needing help. Comprehensive solutions are lacking although there is no lack of efforting. Only the building and maintaining of public housing in huge amounts will solve this problem as the forces of capitalism drive rents higher and higher. Public housing has alleviated housing needs for the extremely poor in many places and times. Unfortunately, it has also created problems if other social services have not been provided as well. Homelessness needs to be addressed on the level that 1) many people cannot cope with modern social circumstances in this advanced capitalistic world and 2) society has to devote major resources to shoring up peoples' lives who have basically been left behind and are not needed by society. They can be left to die on the streets or they can behelped by a humane society. The question is: is the US a humane society?
New York City has the largest homeless population in the United States with 77,000 homeless people. However, they are addressing this crisis head on. The De Blasio administration is tackling the issue by closing hundreds of low-quality shelter sites and building 90 new ones, including an innovative Bronx facility that combines a 200-bed shelter with more than 100 units of affordable housing. As a result no one is left out in the cold on a dark, rainy night in NYC. It is this type of commitment that needs to be undertaken by California and other west coast cities like Seattle.
The homeless problem is not going away without considerable resources, both in terms of real estate and human social services, being disposed to deal with it. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with before the US can become a nation that values quality of life for all its people more than it values its war machine and other frivolous expenditures.
Posted at 08:29 AM in John Lawrence, California, Homelessness, Los Angeles, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
California's Homeless Situation at Crisis Level
Los Angeles is not alone in its homeless situation, but mountains of rat infested trash have been piling up on city sidewalks there and out into the streets. The trash contains human feces and urine and is located in areas where food service trucks enter and exit. The homeless situation is getting worse despite the fact that record numbers of homeless are being moved into permanent housing. Problem is that even higher numbers are hitting the streets because there is no affordable housing. Experts have calculated that a person needs to make three times the minimum wage to afford an apartment in LA. That won't be happening any time soon. But it's not just in LA. San Diego and San Francisco have problems similar if not worse. Disease ran rampant last year when Hepartitis A was discovered in the homeless population in San Diego. For what it costs in trash pickup, police services and medical services alone for the homeless population, affordable housing could be provided. It's just that there's no money for that. But there's money for numerous trash pickups per day, numerous calls to police about homeless, numerous trips to emergency rooms by the homeless. This society has produced a class of super poverty people. And to think just a few years ago it was all about poverty in Appalachia. They even had leaky rooves over their heads.
Elena Stern, spokeswoman for the city Department of Public Works, said the backlog on service calls for trash pickup around homeless encampments sits at just under 8,400 currently. On average, the city gets six calls per site.
"If it's a homeless encampment, it's a lengthier process because humans are involved and we have to meet certain protocols," she said, including a survey of who's there, an inventory of personal property and notice of a cleanup. ...
I spent a few hours one morning on trash patrol with Jesse Ramirez, operations manager for Lopez's maintenance and safety crew. He told me the 17-person team picks up four tons of trash each day, but the recent numbers have been even higher. One two-person crew walks up and down San Pedro all day between 4th and 7th streets.
At 9 a.m. Thursday, we had been out for not quite two hours, and already several pickup trucks had been filled with trash. There had also been six service calls to the BID from merchants — four to pick up human waste and two to clear storefronts blocked by encampments.
Joey Joseph, who owns a seafood distribution center on Gladys Avenue near 4th, called to report urine and feces on the sidewalk where vendors pull in to load their vehicles. Joseph told me he also calls police and City Hall, along with the BID, so I asked how often.
So so you think your seafood might be getting contaminated by the urine and feces deposited on the sidewalk on a daily basis because sanitation facilities for the homeless are inadequate? And contractors are piling on figuring that, if homeless can deposit their trash on the street, well then so can they. But still the response by LA and other cities up and down the west coast from Seattle to San Diego is meager compared to the size of the problem. Will the US finally do something about the poorest of the poor? They can spend a trillion dollars on the military budget but have inadequate funding available not only to provide housing for the homeless, but even to provide sanitary conditions for the average person walking up and down the street as well as businesses that have to conduct business in the midst of a pile of rat infested trash.
Posted at 09:01 AM in John Lawrence, California, Homelessness, Los Angeles, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Rent is Too Damn High!
It's the reason so many people are living on the street or in their vehicles. Rent control's time has arrived, my friends. Right now in San Diego and most cities in California, a landlord can double the rent overnight. There is no rent control. That is about to change, at least in Los Angeles where a rent control law is going into effect. The scenario is very simple. Wealthy investors and hedge funds are moving into the real estate business. They identify marginal properties on the periphery of good neighborhoods, then move in, buy them up, rebuild or renovate and upgrade or upscale the area. They then can double the rent having converted cheap real estate into more expensive real estate. This process upscales and upgrades marginal neighborhoods, but outprices tenants who were already living there.
The New Republic reports:
If you've signed a lease in the past year, there's a good chance your landlord wears a tailored suit and works on Wall Street. One of the hottest trends in the financial sector is known as "REO-to-rental." Over the past couple years, hedge funds, private equity firms and the biggest banks have raised massive amounts of capital to buy distressed or foreclosed single-family homes, often in bulk, at bargain prices. Their strategy is to convert them to rental units for a while before reselling them when prices appreciate. The Wall Street firms are scooping up properties in the hardest-hit areas, promising high returns for the rental revenue streams—up to 10 percent annually —and starting bidding wars that have driven up some prices well above national averages. It's the next Wall Street gold rush, with all the warning signs of a renewed speculative bubble.
Since hedge funds have unlimited monies available to them - they can borrow money at 0% interest -, they can pay premium prices for distressed and marginal properties, then tear down a one family home and build 16 apartment units on the same property. This process has been going on for years but now it's at an accelerating rate. There is a snowball effect: the more a neighborhood gentrifies, the higher property values become, the higher rents become. So renters are being priced out of the market. Single room occupancy hotels, the last resort of the poor, are being converted to regular hotels and other more expensive rentals. In San Diego there is much soul searching and hand wringing over the closure of one of the last SRO hotels. Voice of San Diego reported:
City housing officials are rushing to aid dozens of residents who will soon be booted from the downtown Plaza Hotel, the latest historic single-room occupancy hotel set to shut down in anticipation of a redevelopment project.
For the first time, the Housing Commission board earlier this month voted to sink up to $500,000 into relocation assistance for low-income San Diegans who must move out within weeks – a move that a top official there described as "the right thing to do" amid a regionwide affordable-housing shortage.
Despite that assistance, the closure follows a familiar pattern: Low-income San Diegans paying meager rents – in this case, $635 to 780 a month – will be left to find new homes as their small units are demolished or converted into more lucrative hotel rooms or apartments.
Many of the people kicked out of these SRO hotels will inevitably end up on the streets. Rents will skyrocket as a city loses its cheap neighborhoods and the city's neighborhoods gentrify. At least in Los Angeles they have temporary rent control.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 recently to extend—and expand—an ordinance that bars landlords from raising rents more than 3 percent in most apartments built prior to 1995.
Originally set to expire on June 18, the measures will now remain in effect until December 31. That gives county officials more time to flesh out a permanent ordinance, and Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said it would continue to help "prevent people from slipping into homelessness."
A provision that requires landlords to have "just cause" before evicting tenants was also expanded to cover all rental units in unincorporated Los Angeles, including single-family homes. That primarily means that tenants can't be booted unless they have not paid rent or have violated the terms of their lease.
It seems that rent control is an idea whose time has come. Without it rents will continue to skyrocket due to the hedge fund money coming into the market and the aggressive stance that these entities are taking in tearing down marginal housing and replacing it with higher priced units.
Posted at 08:26 AM in John Lawrence, Affordable Housing, Los Angeles, Off the Top of my Head, Rent, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (2)
Put an End to Glyphosate in San Diego
UCSD researchers at the School of Medicine have found that exposure to Monsato's (now Bayer's) glyphosate in the popular weed killer Roundup has increased 500% since the herbicide was introduced in 1974. "The data compares excretion levels of glyphosate and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid in the human body over a 23-year time span, starting in 1993, just before the introduction of genetically modified crops into the United States," said Paul J. Mills, PhD, UC San Diego School of Medicine professor of Family Medicine and Public Health and director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health.
The article goes on:
Glyphosate is a key ingredient in the herbicide brand Roundup. Use of this herbicide has increased approximately 15-fold since 1994, when genetically modified "Roundup Ready" glyphosate-tolerant crops were introduced. Historically, it is used on genetically modified soy and corn, but it is also sprayed on a substantial portion of wheat and oats grown in the U.S., said Mills.
"Our exposure to these chemicals has increased significantly over the years but most people are unaware that they are consuming them through their diet."
In a paper published in the journal JAMA on October 24, Mills and a team of researchers compared urine excretion levels of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) in 100 people living in a Southern California community who provided samples during five clinic visits that took place between 1993 to 1996 and 2014 to 2016. Samples were extracted from the Rancho Bernardo Study of Healthy Aging (RBS), a prospective population-based investigation started by Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD, Distinguished Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a co-author of the study.
"What we saw was that prior to the introduction of genetically modified foods, very few people had detectable levels of glyphosate," said Mills. "As of 2016, 70 percent of the study cohort had detectable levels."
In July, glyphosate was listed by California as a carcinogen. As exposure to this chemical has increased, interest in how much risk it poses to human health and what exposure levels are safe has become a topic of ongoing debate.
There is now a petition before the Mayor of San Diego: Ban RoundUp in San Diego County. It reads:
Roundup is a commonly used pesticide here in the county of San Diego, California. Its active ingredient, glyphosate, is a harmful, type 1 carcinogenic chemical as declared by the state of California's Environmental Protection Agency.
San Diego County allows the spraying of this and similar toxic pesticides at schools, which unavoidably forces children to be exposed to cancer-causing chemicals. The city of Irvine had so many childhood cancer patients that a huge movement was created to ban pesticides from being used at parks and schools. WHY ISN'T SAN DIEGO DOING THE SAME?
There is an increasing amount of scientific research showing the multitude of dangers associated with Roundup use in the environment and human bodies and has been a definitive cause of untreatable lymphoma in dogs. Our beloved pets who roll in, play on, sniff, lick their paws and fur, have been exposed to and ingesting this pesticide...and have been dying from this cancer for years. How can San Diego pride itself in being one of the top "dog friendly" cities when it allows pesticides everywhere that cause cancer? Plus, EVERYTHING toxic to plant and insect life will inevitably end up in our ocean, the natural environment that San Diego is so proud of and renowned for! Research has proven that glyphosate is known to kill marine life, just as it kills the plants and insects its carelessly used for.
Sooner than later, the entire developed world will regrettably understand the drastic effects of over-use of pesticides that we are seeing now: sky-rocketing cancer rates, super-weeds with resistance to all pesticides, diminished soil quality, death of pets, humans and aquatic life, and much of our available food causing chronic gut inflammation.
There are currently no restrictions to who can purchase Roundup and where they are legally able to spray it. Therefore, this dangerous chemical could be available for anyone and sprayed virtually anywhere in the public. This is a huge concern for parents, health conscious individuals, and organic gardeners.
According to an article below, Santa Cruz county has joined Trinity, Mendocino, Humboldt, and Marin county in a GMO ban.
By signing this petition, we are requesting for Roundup to be banned from the shelves of all stores that sell it in San Diego county. It could be easily and much more safely replaced with natural herbicides, such as Dr. Earth, which is sold at health conscious stores like Staff of Life.
As a worldwide tourist destination, San Diego is known for its natural beauty, wildlife, and beaches. Plus we are considered one of the top ten "pet-friendly" cities in the US.
Our famed monarch butterfly as well as the much needed honey bee are both declining rapidly in population, which the spraying of pesticides is largely contributed to.
We want our children and pets to have a healthy future, free of unavoidable environmental poisons.
If the state of California recognizes Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate is a carcinogen, why isn't San Diego banning it? This product needs to be taken off all store shelves and its use discontinued by the Parks and Recreation Department. Let's get rid of this nasty cancer causing stuff once and for all. Send a message to Monsanto (now, Bayer): No more Roundup in our city. Bayer, by the way, is located in Germany where there is a ban on Roundup. But they don't hesitate to sell it to the US where there isn't. Germany's agricultural minister, Julia Kloeckner, announced April 17, 2018 that she was finalizing a draft regulation to end the use of glyphosate, the world's most heavily used herbicide in history. And something else: feed your family organic foods. Restaurant foods and in particular fast food restaurant foods are loaded with GMO products containing hefty amounts of glyphosate. Bye y'all.
Posted at 07:20 AM in John Lawrence, Herbicides, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Modest proposal to Eliminate Potholes in San Diego City Streets
Or Why Are San Diego Freeways So Devoid of Potholes But City Surface Streets Are So Pothole Intensive?
There's a simple answer to this question. There are no utility lines running under the freeways so they are not being dug up constantly. But surface streets - that's another situation. They are being dug up constantly to replace sewer lines and to maintain and upgrade various other utilities which run right down the middle or to one side of practically every street in San Diego. The patches they provide once the digging is done do not facilitate the smooth passage of vehicles over them. They've got two methods: run the utilities down the middle of the street so that they can be connected to from both sides. This creates a constant mess. And if they run the utilities down one side of the street, they need to be connected to from the other side by lines going perpendicular to and across the street.
I have the solution to this problem, but it may not be workable except for new streets under construction: run the utility lines down both sides of the street under the sidewalks. Then the streets do not ever have to be dug up and they can be resurfaced with high quality asphalt not subject to potholes in the same way freeways are not subject to potholes. This would be more expensive of course, but not as expensive as continually resurfacing the streets. Except that they hardly ever resurface the streets. They spend millions of dollars on what they call a slurry seal. They fill the potholes and cracks with a slurry which is a temporary solution at best.
On February 20, 2019, local station NBC7 reported, "On the City of San Diego's Get It Done app, there have been a total of 4,573 pothole complaints in the past 30 days." City of San Diego spokesperson Anthony Santacroce released this statement:
"The strong and frequent rains of late have greatly impacted San Diego roadways and led to the creation of an unusually high amount of potholes in a short amount of time. During intense storms like the city has been experiencing weekly, road repair crews that normally patch up more than 100 potholes a day are reassigned to our storm prep and storm patrol to respond to the most critical storm-related issues such as downed trees, flooding and emergency street repair.
During fair weather and less intense precipitation, road repair crews have been working extended hours to repair potholes and are bolstered by additional staff that normally perform larger asphalt repair, concrete replacement and traffic marking maintenance.
We are eager for a break in this rain long enough to allow us to focus all of our efforts on road repair and to demonstrate the hard work and dedication of City staff in continuing to fix the damage this wet season has imposed on our streets. Safe, drivable and rideable roads remain a top priority of Mayor Faulconer and City of San Diego and that is why the city is deploying all available resources to address this issue."
Except it's not a high priority at all. What needs to be done is resurfacing, not patching up, the streets. The utilities need to be moved so the streets don't have to be dug up all the time. Then there won't be so many potholes, cracks, bumps, grooves and fault lines in the first place. How come they can have the freeways so smooth with nary a pothole, but the surface streets are a mess? Youth wants to know.
By the way having double sewer lines running down both sides of the street instead of one sewer line and digging ditches across the street to get to the other side can be accomplished with many fewer transverse connections. When there does need to be a transverse connection, it can be made in the form of a tunnel with the street running over it so that the street does not have to be dug up for this transverse connection either. In fact the lines running under the street in a tunnel do not have to be buried so that they are more accessible in the first place.
So I repeat my question: how come freeways in San Diego don't have potholes but the surface streets are almost one continuous pothole? They need to be resurfaced not slurry sealed.
Posted at 08:31 AM in John Lawrence, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego, Transportation | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.
Posted at 08:07 AM in John Lawrence, Voice of San Diego, Homelessness, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego's Housing Crisis: Looking Beyond 'Build, Baby Build'
From Words and Deeds by Doug Porter, February 25, 2019
Sometimes building more housing stock really just means more investment opportunities instead of more places for people to live…
Mayoral Candidate Cory Briggs's critique of the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement is, as I said on Friday, not something we should dismiss as advocacy for the status quo.
This is not the status quo as a tenet of the Church of Unlimited Parking Spaces, or homeowners believing their property values are endangered by hordes of public transit riders.
The danger in the city's rush to spur more housing construction is the probability of 'same old, same old' rules of the game applying, wherein the rest of us get stuck with paying for the consequences/impacts of such development.
In other words, the status quo is exactly what we should be worried about.
I have long marveled at how the power of the magic hand of the free market gets muddled when it comes to housing. Part of this can be explained by the scarcity of land in big cities.
Developers would like us to believe they're mostly building 'market rate' housing –meaning it's affordable by an increasingly small segment of the population– because fees and regulations stand in the way.
It's also true the current cycle of capitalism devalues labor. Real wages for the bottom 90% or so of the population haven't kept up with increases in the cost of housing even as productivity increases.
From 2010 to 2018, median rental prices for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles increased 84%, while median wages during the same period only rose 11%.
A significant portion of reported increases of income at the bottom tiers of the workforce has come from legislatively increased minimum wages, along with companies grudgingly paying more as a public relations ploy.
But I think there's something right under our noses we might be missing. Like maybe we have more housing built than we realize.
A night time drive through the canyons of cool looking cribs in downtown San Diego (and other cities) offers some insight in what may be a root cause of our housing crisis.
Did you ever notice how many of those units in newer construction are dark at night?
Seriously. Drive by older tall buildings around town after dark and see how many units have their lights on. Now drive downtown and make the same survey of newer construction.
It suggests to me that lots of those condos have absentee owners. They're bought as investments, not living spaces. And if you happen to be wealthy enough to pay cash, the other costs of ownership are likely less than the probable return from appreciation.
The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is significantly expanding its investigation into whether foreign buyers are using shell companies to buy U.S. real estate in order to launder money.
Recently, the threshold for additional reporting for cash purchases (including wire transfers and cryptocurrency) in 12 cities around the country including San Diego has been lowered to $300,000. This comes after a pilot study found more than 25% of transactions involved a "beneficial owner" who is also the subject of a "suspicious activity report," which is an indication of possible criminal activity.
Although the volume of foreign all-cash purchases for high end real estate has fallen since the recession, Chinese consumers have been the top foreign buyers in both units and dollar volume of residential housing for six years straight, according to the National Association of Realtors, and now they expanding to new, lower price tiers.
These purchases aren't foreign syndicates looking to launder money– overseas (especially Chinese) buyers are increasingly middle class families looking to protect their new-found wealth.
Out of town buyers, according to a recent study, can have the effect of increasing real estate prices (4.9%), rents (8.9%), and decreased local revenue (.34%).
A solution putting more housing on the local rental market and increasing revenue for localities is to place a surcharge on property taxes for non-residents.
From a recent article in Fast Company:
When Vancouver passed a tax on homes that sit empty for more than six months out of the year–apartments that serve as pieds-à-terre or investments for the rich, for example–it made a difference: The city recently reported that the number of empty properties dropped 15% between 2017, when the law took effect, and 2018. More than half of those homes went back on the rental market, presumably to avoid the tax. The city also raised more than $38 million, most of which will go to affordable housing programs.
A new study suggests that something similar could happen in other cities–and that in expensive, dense areas where it's difficult to build new housing, an empty house tax might be an effective way to make housing more affordable. The research focused on London, where housing has become significantly more expensive in the last couple of decades, and where property has become a popular investment for people who live overseas. In the most expensive neighborhoods, the study found, as many as 30% of the housing can be empty or "low use."
A recent article at CityLab looks at what people in Berlin are doing to address a severe housing shortage and spiraling rents.
In one of Europe's largest cities proposals are under consideration for limiting how many units a landlord can own, stopping rent rises for five years, and of re-nationalizing real estate.
As Berliners grow increasingly frustrated with rising rents, there's a question making the rounds in local politics that could seriously shake things up: Should there be a limit to how much housing a landlord can own?
Following months of intense debate (and some action), the German capital is considering whether landlords with more than 3,000 units should be barred from operating in the city.
Opinion polls show a majority of Berliners favor such a move, and activists are about to start preparations for a referendum on the subject. If voted through, the plan could give citizens the power to make Berlin's biggest landlords break up their portfolios, in the hope that this could prevent galloping rent rises and provide tenants with better service.
The proposal is just one of several moves in a city that could be on the cusp of a housing revolution. Over the past few months, the German capital has been trying out several plans to keep housing affordable. In effect, these plans would transfer large sections of the city's rental homes from private owners to the public sector.
I realize the concept of government taking over real estate is something unlikely to happen in California, even if the GOP thinks we're trying for a socialist utopia.
However, the increasing concentration of ownership of rental housing by large corporations has to be acknowledged at a minimum.
The defeat of a ballot measure (Proposition 10) repealing the Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act allowing cities to expand with rent control was largely financed by by some of the nation's largest real estate investors, not the mom and pop owners appearing tv ads
None of these alternatives to build, baby build is perfect. What works elsewhere may not work here.
I'm sure it won't take much effort to find studies contradicting those I referenced in this post. I still think these are ideas worthy of consideration.
We need more data, a sense of urgency, and politicians willing to make bold moves, in addition to rational densification.
Posted at 11:37 AM in Affordable Housing, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tiny Homes or Lockable Tents?
There are groups around that are trying to build tiny homes for the homeless. The problem is where to put them. Do you put them on some kind of foundation? Do you have utility hook-ups? What about drainage? What about mildew and rot from water soaked lumber? One of the big selling points of this approach is that the tiny homes are lockable. My solution would be tents plus lockers for valuables. This solution could be produced much more cheaply and is more flexible in terms of moving things to a different location. While tents are not secure unless they were to be made out of a material that couldn't be easily slashed with a knife (maybe such materials are available, I don't know), tents can be locked. That's some deterrent to would be thieves.
Utility hook-ups should be out of the question. There are battery powered lamps for lighting. Lockers which can be mass produced and made out of mildew resistant material like plastic are the ultimate solution for valuables. These lockers could also be made to be portable. You still would need a plot of land, and the best way to secure that would be to cut a deal with the city. Portable sanitation facilities could also be added, both rest rooms and showers. These solutions have been available for some time. They just need to be scaled up.
The problem with tiny houses is that building materials are expensive, and you would have to rely on volunteer labor to put them together. Securing land from the city of San Diego like the unused, undeveloped land south of Morley Field in Balboa Park would be ideal. They had a temporary tent city there once. I wonder what happened to it. Adding a security guard would relieve the police of a lot of their problems in dealing with the homeless. A step up from there would be adding a social worker to help getting the homeless on the right track to a job and a more permanent housing solution.
The city's campground was opened in October of 2017. The San Diego Union reported:
The city of San Diego on Monday opened a camping area for people who are homeless, with 24-hour security, bathrooms and storage.
The 136-space facility was set up in the parking lot of the city operations yard in Golden Hill, just south of the Balboa Park Golf Course.
The camping area is operated by the nonprofit Alpha Project like a typical campground, with rules and regulations and an on-site manager. Each person will register and be assigned a 13- by 13-foot campsite, but each space can accommodate one or more individuals.
The city said that this solution would be temporary until 3 large tents could be opened. I think people would prefer to have their own individual space, no matter how small, than to be thrown together in a large tent with other people. The city was on the right track with the idea of a campsite for the homeless involving individual tents. Why didn't they continue that?
Posted at 07:17 AM in John Lawrence, San Diego Union-Tribune, Homelessness, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Urban Campsite for Homeless and Others
The solutions for the homelessness situation always end up with paying developers to develop more affordable housing. Only problem is it's never affordable, and it costs too much in the first place. The developer's profits could be used much more efficiently somewhere else. So here's a solution that wouldn't cost nearly as much. Develop campsites downtown. The City of San Diego was on to something when it took an unused, undeveloped part of Balboa Park and set up a rudimentary campsite there. Whether or not it's still there I don't know. It was only supposed to be temporary.
The San Diego Union reported in October 2017:
The first city-sanctioned homeless encampment is scheduled to open Monday in a public works yard near Balboa Park with tents, security, food, showers, restrooms and social services for more than 200 people, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and other officials announced Wednesday.
Speaking at the city operations yard that will be used for the camp area, Faulconer said the site will be short-lived, with a plan to begin moving people out after the first of three large industrial tents to temporarily house homeless people opens later this year.
So why did it have to be temporary? Here's my vision of what this could be. It would be similar to those campsites out in the mountains where tourists go and set up a tent or bring in their camper. So it would be nice, not a bare bones operation, and it would be open to homeless and others who just wanted a place to camp. The homeless would not have to pay; the others would. It would integrate homeless people back into society which is the main goal of resolving the homeless situation. Otherwise. a permanent underclass is developing.
Facilities there would include rest rooms with showers, laundry facilities, lockers and tents. Social worker services would be available for the homeless. Meals would be available for the homeless. Food is transportable so they could be brought in. Father Joe's in downtown San Diego provides meals for the homeless 365 days a year. That's why the homeless congregate there, but food is transportable and could be brought in from Father Joe's or other places. Picnic tables are cheap and simple to provide. Security would be provided. Transit passes would be provided for the homeless so they could get to job interviews, other services etc. Spaces would be available for campers, cars and RVs for those wishing to sleep in them. Many semi-homeless sleep in their vehicles in unsafe areas or areas where the police roust them out because it's illegal to sleep in your car.
So this solution would integrate the homeless and the rest of the population who just wanted a reasonable place to camp out, not in the woods, but closer to downtown. It would disperse homeless services and provide nonjudgmental shelter so that the homeless would be indistinguishable from the rest of the population. There would be no need to push belongings around city streets in shopping carts because lockers would be available. Transportation would be provided in many forms from bicycles to bus passes to transportation on demand for elderly and handicapped. Father Joe's demands that no alcohol or drugs be used in the shelter. This rule would not be in effect here as the Housing First solution provides. Security would see to it that fights or unsafe conditions would not be allowed and that children were safe in this environment. Barbering and beautician services could be provided so that homeless people would be indistinguishable from the rest of the population. Pets would be allowed. They are not allowed in most shelters.
All this could be done inexpensively without having to build houses which are expensive. What we are talking about here is nothing more than a glorified park or campground. In inclement weather indoor shelters should be made available, but otherwise outdoor camping plus a few other services would make the homeless have lives that are decent until they can back on their feet, and social workers would be there to help them to do so. In the meantime the homeless would not have to exist apart from mainstream society in a separate culture which is becoming a permanent underclass in the US.
Why Can't El Cajon Dedicate One Vacant Lot for the Homeless
by John Lawrence, August 9, 2018
The homeless are overflowing into every alley, nook and cranny in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego. They congregate on Walter Way behind the Walgreen's. They've almost taken over Wells Park, a playground for children. Yet the City does nothing except to erect some signs along the roads that discourage people from giving money to the homeless as they hold up cardboard signs at intersections. It seems that Nixon's policy of "benign neglect" is the official policy towards the homeless.
Yet there are a bunch of vacant lots downtown and nearby, one right across from the Salvation Army where they go for services, right on Main Street. They could put in a park like campground plus services there, and then the homeless would have some place to go, some place to be. It would be a lot cheaper than building so-called affordable housing. Just a camping site basically plus services like maybe rest rooms, lockers, showers, security, a social worker, a bike rack, a laundry, mailboxes. This place would allow pets, a key provision that most shelters do not allow. However, the NIMBYs are out in force. Also the NWMTDers. (Not With My Tax Dollars). Wouldn't it be nicer to have a children's park not overflowing with homeless citizens because they had a better place to go? Also, it would make the police's job easier. Naysayers would compare this to a concentration camp, but that's a false comparison because they could leave at any time. They would not be confined there.
In downtown San Diego there is one measly place on 17th street called the Neil Good day center. It offers a bunch of services for the homeless including laundry, mail, coolness, TV. The homeless flock there, but it's only open during the day and it's overcrowded. It's the kind of place that's on the right track, but insufficient. Of course Father Joe's serves meals 365 days a year and offers shelter beds. But they don't allow pets. Most homeless people don't want to give up their pets, the only friends they have in many cases.
America does not want to deal with the homeless situation as a social problem that warrants something being done about it including the expenditure of funds. As a result the homeless population continues to grow due to unaffordable rents and other factors. It really separates society into two groups: the haves and the have-nots, the homed and the homeless. There is a stark contrast between the two groups which makes for a very Un-united State of America.
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.
Posted at 07:26 AM in Voice of San Diego, Rent, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Can We Live Without Plastic Straws?
Plastics were supposedly a wonderful development, one that ushered us into the "modern age". They were a boon to our existence. Now as they accumulate in the oceans and threaten wildlife, they have become the bane of our existence. One of the most ridiculous uses of plastics is plastic straws. Paper straws worked just as well. It seems someone decided that when you order a soft drink at a restaurant it automatically comes with a plastic straw. People have forgotten how to drink directly out of a glass. Or it's too gauche to drink directly out of a glass. Whatever it is, in some environmentally sophisticated locales, like Seattle, they have banned plastic straws just like they have banned non-reusable, but ubiquitous, plastic bags.
The New York Times reported:
The latest is Malibu, Calif. Before that came Seattle; Davis and San Luis Obispo, Calif.; and Miami Beach and Fort Myers, Fla.
They're all cities that have banned or limited the use of plastic straws in restaurants. Straws, routinely placed in glasses of water or soda, represent a small percentage of the plastic that's produced and consumed but often end up on beaches and in oceans.
Advocates said laws aimed at cutting back on the use of plastic straws can help spur more significant behavioral changes.
"I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the plastic problem," said Diana Lofflin, the founder of StrawFree.org, an activist organization based in San Diego. "Giving up plastic straws is a small step, and an easy thing for people to get started on. From there, we can move on to larger projects."
Will plastic straws be banned in the heartland or only in the Blue States, the Left and Right coasts? It seems that progressive environmental policies are a no-no in the era of Trump and for Trump's base. They don't believe in global warming and to hell with the environment.Trump's approach is to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency presided over by an anti-environmentalist, Scott Pruitt. These guys don't care whether or not all the fish in the oceans swallow plastic. The oceans now contain gyres or garbage patches that are filled with plastics consumed by "advanced industrial societies" while more primitive societies, presumably, drink directly out of glasses or coconut shells.
NOAA reports:
Gyres are large systems of circulating ocean currents, kind of like slow-moving whirlpools. There are five gyres to be exact—the North Atlantic Gyre, the South Atlantic Gyre, the North Pacific Gyre, the South Pacific Gyre, and the Indian Ocean Gyre—that have a significant impact on the ocean. The big five help drive the so-called oceanic conveyor belt that helps circulate ocean waters around the globe. While they circulate ocean waters, they're also drawing in the pollution that we release in coastal areas, known as marine debris.
The most famous example of a gyre's tendency to take out our trash is the Great Pacific Garbage patch located in the North Pacific Gyre. The patch is an area of concentrated (and mostly plastic) marine debris. While this is certainly the most talked about garbage patch, it is not the only garbage patch in the ocean. In the last five years, researchers have discovered two more areas where a "soup" of concentrated marine debris collects – one in the South Pacific Ocean, the other in the North Atlantic. As with the North Pacific Garbage Patch, plastic can circulate in this part of the ocean for years, posing health risks to marine animals, fish, and seabirds.
Trump's base including Fox News prides itself on their collective ignorance. They just love oil and the internal combustion engine. Fireworks and NASCAR add to the world's pollution, but they don't care. Independence Day and July 5 consistently have some of the worst air quality of the year. With so many fireworks going off at once, levels of fine-particle pollution — a stew of tiny, lung-damaging specks of toxic soot, smoke and ash known as PM2.5 — surge several times higher than federal health standards across Southern California, air monitoring data show. Not celebrate July 4th? Unthinkable. A fireworks free July 4th. Unthinkable. Plastic straws not in your drinks served at a restaurant. Unthinkable.
Just remember, we only have one planet and its carrying capacity is being outstripped by its human population especially the human population of the advanced societies.
Posted at 07:48 AM in John Lawrence, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego, The Environment | Permalink | Comments (0)
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.)
Posted at 07:54 AM in Voice of San Diego, Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Qualcomm Laying Off Employees
Qualcomm is getting rid of 1231 employees in San Diego. This is not because of what Qualcomm wants; it is what Qualcomm investors want. Trim the fat. Get rid of the deadwood. Load up other employees with the jobs of those that have been laid off. If Broadcom had done a hostile takeover of Qualcomm (saved at the last minute by Trump), there would have been a lot more layoffs. Wall Street demands short term performance, not long term research. Therefore, employees have to take a hike so that the stock price stays up. Investors love it when a corporation downsizes so they bid up the stock price. They don't care about the hit to the San Diego economy. Executive perks, salaries and bonuses are not in jeopardy.
The Silicon Valley Business Journals reported:
The news comes after reports surfaced Wednesday that the company is facing pressure from shareholders to reduce spending by $1 billion after consecutive years of revenue decline and a blocked takeover bid from San Jose-based Broadcom Ltd.
Last month, President Trump banned a $177 billion takeover proposal by the chip company, which would have been the biggest tech M&A deal in history. Trump cited national security concerns as the reason to block the deal.
"We first evaluated non-headcount expense reductions, but we concluded that a workforce reduction is needed to support long-term growth and success, which will ultimately benefit all our stakeholders," Qualcomm said in a previous statement, as reported by Bloomberg Wednesday.
Qualcomm is laying off so many employees that it has to file a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice) notice with the state of California. They are trying to save a billion dollars in costs now that revenues are declining, and they are trying to "win over investors."
So R&D goes out the window. What really is important is placating investors who demand short term profits. They are already worth millions, but they want MORE. Forget the little guy who has devoted his life to Qualcomm probably by working weekends and 12 hour days. These are the guys Qualcomm wants to get rid of. I'm sure there will be no tears shed at Qualcomm headquarters among the executives. There jobs are safe ... for now. But wait till Broadcom moves its headquarters to Irvine. Then the hostile takeover dance of death begins again. Qualcomm investors will be coming out with torches and pitchforks demanding that employees be "let go" in an overwhelming show of force. How dare they hold on to these peons when stock prices are at stake and investor cash is dwindling.
What it comes down to is: who is more important... investors or employees? Anybody's guess? Anybody? There are only so many "non-headcount reductions" you can make. Eventually, heads have to go on the guillotine. Employee heads that is.
Posted at 07:40 AM in John Lawrence, Off the Top of my Head, Qualcomm, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego Mulls Providing Storage Lockers for Homeless
San Diego has slowly and begrudgingly started to provide facilities for the homeless. It started with the rest room facilities and washing stations that were put up as a result of a Hepatitius A crisis. It made sense to provide minimal facilities such as are provided at any outdoor event in San Diego. Prior to that people were urinating and defecating on the street because they had nowhere else to go. Then amid much resistance they finally got the idea of providing storage facilities for the meager belongings of homeless people so they would not have to push them around in shopping carts.
Theft of homeless peoples' belongings is a big threat when you're living on the street. And it makes it difficult to use public institutions, the library or go for a job interview if you show up with a shopping cart full of your possessions. The City routinely scooped up peoples' possessions and put them in garbage trucks. In one case they scooped up a tent and placed it in a garbage truck with a man inside. Getting people and their belongings off the street is one of the concomitant results of providing storage lockers. The grocery stores and super markets are also thankful not to have their shopping carts stolen.
The San Diego Union reported:
Laura Davis woke up on a sidewalk in downtown San Diego on Monday morning, pulled back the blanket she used as a makeshift tent and looked to her side.
The two bags that held the bulk of her possessions were missing.
"I woke up, and they were gone," she said.
The apparent theft was frustrating, a setback — and not uncommon for homeless people on the street. Davis said a friend of hers recently lost her children's birth certificates and other important documents to thieves in the night.
"You need storage facilities so people can get out of being homeless," she said. "It almost feels like society wants to keep people homeless."
Help may be coming within a few months. Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced in his State of the City address last week that the city plans to open a second storage facility for homeless people this spring, an addition that would more than double what is available now.
Details were sparse in the speech, but Faulconer spokesman Greg Block said Friday that the new facility will be in a 25,000-square-foot, two-story building at 20th and Commercial streets with space for 700 to 1,000 storage bins.
The second floor will have public restrooms, and the facility will be run by the San Diego Housing Commission, which will hire an operator to manage it, Block said.
Besides helping keep sidewalks clear and protecting property from being stolen, the new facility will allow homeless people like Davis to look for work and go to other appointments.
But as always, when the City tries to do the right thing, indignant citizens are fighting back. Sherman Heights residents don't want a storage facility for the homeless at 20th and Commercial streets. They don't care if the City puts it somewhere else, mind you, just not right in their back yard. The city, however, is promising to be a good neighbor, stressing the site will have security 24/7. There will be no loitering, drugs or alcohol allowed, and they will have regular waste pick-ups within a block radius.
So can't we all get along? Let the homeless have a modicum of respectability? The situation as it exists right now is much worse in terms of the visibility of the homeless on the streets than it would be if they were allowed to store their belongings and have bathroom privileges. And the City would not have to remove 30,000 pounds of garbage every week.
America, the Hideous: Turning Schools into Armed Camps
America is becoming an armed camp, and terrorists from abroad are not the main problem. Now Trump wants teachers to carry guns. I am not a gun lover. I have never owned a gun. In fact I hate guns. I would be in favor of repealing the Second Amendment. That being said, under present day circumstances, it makes some kind of perverted sense to have teachers carrying guns. It also make sense for the schools to post signs telling the public that teachers are carrying guns and they won't hesitate to shoot anyone that comes on campus with a weapon. The real solution to the problem, of course, is to get rid of the 300 million guns that are now flooding the society.
Australia did it, and they haven't had a mass shooting since. This is a phenomenon exclusive to America - the level of gun violence in and out of schools. What next? Parishioners being advised to carry a gun to church? The US is becoming the world's outlier on everything from climate change to infrastructure development to anything that more civilized societies have implemented or outlawed.
It is up to individual states and municipalities to come up with their own gun regulations. In blue states this is completely possible. It won't happen in Republican controlled states, however. At least part of America can and should have a sane approach to gun control. San Diego did just that. The City Attorney and upcoming police chief used court orders to take away the guns of several mentally unstable individuals. How did they know they were mentally unstable? For instance, 911 had been called because of spousal abuse or men threatening to kill their wives whom they suspected of having affairs. If 911 has been called on any issues of domestic violence, this is a red flag that will allow the San Diego authorities to take away their guns. Wayne LaPierre is not happy.
According to the National Rifle Association, the more guns the better. Of course they represent those companies who make a profit from gun sales. They don't give a hoot about children getting killed by guns. Their solution to every gun related problem is to encourage people to buy more guns. Arming teachers seems to be the only alternative in some cases, but I like the San Diego solution better. Court ordered removal of guns for anyone accused of domestic violence or other erratic behavior which causes somebody to call 911 and have the police come out is a good start.
Posted at 05:54 AM in John Lawrence, Guns, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Kids Are Going After the Gun Nuts
It's about time the kids spoke up. They are directly in the crosshairs of the gun nuts and the nuts with guns. It's obvious that school shootings are an epidemic ruining the lives of countless families, some of them former supporters of the Second Amendment. It seems that every town has its resident candidate for the looney bin who doesn't know what to do with himself other than by buying an AR-15 assault rifle and gaining his 15 minutes of fame by shooting up a school. It isn't about the rights of gun nuts or the NRA or the politicians who take money from the NRA any more. It's about what the kids want and need to protect themselves.
Since the FBI has said that they can't follow up on every lead because there's so many of them, it's up to the kids themselves and their parents and loved ones to take matters into their own hands. The kids are in an ideal position to do so because they haven't been indoctrinated yet by the military. After high school when many of them go into the military, they come out Republicans of the Trump variety and gun advocates. That's the military's job, to convert kids from peace and love hippies into hardened men and women of the world who vote Republican and strongly support the Second Amendment.
Here in San Diego the local City Attorney has taken matters into her own hands. She and law enforcement have obtained court restraining orders against mental cases who have threatened harm to others and taken away their guns. In an article in the San Diego Union, 10 San Diego residents under court orders to give up their guns, Dana Littlefield writes:
Ten gun owners are under court orders to give up their weapons after prosecutors and police filed gun violence restraining orders against them, San Diego authorities said Friday.
The orders require the gun owners — some of whom are dealing with severe mental health problems, according to the San Diego City Attorney's Office — to surrender or sell the firearms, and bar them from possessing guns or ammunition for 12 months.
"Our federal government is inexcusably ignoring the growing problem of gun violence in our schools and communities," Elliott said. "The City of San Diego will not tolerate federal inaction. We're doing everything in our power to respond to the epidemic of senseless killing by removing guns from the hands of unstable and irresponsible gun owners."
Thank you, San Diego Superior Court Judge Tamila Ipema, City Attorney Mara Elliott and San Diego police Assistant Chief Dave Nisleit! Together they developed this approach. It should be replicated everywhere. It's about time. No use in waiting for the FBI to act. Local communities have to take matters into their own hands. Forget the National Level. The national level is a farce, and Congressmen and Senators are in the pockets of the NRA. It's up to local judges, attorneys, law enforcement, the local judicial system, school districts and people of good will to end this gun paranoia which lets every mental case buy an AR-15 with a bump stock.
Once these young men go into the military, forget about good sense when it comes to guns. They become the definition of their manhood. The same holds for indoctrinated women. They'll complain about sexual harassment, but not about the US role in guns and violence in the world or that a trillion dollars a year is spent on the military and still they can't prevent domestic terrorism or protect American school kids. One of the reasons is that they stand to profit from generous GI benefits when they get out. They're not going to cut their own throats.
So when are you starting your local chapter of Moms Against Gun Nuts?
Why is Qualcomm Advertising on Billboards?
Suddenly you see billboards all over San Diego saying something like "It took a San Diego native to put the smart in smartphones." What do they want - a pat on the back or something? They don't sell anything to the general public. Who is their target market for this advertising? Their chips go in Apple products and android phones although those companies are on the outs with Qualcomm. They'll probably develop their own chips because Qualcomm's are so expensive. Qualcomm is also on the outs with various countries who have accused them of unfair business practices.
It's all about intellectual property. Qualcomm says that these companies must pay for Qualcomm's intellectual property as reflected by all the patents on their patent wall. My patents aren't there because I was never a Qualcomm employee, and they probably worked around them. But I don't have a bevy of corporate lawyers to figure that out. Apple and Samsung say that Qualcomm should just be charging them for their chip, not their wall full of patents.
Meanwhile their arch rival, Broadcomm, is launching a hostile takeover to buy them out. Naturally, Qualcomm doesn't want to be taken over by Broadcomm. It would result in thousands of layoffs. But investors see it differently. According to cnbc:
But billionaire investor Kevin O'Leary sees a bright side, he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" Monday.
"People love this deal," he said. "Many people that own Broadcom and Qualcomm, like me, want to see this."
The reasoning is pretty simple: $3 billion in "synergies" — a term often used to mean cost-saving layoffs — protects profits in the long run and, in this case, frees up engineers to fill the well-established tech talent shortage.
Those "synergies" mean massive layoffs in San Diego. Freeing up engineers is just another way of saying "laying them off." O'Leary thinks that the litigation problems with Apple could be resolved if Broadcomm takes over. Qualcomm's insistence that it's their way or the highway is not playing well with the other adults in the room.
So this is why Qualcomm is putting up those billboards. Somebody, anybody please help Qualcomm not to be taken over by rival Broadcomm because if that happens, San Diego, you're going to lose a ton of jobs.
About a dozen people arrested for feeding the homeless in El Cajon park
From the San Diego Union:
The event was organized by a group called Break the Ban, which formed after the El Cajon City Council passed an emergency ordinance prohibiting the distribution of food on any city-owned property.
Lyndsay Winkley Contact Reporter January 14, 2018
El Cajon, CA police officers arrested about a dozen people for feeding the homeless at a city park Sunday afternoon.
The event was organized by a group called Break the Ban, which formed after the El Cajon City Council unanimously passed an emergency ordinance in October prohibiting the distribution of food on any city-owned property.
City officials said the ordinance was a way to protect the public from hepatitis A, but critics have called it a punitive measure to dehumanize and criminalize the homeless.
Mark Lane, one of the event's organizers, said about 12 to 15 people were passing out food and toiletries to the homeless at Wells Park on East Madison Avenue when police arrived.
About 40 more people, including several lawyers, also were there, but not actively passing out food. Some of those carried signs that had slogans like "Feeding the hungry is not a crime."
While the event was intended to feed members of the homeless, it was also part of the group's plan to legally contest the ordinance.
"It was absolutely necessary to break this law until they were willing to enforce it, and, now that they have, we will continue this fight in court," said another organizer, Shane Parmely.
It's a familiar legal strategy that played a critical role during the civil rights movement and other social justice movements, Parmely said.
The arrests began about 3:40 p.m.
According to a video Parmely shared on Facebook, a police officer explained to the crowd that the city council had banned food sharing on public property.
"This park is part of city property so you aren't allowed to food share," the officer in the video said. "...If you guys continue to food share, then you guys are subject to arrest, all right?"
Everyone who was handing out food, including a 14-year-old child, was arrested, given a misdemeanor citation with a date to appear in court and released. No one was taken away in handcuffs.
In the video, one officer can be heard explaining the citation was for failing to comply with a municipal ordinance as well as an emergency order recently passed by the city.
An El Cajon police lieutenant was unable to comment on the arrests, saying the city would handle all inquiries.
Lane said Break the Ban will continue to organize events to feed the city's homeless. Sunday's event was the second hosted by the group.
They have partnered with a second group called Food Not Bombs that has also hosted two food-sharing events. Another is planned for Jan. 27 at Wells Park.
"Our goal it to get the ban overturned and sit down and figure out how to humanely deal with something that's not going away," Lane said.
Posted at 07:13 AM in Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hepatitis A Forced City Leaders to Act, But Big Homeless Issues Persist
From Voice of San Diego
Workers power-wash a sidewalk near the Midway area. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
San Diego's reputation as a nice tourist destination was tarnished this year when an historic hepatitis A outbreak made international news.
The city's homelessness crisis fueled the spread of the disease, and while city and county leaders had been holding meetings, writing memos and making plans to house the growing number of people sleeping on our streets, little was being done until San Diego's hep A problem made its way into headlines.
In her latest story, Lisa Halverstadt revisits how hep A forced city officials to set aside their usual bureaucratic processes and try to get people off the streets.
New shelter tents have gone up, but it's unclear what will happen next for the folks who move into them — or for the hundreds of others who chose not to.
A handful of potential ballot measures to pay for permanent housing and homeless services may make their way onto the 2018 ballot. There's also a new regional strategy to tackle homelessness, but leaders will need to maintain momentum now that the hep A crisis is calming and the pressure subsides.
"The question is whether San Diego leaders and perhaps voters will continue to demand results and make the tough decisions they've resisted for years," Halverstadt writes.
Homeless Treated With "Benign Neglect", but Hitler's Solution Was Worse
Leave it to Richard Nixon to coin the phrase "benign neglect" as the basis of his policy to help the poor and homeless. This is sort of the middle road between doing something to actively help them and doing something to get rid of them. If Hitler had won the Second World War, there would be no homeless problem. They would all be incinerated. It mirrors Trump's policy to deal with the immigrant policy: don't let any of them in and get rid of the ones we have.
On the other hand if Jesus Christ were President of the US, the rich would be taxed in order to provide free food and lodging for the homeless. Two different approaches with America being somewhat in the middle - indifferent to the plight of the poor and homeless: benign neglect. Interesting that in America there is no noblesse oblige, the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged. It's pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps, baby!
Some cities criminalize homelessness which is closer to the Hitlerian solution. Some try to end homelessness by providing funds in order to get a roof over their heads. In the South they used to call poor whites white trash. Maybe they still do. Even though they lived in substandard housing, white trash were not homeless. Homelessness is caused by a newer trend involving skyrocketing rents, the breakdown of the American family and the drug epidemic. 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.
So it's a question of does society want to try and help these people or does society just want to treat them with benign neglect? Until recently, when the fact that the homeless situation impacts the rest of society was made clear, benign neglect was the preferred solution. Then the Hepatitus A epidemic broke out in San Diego. You can only piss and shit on the sidewalks and in the streets so many times before a health crisis occurs. Proper sanitation was a long fought struggle in human civilization, and now it's going by the wayside as society ignores proper sanitation for the homeless. Building codes demand it, but building codes don't apply to the homeless who do not live in buildings but in tents or tarps.
The cost of treating the homeless for free in emergency rooms across the country is also raising some eyebrows among the landed gentry. So health care costs, real estate costs, the impact of a sub-class of human beings roaming the streets of a tourist town creating a spectacle for visitors in "America's Finest City" as Pete Wilson dubbed San Diego - all these things start adding up and taking a toll.
So which will it be: Hitler's solution, Richard Nixon's solution or Jesus Christ's solution? A preferential option for the poor as a Pope has recommended or a preferential option to get rid of the poor?
Morning Report: The Lilac Fire's Terrible — and Terribly Random — Destruction
Lisa Halverstadt
December 9, 2017 , From Voice of San Diego
A San Diego Fire Department helicopter drops water to contain the Lilac Fire near the Rancho Monserate Country Club. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
The Lilac Fire surrounded skateboarder Tony Hawk's former hillside property on all four sides, burned a tree in the driveway, singed a potted plant by the backdoor, but spared the house and outbuildings.
"It's unbelievable, it really is a miracle," said Angela Murphy, who now lives in house along Highway 76 with her husband, Sean.
But two houses just up the hill and another house below burned to the ground.
Such was the terrible and terribly random nature of the Lilac Fire, which began Thursday morning in Bonsall, burned 4,100 acres and 85 structures, and injured six people, including two firefighters.
By Friday morning, firefighters from across the state – aided by a jet airplane dropping fire retardant and a swarm of helicopters dropping water – had halted the fire's spread. By Friday evening, Cal Fire began lifting the evacuation orders that had displaced thousands in North County.
During the day, firefighters roamed Highway 76, putting out hot spots along the road and marching up hills to create firebreaks.
Amateur firefighters did their part, too.
One of them was Barry Farley, who worked to protect the home of his friend, artist Judy Dy'ans. Her house, just down the hill from the Murphys, was also spared, though the fire burned some of the steps on her walkway. But a home next door burned to the ground.
With smoke everywhere and small bits of flame occasionally shooting up from the ground, Farley shoveled dirt to smother the fire. Because the power was out, the pump to get water from a well didn't work, so he also poured water from a jug onto the ground, before he got a bucket he could refill in the Murphys' pool. Then a fire crew showed up to help.
"It's like everybody has to work together to make this fire protection a reality," Farley said. "Because these are just about some of the worst fire conditions."
– Ry Rivard
VOSD's Adriana Heldiz captured several amazing images from one neighborhood near Fallbrook ravaged by the Lilac Fire.
President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in Southern California on Friday, allowing federal assistance to flow in.
NBC 7 is regularly updating this page with information on evacuations and closures tied to the fires.
The Union-Tribune reports that at least 25 horses were killed as the Lilac Fire spread on Thursday.
A second, much smaller blaze dubbed the Sweetwater Fire broke out Friday morning near Descanso, Times of San Diego reported.
The Union-Tribune reported Friday afternoon that SDG&E was continuing to try to restore power for the thousands who'd had it shut off amid the wildfire conditions – and County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, one of the SDG&E's biggest local critics, shared her latest beefs with the utility at a Friday press conference.
Posted at 07:51 AM in Extreme Weather, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego's Sunny Identity Threatened by Homeless Crisis
By JULIE WATSON
From the Associated Press
https://apnews.com/406f2b7e7c84423f8b85bda32ac26498
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Christine Wade found a haven in the tent she shared with six children, pitched in an asphalt parking lot.
It was, at least, far better than their previous home in the city, a shelter where rats ate through the family's bags of clothes and chewed on 2-year-old Jaymason's stroller. Roughly 50 of the encampment's 200 residents were children, so Wade's kids had plenty of playmates.
"It's peaceful here," Wade, 31, who is eight months pregnant, said in an October interview. "There's coffee first thing in the morning. We can hang out here in the daytime. I mean what more could you ask for?"
A tent, of course, is not a home. But for these San Diegans, it is a blessing.
Like other major cities all along the West Coast, San Diego is struggling with a homeless crisis. In a place that bills itself as "America's Finest City," renowned for its sunny weather, surfing and fish tacos, spiraling real estate values have contributed to spiraling homelessness, leaving more than 3,200 people living on the streets or in their cars.
Most alarmingly, the explosive growth in the number of people living outdoors has contributed to a hepatitis A epidemic that has killed 20 people in the past year — the worst U.S. outbreak of its kind in 20 years. Deplorable sanitary conditions help spread the liver-damaging virus that lives in feces.
San Diego returns to a controversial quick fix to deal with a shortage of housing for the poor: tents. (Dec. 1)
"Some of the most vulnerable are dying in the streets in one of the most desirable and livable regions in America," a San Diego County grand jury wrote in its report in June — reiterating warnings it gave the city repeatedly over the past decade to better address homelessness.
San Diego has struggled to do that. Two years ago, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a moderate Republican, closed a downtown tent shelter that operated for 29 years during winter months. He promised a "game changer" — a new, permanent facility with services to funnel people to housing.
But it wasn't enough.
The result? Legions of Californians without shelter. A spreading contagion. Endless political disputes over what can and should be done — and mounting bills for taxpayers. Struggling schools and other institutions. And an extraordinary challenge to the city's sunny identity that threatens its key tourism industry.
For now, San Diego again is turning to tents. The campground where the Wades lived was only temporary; this month, officials are opening three industrial-sized tents that will house a total of 700 people.
Continue reading "San Diego's Sunny Identity Threatened by Homeless Crisis" »
What it Took to Clear 17th Street
More than two months after a dramatic police crackdown on 17th Street, the impact is beginning to come into focus: Court records show many of the 75 who were arrested were jailed for days while they awaited arraignments. More than a quarter have yet to be charged despite being held in jail. Some homeless residents who'd stayed there for months or years moved to other neighborhoods; others have settled nearby.
Leticia "Lety" Croce was arrested in September on 17th Street. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
Until recently, 17th Street was San Diego's skid row. Homeless San Diegans' tents covered sidewalks on both sides of the street, and their belongings spilled onto the roadway.
Then they disappeared. For a time, the area was eerily silent. The tents were gone. Once-packed streets were dormant.
Many haven't returned.
Police descended in September, arresting 75 people on 17th Street in order to clear the area for power-washing to combat a deadly hepatitis A outbreakthat's battered the homeless population. Another two dozen were cited. Nearly all were accused of misdemeanor crimes, including blocking the sidewalk with their belongings, settling in a tent or drug charges.
More than two months later, the impact of the police crackdown is beginning to come into focus: Court records show many of the 75 who were arrested were jailed for days while they awaited arraignments. More than a quarter have yet to be charged despite being held in jail. In at least a few cases, prosecutors dropped charges that were the impetus for the 17th Street arrests but decided to pursue other cases against those arrested, like for earlier drug charges.
Some who had stayed on 17th Street for months or even years moved to other neighborhoods. Others have settled in quieter corners nearby at night, hoping to avoid police. Many were temporarily pulled off the street at a substantial cost.
The tab for the 17th Street arrests likely exceeds $21,000, including daily county jail cost estimates and court records documenting the time those arrested spent in jail awaiting court hearings.
That figure doesn't include costs for those who were arrested who have yet to be charged with a crime or who were sentenced to more jail time for their crimes. It also doesn't incorporate the bill for city police officers pulled from other divisions and in some cases, working overtime, to disperse homeless camps.
A view of the same stretch of 17th Street, in 2015 (left) and in late September 2017. / Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle
Mayor Kevin Faulconer and police officials have defended the ramped-up enforcement efforts on 17th Street and elsewhere downtown, saying they were needed to help the city clear homeless camps considered hotbeds for the hepatitis A outbreak. They've also pointed to their efforts to offer services to those they're encountering and to open a temporary homeless campground and three industrial tents to give homeless San Diegans more safe places to go.
But homeless San Diegans who were arrested on 17th Street say the arrests and increased police activity have only made their lives more chaotic.
Jean Calma, 49, and her boyfriend Rashad Burns, 38, were arrested early on Sept. 23 after police noticed their tent blocking most of the sidewalk. Police say their tent was surrounded by multiple shopping carts filled with property and crates.
The couple were among about a dozen people arrested on 17th Street that Saturday morning.
When Calma and Burns were released from jail days later, they learned they'd lost nearly all their belongings and that prosecutors weren't going to pursue charges.
They were surprised when they briefly returned to 17th Street.
"We came back to nothing," Calma said. "It was a ghost town."
Rattled by the arrest, Calma and Burns decided they couldn't remain on 17th Street. The Voices of Our City Choir, a group of homeless San Diegans who perform together, cobbled together donations to help the couple stay in a San Ysidro motel for two weeks.
They've since managed to find temporary places to stay in other parts of the city but remain without a permanent option.
Leticia "Lety" Croce, 49, has also found refuge since her Sept. 19 arrest on 17th Street – at least for now.
Croce, who has cataracts and glaucoma, spent nearly a week in jail after agreeing to plead guilty to illegal lodging. She also agreed to a probation order to stay away from an expansive area bordered by Market and Commercial streets and 14th to 19th streets, an area that includes 17th Street and many services for homeless San Diegans. Croce's got a long rap sheet of previous arrests and feared a longer sentence.
Croce's boyfriend, Randall Holmes, 50, who was arrested with her, urged Croce to go to the city-sanctioned safe campground at 20th and B streets after she was released from jail.
Holmes, who couldn't immediately reach Croce after he bailed out of jail that night, worried about the increased police enforcement and Croce's stay-away order. Croce's bad knee and other health issues make it difficult for her to quickly move along when police approach.
"I can't just come out of the tent and leave her," Holmes said.
So Croce moved into the campground in October. She's now planning to move to Alpha Project's tent for homeless adults this month.
Yet Holmes has remained on 17th Street despite a stay-away order of his own. He initially tried to fight encroachment and illegal lodging charges prosecutors filed against him but ultimately agreed to a plea agreement that includes the stay-away order. He's constantly trying to avoid police officers.
Lt. Scott Wahl, a police spokesman, acknowledged that increased enforcement on 17th Street and elsewhere downtown isn't an accident.
"We want people to live in a humane, safe, healthy environment for them and a part of that, within our area of responsibility, if you will, is preventing the environment that existed before that allowed (hepatitis A) to spread and kill 20 people," Wahl said.
Holmes is one of many homeless San Diegans who have decided to remain in the area around 17th Street despite the police crackdown. After all, it's an area they know – and an area where they can get help.
I found Shawn Watkins, 54, at the Neil Good Day Center on 17th Street despite a new stay-away order barring him from parts of 17th Street and Imperial Avenue. Watkins spent 10 days in jail after reaching a deal with prosecutors after his Sept. 20 arrest. He agreed to plead guilty to an older drug charge. Prosecutors chose not to pursue the encroachment and illegal lodging charges that were the impetus for his September arrest.
Shawn Watkins, pictured on 17th Street in 2015. / Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle
Watkins, who's lived on East Village streets for years, said he couldn't imagine not returning to the neighborhood despite what might come next. He accesses free meals and other services there.
"I use the resources that are provided," Watkins said.
But like Holmes, if Watkins gets arrested in the area again, he'll likely face an additional charge for defying a court order. Watkins said one of his friends who was also arrested in September opted to move to Balboa Park to avoid the hassle.
Watkins' friend isn't the only one who's moved into the park, if only temporarily.
Balboa Park Conservancy CEO Tomas Herrera-Mishler said in late September he saw the homeless population in the park more than double amid increased police enforcement downtown.
Residents in other neighborhoods reported seeing more homeless San Diegans as enforcement increased downtown.
Marine veteran Benjamin Brough and girlfriend Tammy Whitt, who were arrested on separate occasions in September, have settled north of 17th Street in Sherman Heights.
Whitt said she and others had flocked to 17th Street because police seemed to allow it for a time. They've opted to stay nearby to be close to the resources they rely on downtown and Brough's job as a handyman.
Whitt has yet to be charged with a crime, while Brough is fighting drug charges. He said he believes police mistook another person's meth as his as they rifled through property from multiple tents. A friend bailed them both out of jail after their arrests.
Whitt described the arrests as the latest effort by the city to move homeless San Diegans from place to place.
"They move us around in circles. It's a circle," Whitt said. "It's a revolving door."
Scott Dreher, an attorney who's battled the city in a series of lawsuitschallenging its homelessness enforcement, agreed. He's followed similar cases for years and said the outcomes of the recent burst of arrests match the patterns he's been hearing about for years: costly days in jail, stay-away orders and plea deals that do more to displace people and disrupt lives than help them get off the street.
"This is like whack-a-mole," Dreher said. "You're just sitting there hitting things that pop up."
Tyrone Wright, 43, who was cited for encroachment on 17th Street on Sept. 27 embodies Dreher's argument.
Wright moved after the citation. He was arrested for illegal lodging and encroachment near 16th Street and Newton Avenue days later. That is the site where Alpha Project opened its homeless tent on Friday.
Wright agreed to a deal with prosecutors that came with a new stay-away order. He had to avoid 1500 Newton Ave. with a special exception: He could return when the tent opened.
While the enforcement has riled homeless San Diegans, some East Village and Sherman Heights residents cheer it – even as they acknowledge doubts about long-term results.
Graciela Paredes and her son Jose, who moved into their home on 17th Street five years ago, said the area's become more dangerous as homelessness and drug use has boomed and that the increased police activity has made things more bearable recently.
They said some neighbors moved away rather than deal with the drugs, violence and other crime in the area. More recently, Graciela Parades said she felt compelled to accompany her daughter on her short walks to school. At one point, Jose Paredes said, a homeless man jumped the family's fence, stole his puppy and broke into his father's truck.
Two months after police cracked down, the Paredes said 17th Street is less packed with people and tents. Still, on the night I visited last week, a dozen or so tents had already popped up by 6:30 p.m. and a couple dozen people had gathered on the sidewalks.
"Cops tell (homeless people) to get away but they come back again," Jose Paredes said.
Homeless People With Disabilities Sue San Diego Over RV Parking Law
From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
David GarrickContact Reporter
"The city has repeatedly ticketed and harassed these individuals for seeking shelter in their vehicles."
A group of disabled homeless people filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday against San Diego, challenging its enforcement of laws that prevent homeless people from living and sleeping in recreational vehicles.
The nine homeless men and women say they have no choice but to live in their RVs and park them overnight on city streets. They say their disabilities make them unable to afford rent and that homeless shelters are unsuitable for the disabled.
Their lawsuit, which was written by attorneys from the Sacramento-based nonprofit group Disability Rights California, demands that the city immediately stop citing disabled people under its long-standing vehicle habitation ordinance and its relatively new RV ordinance.
The RV ordinance, enacted by the city in 2014, prohibits such vehicles from parking on any San Diego city street or in any public parking lot between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
Gerry Braun, a spokesman for City Attorney Mara Elliott, said city officials will review the lawsuit but declined further comment.
Attorneys for Disability Rights California say city officials expressed interest last spring in making changes when presented with the group's complaints, but that nothing ever came of those discussions.
Three "safe" parking lots recently established in San Diego allow overnight parking for homeless individuals, but they don't accept RVs and have far fewer spaces — 150 — than the estimated 1,000 homeless people living in vehicles locally, the lawsuit says.
Those lots also require users to apply for slots in local homeless shelters, a move that doesn't make sense for most disabled homeless people living in RVs because shelters aren't appropriate environments for them, the suit says.
People who are physically disabled may struggle with stairs in shelters and those with mental health problems don't function well in noisy, dirty, unsafe and overcrowded conditions where there is a lack of privacy, the suit says.
The nonprofit group that operates the safe lots, Dreams for Change, doesn't allow RVs because they take up more space than cars and because people living in cars typically face greater urgency to find permanent housing, chief executive Teresa Smith said by telephone on Thursday.
The lawsuit says the RV law and vehicle habitation ordinance both violate numerous U.S. and state constitutional rights, including the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment due process protections.
Enforcement of the two laws also violates the antidiscrimination protections of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the suit says.
"Their vehicles are their only reliable, safe shelter from the elements and only place to store their belongings," the suit says. "Yet, even though there are no adequate alternatives, the city has repeatedly ticketed and harassed these individuals for seeking shelter in their vehicles or simply for owning vehicles and having nowhere else to park."
The names of the nine plaintiffs are Michael Bloom, Stephen Chatzky, Valerie Grischy, Penny Helms, Doug Higgins, Suzonne Keith, David Wilson, Tony Diaz and Benjamin Hernandez.
They range in age from 54 to 70 and each contends they can't afford San Diego's high rents because they have a disability preventing them from earning enough money.
Disabled people receive a monthly check from the government of about $900 because they aren't capable of working. San Diego's average rent is just over $1,800 for a two-bedroom apartment.
Monthly fees at RV parks, another option, range from $700 to $1,650.
The goal of the RV law was boosting safety, aesthetics and parking availability — particularly near the beach — by preventing tourists with large campers from sleeping inside their vehicles to avoid paying for hotels or other accommodations.
Many city residents had become frustrated with the RVs and what came with them, including trash on the street, loitering outside their campers and other problems that turned some neighborhoods into makeshift campgrounds.
An unintended consequence may have been increasing homelessness by forcing onto the streets some people who had been sleeping in RVs.
Morning Report: No, Not All Homeless People Are Drug Addicts
by Kinsee Morlan from Voice of San Diego
A homeless woman pours water into a bowl for her dogs. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
In an interview with Fox 5 San Diego, El Cajon Mayor Bill Well claimed nearly all homelessness is tied to drug or alcohol abuse.
Our Lisa Halverstadt dug into Wells' claim for our latest Fact Check.
Claims like Wells', Halverstadt writes, can impact policy discussions: "Statistics like those Wells' cited can give residents and elected officials ammunition to blame homeless people for their predicaments and provide cover for not exploring solutions that may be costly or controversial."
After reviewing several studies and surveys and talking with national experts on homelessness, "the consensus was clear," Halverstadt writes. "Wells' claim that nearly all homelessness is linked to alcohol or drug addiction is false."
Wells, however, said his experience as a registered nurse with a doctorate in psychology who's worked in emergency rooms, has convinced him that the statistics are wrong.
"I think a lot of these figures are politically motivated," Wells said.
Housing Affordability Crisis
San Diego Has Money in the Bank But Refuses to Build Affordable Housing
With money in the bank San Diego refuses to build housing for the homeless or housing the homeless could afford. The most affordable housing used to be the single room occupancy units in downtown, but those have been torn down to make room for luxury high rise condos. Therefore, poor people have been displaced, and many of them have transitioned into homelessness. With rents sky high, typically $1500. for a two bedroom, many cannot put together first and last month's rent plus a security deposit. Landlords can be choosy and decline those with poor credit.
Recently, a Hepatitus A epidemic has broken out among the homeless due to the deplorable sanitary conditions in which they live. No public rest rooms has led to urination and defecation on the streets, the same streets that tourists and residents walk down. This has gotten the attention of the Mayor and the City Council members who don't want San Diego to get a bad rep. Consequently, hand washing stations have been provided as well as keeping some rest rooms in Balboa Park open 24 hours a day. Other solutions have been hurried into readiness such as three large circus type tents and smaller tents on what amounts to a parking lot. I'm sure the homeless will not want to be crowded together in one large circus tent where they probably won't be able to bring pets. The small tent solution, with sanitation facilities and security seems much more copacetic and practical. There at least they will have their own individual domiciles such as they are.
"The county of San Diego is holding over $100 million in unspent Mental Health Services Act funds," state Sen. Ben Hueso said.
Real estate is one of the central areas of the FIRE economy. That's what the last two letters of FIRE stand for. It's one of the central pillars of capitalism. You don't want the government to build your house for you, do you? That's the sector for private enterprise. Then why are rents so damn high? They're so damn high that people are evicted on a daily basis for non-payment of rent. The homeless population grows. And why is the price of the median house over $500,000? Average people can't afford to buy and they can't afford to rent. So government gingerly steps in to "solve" the housing crisis in California. In other parts of the country rents and housing are more affordable.
So now the state government, being careful not to say that the housing crisis is the fault of the capitalist system running amok, takes baby steps so that it can claim that it is doing something about affordable housing. Their real view, that they won't mention, is that the solution is for people who can't afford housing in California to move to some other state where they can. Half measures and half steps is what government's both state and local are proposing so it looks like they are doing something while not really doing much of anything.
California state bills SB-2 and SB-3 are just token measures to ameliorate the affordable housing crisis. In effect state and local lawmakers don't consider it a crisis. These bills make it seem like lawmakers are doing something about affordable housing while being careful not to impact the "free market." In fact you can't have government subsidized housing except on a token basis without impacting the free market.
Continue reading "Housing Affordability Crisis" »
Posted at 04:49 PM in Affordable Housing, Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego Would Be Bankrupt Without Military Spending
Last year $25.2 billion came into San Diego County from the Defense Department. this spurred another $25 billion of commercial activity by the ripple effect. What if peace broke out and San Diego was suddenly minus that $25 billion infusion of cash? San Diego would go broke. Thousands of people would lose their jobs. San Diego is a case study on just why there needs to be perpetual war in the US. Peace would cause a major depression.
All those working in the military-industrial-intelligence complex have to hope and pray that the money keeps flowing, that there are threats that need to be contained, that military spending keeps increasing. I know because I used to work in the military-industrial complex in San Diego. Everyone was encouraged to vote Republican in order to keep their job. If Democrats were in charge, defense spending might decrease and that would mean a RIF - Reduction In Force - and your job might go down the tubes. Then there goes your ability to pay your mortgage and your car payment. Voila! You would be out on the street having to move your family to somewhere, anywhere where a defense contract was still in effect and there were still jobs available.
Last year there was a 3.2% rise in military spending for San Diego so San Diego is in good shape. The dollars are flowing in. Congressmen have identified enough threats to national security to keep the money flowing and peace is not at hand, thank God! San Diego is a major port for the Pacific fleet, THE major port. All the San Diego Congresspersons can be proud of themselves because they have brought home the bacon. They have employed enough scare tactics to convince American citizens and the establishment that spending a trillion dollars a year on defense is a good thing because, after all, we're the world's policeman. Somebody has got to do it, and if not us, well ....
So 22% of the Gross Regional Product is military spending in San Diego accounting for 338,000 jobs. Then think of all those jobs in real estate, car dealerships, insurance products and so on. San Diego would go back to being a little backwater town whose major economic activity was centered around Indian casinos without the major investment that the military brings year after year after year. Let's all hope and pray, for San Diego's sake, that peace doesn't break out.
Posted at 07:32 AM in John Lawrence, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego, The Military | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hepatitis A outbreak among homeless a byproduct of California's housing crunch
By Scott Wilson October 25 at 5:51 PM
A homeless man sleeps along 14th Street in the East Village area of downtown San Diego on Sept. 26. (Sandy Huffaker/For The Washington Post)
SAN DIEGO — California's exorbitant housing costs are driving a public-health crisis here, as a developing-world disease is racing through homeless encampments in cities along the coastThe hepatitis A outbreak in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and San Diego, long considered a model of savvy urban redevelopment, is the extreme result of a booming state economy, now driving up home prices after years of government decisions that made low-cost housing more difficult to build.
Unlike in some other large U.S. cities, the homeless population in San Diego has been rising sharply, outstripping the local government's ability to manage its scope. State lawmakers passed more than a dozen measures in the recent legislative session to address the state's lack of affordable housing, none of which will help resolve the crisis in the short term.
Nowhere is the need more urgent than in this prospering city, where the number of people living on the streets rose 14 percent in the past year, tracing a hepatitis A outbreak that thrives in unsanitary conditions. Health officials believe an epidemic that has infected more than 500 people statewide since March began in San Diego County, where 19 people have died as a result of the disease, nearly all of them homeless.
Extremely rare in the United States, and rarely fatal when it does occur, hepatitis A attacks the liver and causes symptoms such as fever, nausea and jaundice. It is spread when a person ingests food or water tainted by the feces of someone who is infected — that is, it is a virus that stalks the unclean places where the poor are often consigned to live. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared a state of emergency as the result of the outbreak this month.
"An epidemic like this in California — are you serious?" said Timothy Berry, 48, who lives amid the mattresses and tarps lined up along 16th and Island streets outside God's Extended Hand mission.
Berry lives below the brushed-steel apartment buildings that in recent years have remade this city's downtown, on streets that crews now power scrub with bleach. Portable toilets and hand-washing stations mark downtown corners in the shadows of buildings where sea kayaks are visible through the glass balconies of $2,000-a-month studios.
The first of three large, city-sanctioned tents opened earlier this month to bring some of the more than 9,000 homeless people into sanitary conditions, at least temporarily. A vaccination program that already has protected more than 65,000 residents continues with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has called this outbreak the deadliest since it began tracking the disease in the United States two decades ago.
Paulina Bobenrieth, a nurse with the public health department, gives a hepatitis A vaccine to a homeless man in San Diego on Oct. 4. A hepatitis A outbreak has killed numerous homeless people and sent hundreds to hospitals. (Sandy Huffaker/For The Washington Post)
But the long-term solution is simple and elusive: constructing more housing that those on the streets, and the estimated 500,000 San Diego County residents living a missed paycheck away from homelessness, can afford.
Posted at 07:47 AM in Affordable Housing, California, Disease, Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm Homeless. There's Nowhere for Me to Go.
When I first became homeless, the sidewalks weren't so heavily monitored. Fast-forward three years, and now homeless people are constantly being told to move almost every single time they sit down. It wears down one's patience, happiness and quality of life.
Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle
Tents line an I-5 underpass along Commercial Street in downtown San Diego.
By Ginger Stamper
As I lie here in my tent, smoking the day's first cigarette, I think of how grateful I am that it's raining. With the possibility of a flooded tent, soaked clothing and the chance of intensified depression due to the dark and gloomy weather, one might wonder why this homeless gal is so grateful.
I'm grateful because when it rains here in San Diego, which it so rarely does, we homeless people get to leave our tents up. It may not seem like such a big deal to those of you who live indoors. But to us homeless folks, it's a day off and a chance to rest for once.
San Diego's homeless population doesn't get much of a chance to rest during the day. Any time we stop to smoke a cigarette, take a load off or even just to daydream a little bit about how life used to be and what it might be like once again, our little snippet of resting time will soon be interrupted as we hear the words, "Move along."
Those cold and callous words come from the San Diego Downtown Partnership's "safety ambassadors." These people are hired to manage the homeless. They wake us up in the mornings if we are lagging and the real police are too busy to show up. It never fails that once five or so minutes passes, one or more of these rabid relocaters arrives and tells me to move along.
I have grown to hate that phrase and those like it.
"Pack up your things, take them and go."
Homeless women see hope moving into city-sanctioned campsite
Tents in public works yard provide relief from harsh life on the street
Cheryl Blue looks around her new tent at the campsite set up at 20th and B streets on Monday. (John Gibbins U-T)
By Gary Warth
Dozens of women, ranging from mothers with young children to seniors with walkers, arrived at the city's first sanctioned homeless camp Monday with a mixture of trepidation, anxiety and hope. "How are you doing?" asked one of the workers from the Alpha Project, the nonprofit running the campsite, to a woman who had recently arrived. "I'm a little scared," said the woman, who gave her name only as Dawn. The worker gave her a reassuring hug and let her know everything would be all right.
Others arrived with smiles, with some saying they saw the day as a turning point. "I think it's great that I get a second chance in life," said Terrie Woolever, 58, a San Diego native. "I thought of suicide a lot. When I came here today, I was surprised. I was happy. Everything changed."
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced the opening of the site last week in response to a hepatitis A outbreak that has disproportionately affecting the homeless, leaving 17 dead and hundreds hospitalized. The encampment also provides some relief from the harsh living conditions for people on the street and the neighborhoods that have seen a growing number of makeshift sidewalk shelters in the past few years.
An annual count conducted in January found 9,116 homeless people countywide and 5,619 in the city of San Diego. Of those, 3,231 in the city were unsheltered, with 1,276 on downtown streets. The asphalt campground is in a public works yard off 20th and B streets and is expected to hold about 200 people. Monday was move-in day for about 65, including some of the most vulnerable on the street.
As the first wave arrived, the condition of some woman who might have been on the streets the night before was alarming. Many appeared to be at least in their 60s. One was severely hunched over and used a walker, one woman had a pronounced limp, and another had braces on both wrists.
Continue reading "Homeless women see hope moving into city-sanctioned campsite" »
No Rest Rooms in Downtown San Diego Plus Thousands of Homeless Equals Hepatitis A Outbreak
What did they expect to happen? To be blunt people were living on the streets, the same streets tourists and residents were plodding down, and they were shitting and pissing all over the streets and sidewalks. I say again: what did they expect to happen? People were going to Padres games, spending hundreds of dollar on tickets, food, beverages and merchandise and they're walking over streets contaminated with human and animal waste products. Don't forget a lot of homeless people have pets. They had nowhere to go either.
San Diego didn't used to provide public rest rooms for anybody, much less the homeless. It's just that they couldn't afford to. They spend millions of dollars on everything else, but they couldn't afford public bathrooms. If you couldn't afford to patronize some profit making establishment where you could use the bathroom, you were just out of luck. You had to go in the bushes. That's just what thousands of homeless have done... and the sidewalks.
European cities provide public rest rooms on practically every corner, even the poorest cities. San Diego, by contrast, set up a Portland Loo and then decided that there was too much crime going on there and took it away. Most European public bath rooms have attendants who oversee the operation and make sure it stays clean and safe. Of course San Diego never thought of that. These European bathroom attendants were probably not paid very much, but at least they had a job. Suppose San Diego could afford that?
Now the LA Times reported that Los Angeles County health officials declared a hepatitis A outbreak, days after a public health emergency was announced in San Diego County, where at least 16 people have died of the highly contagious virus. It has been known for some time that the homeless were running up huge bills for taxpayers to pay at San Diego emergency rooms, but that and the extra costs for police were not enough to persuade local "leaders" to provide housing and sanitary living conditions for those who couldn't provide it for themselves. So public expense, public safety and now public health evidently are not enough motivation for the public to do something about the homeless situation. As has been pointed out, the City has the money in various funds, but it won't spend it on housing for the homeless.
Councilman David Alvarez, one of the memo's co-authors, said the city is sitting on "literally hundreds of millions of dollars" it could spend on housing.
"Unfortunately, the mayor has refused to take action on this issue," Alvarez said. "We are seeing more and more money coming back to the city in the general fund. ... This was intended to be used for more housing and it hasn't been.
"You'd have to ask the Mayor's Office why they don't want to use it for that purpose."
Katheryn Rhodes and I did a series of articles on money the City of San Diego has squirreled away in the LMIHAF fund and other funds that it is supposed to use for affordable housing but won't do it. Something like $30 million altogether. It seems the Mayor doesn't want his reputation tarnished by catering to the homeless. It would be unseemly. So tourists and downtown residents living in million dollar condos will just have to take the Hepatitis A risk on themselves.
Posted at 07:27 AM in John Lawrence, Affordable Housing, Health Care, Latin America, Los Angeles, Off the Top of my Head, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Homeless in Paradise: Third World Living in AMERICA
San Diego's Homeless Situation Has Been Neglected For Years
San Diego's neglect of the homeless situation in downtown has finally come to a head with the outbreak of Hepatitis A. But Hush Hush non-homeless people have also contracted it. It is a genuine public health issue. The fate of downtown high rise residents and the tourism industry is at stake. Maybe that will finally motivate city leaders to do something about it. Homeless advocates have been suggesting solutions for years. But city leaders have decided to just let the situation sit there and fester. So what is next: cholera? Third World diseases inevitably will break out among people living in filthy conditions. Already, emergency room bills are being run up by the homeless which must be paid for by tax payers in one form or another. The homeless can't pay for them. People concerned about the homeless situation have appealed to the city leaders' compassion for years and have practical solutions which cost a pittance to implement. Finally, now that the real estate and tourism industries are at stake as well as the city's shining reputation, greed and pride might actually come up with a viable solution.
The following is from Voice of San Diego:
Morning Report: Restroom Panic
By Randy Dotinga on Sep 18, 2017 05:25 am | View in browser
Downtown wants to be a place where people can get out of their cars and go for long walks — tourists, office workers, residents. But if they walk, they'll need restrooms. And for years, there's been a conflicting urge: Let's not make the homeless too comfortable by installing easy-to-access public restrooms.
Now city officials are scrambling to address a problem they have acknowledged for years: We don't have enough bathrooms. A deadly outbreak of hepatitis A has them panicked. It is said to be the second-largest outbreak in the United States. since a vaccination became available 22 years ago. The outbreak, which has killed 16 and sickened hundreds, is linked to poor hygiene and lack of restrooms.
Meanwhile, the city's new bleach-enhanced cleaning of "fecally contaminated" streets and sidewalks is garnering unwanted national and international attention.
County officials warned patrons of a Pacific Beach restaurant they might have been exposed. It may not be long until late-night hosts hear about this and give us a new motto.
New portable restrooms and hand-washing stations are appearing downtown. But what happened, or failed to happen, earlier? The city "hit debacle after debacle even in far less urgent attempts to add them," reports our Lisa Halverstadt in a new story.
The glitches continue, she notes. A high-profile "Portland Loo" at Park Boulevard and Market Street, near the downtown library, vanished earlier this month. Meanwhile, some of the homeless say they avoid 10 toilets at Father Joe's Villages because they're filthy. "I'd rather use a bucket," one said.
More Outbreak News: Inside the Restaurant Scare
• Hepatitis A is actually quite rare, with an estimated 2,500 cases a year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. "Keep in mind that most people do not get sick when someone at a restaurant has Hepatitis A," cautions the CDC. "However, if an infected food handler is infectious and has poor hygiene, the risk goes up for patrons of that restaurant."
• L.A. is worried that San Diego's outbreak will spread there. Why hasn't it already? Possibly because the city has been cleaning certain streets and sidewalks with bleach solutions for years. Officials in both L.A. and Orange counties have begun vaccinating the homeless against hepatitis A.
To provide some perspective about how big our outbreak is, L.A. County — more than three times our county's size — hasn't had more than 60 annual cases of the disease in the past five years. (L.A. Times, KPCC) We are marching toward 500 cases in the last year.
• A U-T reporter visits the edges of the Santa Ana River in Orange County, where "tent cities along the river offer a level of comfort and perhaps sophistication unparalleled by any prominent homeless camps in the San Diego region. Many people control a relatively stable piece of real estate, complete with couches, beds, small refrigerators powered by gas generators, cook stoves, even amenities such weight benches and a communal bike shop."
But there aren't any restrooms.
After Months of Stagnation on Shelter Plan, Faulconer Pledges Action
by Lisa Halverstadt, from Voice of San Diego, September 13, 2017
Mayor Kevin Faulconer's staff looked at potential homeless shelter sites for months and repeatedly pointed to reasons they couldn't work. Now, in the midst of a deadly hepatitis A outbreak, they've decided sites identified months ago or that previously housed shelters are acceptable after all.
Photo by Lisa Halverstadt
Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced the sites of three temporary homeless shelters, including one in a parking lot at 14th Street and Commercial Avenue, where the press conference was held.
In January, Mayor Kevin Faulconer promised to quickly add hundreds of shelter beds to aid San Diego's growing homeless population. After months of stagnation, his staff settled on three sites that had been on city officials' radar all along.
Faulconer on Wednesday announced the city will pitch temporary tents at Barrio Logan and Midway sites that for years housed winter homeless tents, and at a third East Village parking lot that city officials have inquired about since at least the beginning of the year.
The difference maker: A deadly hepatitis A outbreakthat's left 16 dead, infected more than 400 people and disproportionately battered those living on the streets.
As street homelessness grew this year, Faulconer pledged quick action but then said consensus would be necessary. Consensus didn't materialize, and the process stalled. Now, in the midst of the outbreak, Faulconer has decided to move forward.
"I wish you could snap your fingers and make things happen overnight," Faulconer said in June. "It's important to do it the right way. It's important to get buy-in."
By that time, city officials had analyzed countless buildings and properties, ruling many of them out in the process.
Since then, the county's declared a public health emergency and the region's received a hail of national scrutiny over the outbreak and the city and county's months-long failure to address it.
At a Wednesday press conference, flanked by politicians and community leaders, Faulconer struck a different tone.
"One of the reasons we've reached a critical mass on homelessness is because government entities have been looking for answers that'll make everyone happy," said Faulconer.
"The truth is that nothing is easy when it comes to reducing homelessness and frankly, we can't spend any more time worrying about whether this group or that group will be offended," Faulconer said. "Lives are on the line. We need to take action."
He's now hoping at least one or two of the shelters, which are each expected to temporarily house at least 100 people, will open by the end of the year. Faulconer said the city will rely on a $1.5 million donation from a group led by Padres managing partner Peter Seidler and restaurateur Dan Shea to buy the tents. The city plans to contract with homeless-serving nonprofits Alpha Project, Father Joe's Villages and Veterans Village of San Diego to operate them. Faulconer's already talking about more tents elsewhere in the city too.
Faulconer's Wednesday announcement comes nearly two months after Seidler and Shea publicly committed to supply at least two large industrial tents – and eight months since Faulconer's January pledge to quickly add hundreds of shelter beds.
The city could have moved forward sooner.
Continue reading "After Months of Stagnation on Shelter Plan, Faulconer Pledges Action" »
Posted at 02:05 PM in Homelessness, San Diego | Permalink | Comments (0)
Homeless Lack of Sanitation Leads to Hepatitis A Outbreak
Well, who could have predicted this? Thousands of people living on the streets in downtown San Diego and there is an outbreak of some deadly disease, in this case hepatitis. Now finally the City is doing something about the homeless situation - handwashing stations! As if the outbreak of disease among a group of people with no access to sanitation facilities, who urinate and defecate on the street, can finally be eradicated by having them all wash their hands. Of course the City could not go so far as providing public toilets or showers. That would be asking too much.
Note to tourists: you are walking down the same streets that are the "home" to thousands of people with a disease threatening public health - not only their health, but your health as well. When a tourist or "homed" resident of San Diego comes down with hep A, there will be lawsuits. There will be a major problem. Who wants to visit "America's Finest City" and get a case, perhaps deadly, of hepatitis A?
Homeless advocates have been trying to get the City to allocate land where tiny houses with adequate communal sanitation facilities could be built. Sort of like a campground where there are toilets and showers in addition to wash basins (handwashing facilities). The frenzy of activity to install handwashing stations seems a bit odd. What about allocating money so that the homeless can have a decent place to live in general? It doesn't have to be the Waldorf Astoria. It can be similar to the single room occupancy units (SROs) which have largely been destroyed in San Diego in order to build luxury high rise condos.
San Diego has money sitting around in various pots that could be used to construct facilities for the homeless. Katheryn Rhodes and I did a major study of it here.
Hep A may be only the precursor of a public health disaster brought about by the City's neglect of people who have been forced into living in a totally inadequate and substandard situation. America's Finest City turns out not to be America's Most Compassionate City.
San Diego County, City Pledge Action on Hepatitis A Crisis
By Lisa Halverstadt on Sep 02, 2017 05:00 am
Photo by Adriana Heldiz
A hand-washing station at San Diego County's Rosecrans Health Services Complex in the Midway district.
County officials sputtered over bureaucratic steps for weeks after announcing a plan to deploy hand-washing stations in areas where homeless people congregate in hopes of combating a deadly hepatitis A outbreak plaguing that population.
On Friday, they sprang into action.
I was first to report on a letter from county Chief Administrative Officer Helen Robbins-Meyer demanding that the city immediately allow the county to deploy at least 30 hand-washing stations to try to stem an outbreak that's left 15 dead and infected nearly 380 people.
The city pledged to allow the county to install the temporary stations immediately and to implement sanitation protocols.
And as the Union-Tribune reports, 20 stations had gone up by the end of the day and the county said 20 more were set to be deployed on Saturday.
The county also declared a local health emergency Friday night, a move Mayor Kevin Faulconer had urged in order to pull in state and federal resources to respond to the crisis. Councilman David Alvarez wrote on Twitter that the city still must do more to act.
• San Diego's Metropolitan Transit System is also facing increased pressure to act.
As I wrote earlier this week, two MTS officials raised flags over potential safety and quality-of-life issues when county officials requested the agency consider allowing two hand-washing stations outside one of its East Village facilities.
San Diego City Councilwomen Georgette Gómez, Lorie Zapf and Myrtle Cole fired off a letter to MTS Thursday urging the agency to allow the stations on its properties.
Public Restrooms in East Village Remain Locked Despite Hepatitis Outbreak
A developer agreed years ago to maintain public restrooms at Fault Line Park in East Village. But homeless people say they remain inaccessible. Meanwhile, experts say hygiene issues could be helping spread the deadliest hepatitis A outbreak in California in 20 years.
Photo by Kinsee Morlan
A homeless encampment has settled into the south side of Fault Line Park.
By Lisa Halverstadt | 24 hours ago
Public restrooms in an East Village park have been mostly locked for months, even while a hepatitis A outbreak fueled in part by lacking hygiene has plagued homeless San Diegans.
Pinnacle International developed two high-rises bordering Fault Line Park, agreeing years ago to build and maintain the park and restrooms in exchange for perks including the right to build more apartments in the towers and a garage underneath the park.
The restrooms have been a problem since they opened, as inewsource reported last year. Homeless people have settled at the edge of the park, and city officials, Pinnacle staff and owners of the restaurant that houses the bathrooms have described near-constant safety hazards, including a stabbing that some restaurant workers witnessed.
"They basically got used all the time for drug use and prostitution and crime," said John Long, whose restaurant Stella Public House oversees the restrooms for the developer.
Long, the city and the developer said they decided last fall to ensure safety by locking the restroom doors and requiring visitors to walk into the restaurant to get a key. The restaurant had previously just kept them closed.
In the months since, homeless people who visit or regularly settle at Fault Line Park say they've gotten the message the restrooms still aren't open to them. The number of people gathering at the park between J Street and Island Avenue has grown, and more homeless children spend time there. One afternoon last month, several young children roamed or sat with their parents, belongings in tow, paces away from the locked restrooms.
The Hidden Wealth of Cities
To find it, a new book says, localities need look no further than their roads, airports and convention centers.
BY LIZ FARMER | AUGUST 9, 2017 From Governing.com
Downtown San Diego, with a view of the convention center. (Shutterstock)
In the years since the Great Recession, there's been a lot of effort made to ensure a government is sharing its complete fiscal picture. In many cases, this transparency push has resulted in a government's bottom line going from a surplus to a shortfall thanks to the introduction of things like pension and retiree health benefit liabilities to annual balance sheets.
But some think governments are still leaving a few things off the ledger. Dag Detter and Stefan Folster, co-authors of the new book The Public Wealth of Cities, say localities are failing to realize the true value of the public assets they own, such as airports, convention centers, utilities and transit systems, just to name a few. "The public sector owns a lot of commercial assets," says Detter, a Swedish investment advisor and expert on public commercial assets.
But, he adds, it doesn't manage the risk of increased costs associated with those assets very well. Then, "the inclination is to give [management] away to the private sector," he says. "But when you do that, you also have to give away the upside."
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The solution, according to the authors, is independent management and governance. Detter says cities could realize their hidden wealth potential if their commercial assets were bundled together and managed by a politically independent "urban wealth fund." Such a structure, Detter says, would allow these assets to be turned into bigger profit-generators for cities.
As an example, Detter points to Cleveland, which reported capital assets of more than $4 billion in 2014. To him, there are several flaws with this estimate. First, thanks to a legal quirk, many assets acquired before 1980 are not accounted for at all. Second, the city reports the value of its assets based on historic costs instead of the likely market value, which Detter estimates could be three or even seven times more. If Cleveland put its assets into an urban wealth fund, a modest yield of 3 percent on a fund with a market value in the neighborhood of $30 billion could amount to an income of $900 million a year. That's nearly double what the city earned in tax revenue in 2014 and is money that could be spent on infrastructure, health care and other critical needs.
Doing such a thing in the U.S. would require a lot of work. For instance, a city or county would not only have to determine all its assets' market value, but it would also have to develop a strategy for them. The example Detter and Folster give in their book is Copenhagen, which through a publicly owned, privately driven urban wealth fund revitalized its waterfront and financed a citywide transit system without raising taxes.
John Ryan, principal of the infrastructure recapitalization firm InRecap LLC, says U.S. cities could adopt a piecemeal approach by lumping a handful of similar assets together for a mini urban wealth fund. What's more, many localities could utilize existing quasi-public development corporations by expanding their focus from just new development to existing assets.
Ryan adds that urban wealth funds don't necessarily have to be as profit-driven as Detter envisions. To him, the larger point is that governments aren't focused enough on their long-term wealth. Ignoring that part of the balance sheet, he says, causes officials to make short-term decisions about finances.
"If you think all you have to work with to deal with emerging long-term liabilities are short-term cash and whatever assets you have on the shelf, then it will seem that there's not much choice but to use gimmicks or kick the can," he says. "But if instead you believe that you have some long-term assets that maybe aren't so obvious but could be the raw material for good long-term solutions, at least you'll start to look for better, more sustainable options."
Liz Farmer | | lfarmer@governing.com | @LizFarmerTweets
Posted at 09:10 AM in Cities, Pensions, San Diego, Wealth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Amid Homeless Crisis, Police-Run Shelter Beds Sit Empty
by Lisa Halverstadt August 10, 2017
Some shelter beds offered by San Diego Police officers are often vacant even despite weeks-long waits to get into other programs. The beds have a built-in Catch 22: Those who need them are often wary of any help being offered by the police.
San Diego Police Sgt. Michael Stirk talks to a homeless man in Balboa Park.
Weeks-long wait lists are a constant reality for homeless people seeking shelter in San Diego yet some of the beds reserved for San Diego police to offer homeless people they encounter sit empty.
Reports to the city revealed just a 73 percent occupancy rate for the 50 shelter beds operated by the San Diego Police Department's Homeless Outreach Team last year.
That's far below the more than 95 percent occupancy reported by the two other city-funded shelter programs for single adults, including one run out of the same East Village campus that's operated by Father Joe's Villages rather than the HOT team.
Stories about homeless people rejecting police offers of shelter beds and other services are regularly mentioned in conversations about San Diego's struggle to address a growing homelessness crisis. Last year, police say just 14 percent of homeless San Diegans who interacted with the HOT team were placed into shelter or treatment – an increase from the previous year.
For many, those stories are proof many living on the street aren't interested in help.
Homeless San Diegans, city officials and the lieutenant who leads the HOT team say the reality is more complicated.