One of the county’s biggest roles is implementing and supporting social services. In the past year, it’s started putting more money toward homelessness through a variety of programs.
Whoever fills the District 3 supervisor seat after November’s election will have to continue that work.
“The county and the supervisors are uniquely positioned to bring together resources from throughout the county to address a countywide issue,” said Greg Anglea, executive director of Interfaith, the largest homeless service provider in North County.
Both incumbent Democrat Dave Roberts and Republican Kristin Gaspar tout their experience and success with homeless programs they’ve implemented in the past couple of years.
Roberts points to the progress he’s made at the county, devoting more resources to mental health services, veterans and homelessness and to opening the Live Well crisis center in Escondido. Gaspar holds up a pilot program she spearheaded in Encinitas that provided $100,000 to one local nonprofit to fund a social worker and other programs to help match the city’s homeless with resources like social services and housing by providing.
While people on the ground, like Anglea, say they are happy with the work Gaspar and Roberts have done so far, they underscore the major gaps that are still left in providing housing, in dealing with people who suffer from addiction and in preventing people who fall on hard times from crossing the line into homelessness.
Migrant Crisis at the Border Shows No Signs of Stopping
There’s a new wrench in the migrant crisis happening at the border. Already, countless migrants from countries all over the world have flooded the U.S.-Mexico border, awaiting word on whether they’ll be granted asylum in the U.S.
Now, “the United States has announced that it will resume deportations of Haitians, six years after suspending them when an earthquake devastated Haiti’s infrastructure in 2010,” Brooke Binkowski writes in this week’s Border Report.
Tijuana shelters are packed with migrants, and are desperate for donations.
Meanwhile, San Diego Rep. Juan Vargas has introduced a bill package aimed at helping deported military vets. He wants to stop deportations and help those who’ve already been deported gain entry into the country to access VA services.
Obama Jumps Into the Housing Tug-of-War
The fight over how much control locals should have regarding where housing can be built, and how much, now goes all the way to the top: President Obama is calling on localities to rethink their housing and zoning policies, according to Politico:
The White House published a “toolkit” of economic evidence and policy fixes to help local political leaders fight back against the NIMBYs that tend to hold sway over municipal zoning meetings.
“In more and more regions across the country, local and neighborhood leaders have said yes in our backyard,” the paper states. “We need to break down the rules that stand in the way of building new housing.”
That might not happen any time soon, though: As Maya Srikrishnan reported this summer, “cities across the state are hoping to use the November ballot to institute even more restrictions on new development.”
Places like Del Mar, Costa Mesa and Santa Monica all have ballot measures that seek to put up more hurdles to building, usually by requiring a public vote on certain projects.
Quick News Hits
• A new report says that San Diego could take a major economic hit under a Trump presidency. (Union-Tribune)
• Morning Report scribe Randy Dotinga’s dad, Ralph, makes a cameo in this sweet story about the 70th anniversary of a camp attended by sixth-graders around the county. (KPBS)
• inewsource ran the data on calls to 2-1-1, the countywide line that connects people with social services.
• Mother Nature had issues with San Diego Monday. Classes were canceled because of the intense heat. And yes, that was an earthquake you felt on Monday morning. (NBC San Diego)