Downtown Councilman Pushing Big Homeless Project – and a Crackdown

Councilman Stephen Whitburn next month plans to unveil proposals to crack down on street homelessness and accommodate hundreds of unhoused people in a parking lot near downtown. 

The city’s housing agency is now evaluating whether Inspiration Point, a long-underutilized corner of Balboa Park, could potentially support a large shelter tent and safe camping sites that the downtown city councilman envisions.  

Whitburn shared his vision for both a large shelter and safe campground at a University Heights Community Association meeting Thursday night but didn’t specify a location. Moving forward with his pitch, Whitburn said, would let the city enforce an ordinance he plans to propose that bans camping on public property. 

“We need to add more shelter and more places for people to go. That is key to the whole thing, to get people out of the canyons, out of the parks, off the sidewalks,” Whitburn said. “We need other places for them to go.” 

Then, Whitburn said, the city can require unhoused people to move off the street.  

Whitburn’s comments on the need for more shelter options to allow stepped up enforcement reflect legal realities. A 2018 federal appeals court ruling barred citing homeless people for sleeping on sidewalks if no other shelter is available and a  2007 legal settlement prevents police from ticketing or arresting homeless San Diegans if shelters are full. 

For now, the city has nearly 1,800 shelter beds. By comparison, a downtown business group’s late January tally of people sleeping on the street downtown and its outskirts alone hit a new record of 1,939 and a regionwide point-in-time count last year tallied about 2,500 unsheltered residents. 

Yet Whitburn said his proposed ordinance will also call for bans on settling in some areas such as canyons and near schools even when there’s no shelter space available, a move that the city councilman representing downtown and central city neighborhoods said was legally defensible due to public health and safety threats. Similar policies have been pursued elsewhere. Los Angeles last year passed a ban near schools and day cares while Sacramento voters approved a policy allowing the city to clear more homeless camps absent available shelter in some instances, and called for the city to deliver hundreds of new shelter beds.  

Whitburn told Voice of San Diego last month that he was working with City Attorney Mara Elliott’s office on a proposal to address the challenges the city now faces using encroachment and illegal lodging laws not written to directly address the situations now playing out in the city. He noted that Elliott’s office has often declined to prosecute those cases and that judges often throw them out.  

“We need rules that speak to the issue at hand and are clear for the people most affected, are clear for the community and are clear legally so that is what I am working toward, a legal framework that hopefully is better for everybody,” Whitburn told Voice last month. 

As he worked on that ordinance, Whitburn said he had identified a half dozen sites near downtown he planned to analyze early this year to see if they could house a large safe camping site, including an often largely vacant parking lot at Inspiration Point. 

Housing Commission Chairman Mitch Mitchell said agency staff are now assessing Inspiration Point, a site that the nonprofit Lucky Duck Foundation also recently pushed as a possible shelter site.  

“The Housing Commission is evaluating the site and what potentially could work so we can begin having those conversations with the mayor and City Council,” Mitchell said. “We would like to provide them with as much detail on the site, the possibilities, the constraints and the cost to operate the site overall.” 

He said the Housing Commission is also discussing other possible sites but is for now spending most of its time analyzing the possibilities at Inspiration Point. Mitchell said the agency ultimately wants to deliver a plan to add hundreds of additional shelter options that also includes multiple other locations to address the needs of different segments of the unhoused population.

The revelation of this work comes about a month after the Housing Commission was forced to put its plan for a pilot safe camping lot at a small Cortez Hill parking lot on hold. 

Whitburn’s pitch to crack down on unhoused residents and a plan potentially allow hundreds to settle in Balboa Park is likely to face scrutiny from both his City Council colleagues and advocates who have for years criticized enforcement affecting unsheltered San Diegans. 

Attorney Scott Dreher, who has filed suits against the city that have resulted in multiple settlements dictating how the city conducts enforcement and clean-up operations at homeless camps, said Friday that Whitburn’s proposals could be a positive step. After all, Dreher said, the premise is that there will be a place for people to move. 

But he said the details matter. For example, Dreher said, will the proposed changes make it easier for unhoused people to access a safe space to stay and eventually move into homes or will they be enacted in a punitive way? 

“My fear is this is just an ordinance that’s got no substance except it’s a different excuse to give the same people different tickets,” Dreher said.