Within the ongoing debate about homelessness in San Diego lies a multitude of assumptions about homeless people. These typically involve theories of who they are, where they are coming from and why they are homeless.
Voice of San Diego’s Will Huntsberry delved into the four most common assumptions about homeless people and what the data says about them.
He found that some of these assumptions are a little bit true and some of them are just plain wrong.
Dig deeper: Numbers collected by the Regional Taskforce on Homelessness showed homeless people from out of town make up a minority of San Diego’s homeless population.
San Diego’s shelter data showed a severe lack of shelters that could explain why homeless people are staying homeless.
And new research by UC San Francisco, as well as recent findings by housing scholar Gregg Colburn and data journalist Clayton Page Aldern, examine the two most prevalent assumptions about the best way to solve homelessness: housing first or treatment first.
Related: Speaking of Housing First, a local housing project that follows the model could be an indicator of its effectiveness, the Union-Tribune reported.
The Housing First policy requires moving people into permanent housing as quickly as possible with no conditions, such as sobriety. It’s a requirement to be eligible for some state and federal funds.
Housing First is increasingly becoming more political because it doesn’t mandate treatment.
Two hotels purchased by the city of San Diego in 2020 follow this policy and have shown that people are remaining housed, and some are voluntarily seeking treatment for their addictions.
Environment Report: Oops!…The City Should Have Collected This Trash Bin
A couple weeks ago, one of our reporters noticed a tag attached to the green food waste bin at his apartment complex. The bin was overflowing with takeout containers and trash — not food waste.
The tag noted that the bin was not emptied by the trash collector because the content in it should be only organics. That sparked our MacKenzie Elmer’s curiosity. She wanted to know if the city of San Diego is cracking down on bad composting.
The answer? It’s not.
Elmer learned that the bin should not have been tagged and skipped. The city’s Environmental Services Department is focused on educating residents to use the bins correctly. It’s a new habit and it’s not always pretty.
A city spokesperson said there is a “moderate amount” of contamination, but overall people are doing a good job. If there is trash mixed in with food waste, workers hand-pick the contamination out at the Miramar Landfill.
Background: San Diego’s food waste recycling program is how the city plans to comply with a state mandate that Californians cut 75 percent of the food waste heading to landfills by 2025. But as CalMatters reported, the state is already falling short on its goals.
Read the Environment Report here.
The Coastal Erosion Research Must Go On
Research on landslides and coastal erosion in San Diego County can continue for another three years thanks to a bill authored by Assemblymember Tasha Boerner and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The bill extends the three-year deadline set in 2021 that secured $2.5 million in the state budget for research on cliff erosion, the Union-Tribune reported.
Boerner’s district includes Encinitas and Del Mar, two coastal cities that have seen significant cliff erosion in recent decades, including a 2019 cliff collapse in Encinitas that killed three women.
The study, led by researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, aims to provide a better understanding of the signs and circumstances that lead up to cliff failures.
Related: North County reporter Tigist Layne previously reported on SANDAG’s plan to move the train tracks that run along the fragile Del Mar bluffs into an underground tunnel – a project that will cost an estimated $4 billion and at least 10 years to complete.
In Other News
- A small group of California legislatures have formed a renter’s caucus made up of elected representatives who rent. It was started by Matt Haney, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, when he discovered that he was part of a small minority of legislators who are not homeowners. The caucus hopes to highlight and represent the millions of renters in California. It now has five members including Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, who represents coastal San Diego. (New York Times)
- Lemon Grove last week formally declared a crisis over its lack of local homeless shelters. The move will help city officials secure more local and federal grants and could help the city bypass certain building regulations when looking for shelter and housing sites. The number of unsheltered homeless people in Lemon Grove almost doubled from 2022 to 2023, according to this year’s point-in-time count. (Union-Tribune)
- The Temecula Valley Unified School District board unanimously approved a previously rejected social studies curriculum after Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened the district with a $1.5 million fine if it failed to adopt the curriculum. (KPBS)
- Homeless service providers received $2.37 billion from local governments between 2015 and 2022, a report by the San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation found. The report is part of an ongoing effort to match the dollars to actual outcomes to see what is and isn’t working, as well as an overall review of how homeless providers operate. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by Tigist Layne and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.
MDT (more dumb typos) report:
“A small group of California legislatures have formed a renter’s caucus.”
do you mean that there is more than one California, that they all have legislatures, and that some of them formed a caucus? i didn’t think so.
it’s legislaTORS; those who legislate.