The city’s got what it hopes will be a new fundraising engine to help it combat homelessness.
During his State of the City address last week, Mayor Todd Gloria announced that a new campaign called “San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness” already had $250,000 in commitments.
Donations won’t be flowing directly to the city. The San Diego Foundation will be taking in the contributions, which must ultimately go to nonprofits rather than the city itself.
The city’s goal is to bring in $370 million to build affordable housing, prevent homelessness, shelter more homeless San Diegans and help more of them find permanent homes.
Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan told Voice of San Diego that he will decide how the funds are doled out with input from a 10-member advisory board he’s now assembling. He said the city plans to share details on investments on its website and partnered with the San Diego Foundation on a structure that ensures gifts will only back efforts to address homelessness.
Dargan, the city’s top bureaucrat, already has one big ticket item in mind. He’d like the fund to help bankroll a city-owned 40-story, 400-unit affordable housing complex at the old Central Library in East Village.
The ultimate goal, Dargan said, is to get San Diegans more involved in addressing the city’s homelessness crisis. He plans to personally urge businesses, nonprofits, faith communities and residents to get involved – whether that means donating or volunteering if they can’t afford to do so.
“This is a community call for action. This is what this is,” Dargan said. “I am targeting 1.4 million residents of this city to get involved in the homeless crisis that we’re going through. I’m asking them to donate their time, talent or their treasure.”
Can VOSD figure out how much the City and other government agencies spend on staff under the heading of homelessness? How much has been spent in the name of the homeless over the past 10 years.
As for funding, why doesn’t the City apply a displacement fee on the projects that knocked down downtown SROs over the past 10-15 years and contribute the increased property tax base from the City receives from the new projects? I know it’s too late to implement this but the City was an active enabler of the homeless crisis and needs to own up to poor decision making as it makes more bad decisions today.
And good luck with a 40 story homeless shelter.
A study done by Point Loma Nazarene University called Project 25 and published in 2015 using data from 2012, estimated the yearly cost of a chronically homeless person to the city was about $125,000 per person per year.
Just as a guess, that cost has at least doubled over the time from then to now.
Billions and billions spent on these drug addicts and what do we get for it? Garbage and tents on the sidewalk and train horns because the city allows them to wander the train tracks and regularly walk into trains.
MORE funds for the homeless? Pay more more more. Problem gets worse worse worse.
We have a plan! We love San Diego! http://www.dannytri.com
Sure, let’s have a big giant government project without the transparency and conflict-of-interest laws of the Brown Act, FPPC and other structures. The San Diego Foundation loves being a shadow government. Laws say that money donated to a non-profit are the responsibility of ITS board of directors. Based on this article, Dargan is admitting he will use the Foundation as a sham…..that Dargan and HIS board will control the money. So it would just be City activity without the laws that apply to City activity. Say no.
Are you seeking out for a honest to goodness online work? $62ooo Are you’re a housewife or a understudy and are looking to work from residential? Yes, at that point this will be the article which can give you focuses of intrigued dp nearly Google online occupations which are genuine blue ones.
Here Come…… https://WorkArticleOnline24.blogspot.com
Yes I am homeless too. We all should have a good great opportunity to get out there and get whatever we deserve for our family and friends and ourselves 🙏 Amen 🙌🙏🙏. I’m pretty sure it will be worth it Amen 🙏🙌💯 AMEN. Thank you Lord for the blessing of everything you provided for us. Amen 🙏🙌🙏🙏🙏💕💕💕💕.
I second the emotion of SD SOS, and add that allowing AirBNB and its ilk to turn ordinary rental-housing into hotel space destroyed thousands of ordinary non-beach-resort housing units.
This part of the story made me laugh “Dargan, the city’s top bureaucrat,” top bureaucrat — is that the golden turd award or what?
“He’d like the fund to help bankroll a city-owned 40-story, 400-unit affordable housing complex at the old Central Library in East Village.”. Here we go again. Obviously the city hasn’t learned its lessons from the Ash St. debacle. The City of San Diego has not demonstrated any ability to get into the real estate business. Of course if it ends up using more taxpayer money to bail itself out, they’ll try to blame it on the San Diego Foundation instead of Todd and the Toddettes.
“Affordable” housing my foot, this is just a “progressive” (commie) code word for greatly-undersized (vs. market) apartments, with zero parking (gotta use public transportation for everything), and no in-unit laundry hookups (gotta schlep your laundry and quarters 40 stories down/up to the public facilities)… you’ll still end up paying $2850/mo vs. $3600/mo for a market-rate apartment… they will do nothing to help with the “homeless crisis”. There is no housing shortage – more people are leaving than arriving… the dearth of low-cost units were caused by these leftist politicians vilifying & driving out all the SRO hotel & Mom-and-Pop landlords.
For those who are unhappy about the rain’s effects on their morning (Monday, 1/22/24) commute, yes it is a pain.
You however are warm and dry, you are not in a leaky tent somewhere, your bedding is not getting soaked because your tent has a hole in it. So now you are both wet and cold and will stay that way all day because we will have off an on rain for the day. Because there are no toilets where you are staying or they are locked, you have to go out into the rain to do your business. You will also have to go out in the rain to find something to eat. Tonight you will have to go to bed in a wet tent with wet cold bedding.
Yes Sir, San Diego is a homeless paradise, people come from all over just to live here, lay around and collect free goodies.
Todd Gloria and his minions on the city council can fill the new fund by making their developers contributors all make “behest” contributions to it when they sell zoning entitlements. Of course, the crooked politicians would have to take a little less in campaign contributions, but according to the mayor and his staff, its for a good cause.