As soon as early next month, one of the city’s large homeless shelters may be shutting down. Hundreds of other beds are also set to come offline by early next year.
Unfortunately the number of homeless residents is not going down proportionately.
The mayor’s plan: Expand the city’s two safe campsites in Balboa Park and move at least some residents now staying at the city’s Golden Hall shelter into those sites.
Gloria’s team and other city officials emphasize other plans are also in the works. They are looking for other potential shelter sites, including with a formal request to property owners and landlords to pitch potential shelter sites released last week.
Our Lisa Halverstadt broke down which shelters are set to close and when, how the city’s preparing, the status of mega-shelter negotiations and more.
Related: Council President Sean Elo-Rivera on Monday postponed a City Council vote on his proposal to give the mayor new powers to more swiftly respond to the city’s homelessness crisis, including the upcoming loss of shelter beds.
At the start of Monday afternoon’s City Council meeting, Elo-Rivera said he was pulling the item to give officials time to talk to city workers and their labor unions about how the proposed changes could impact them. Elo-Rivera said he hopes to bring the item back to the City Council “as soon as possible.”
About That Battery Fire in Escondido
After a lithium battery fire at an SDG&E battery storage facility in Escondido prompted evacuation orders and warnings, officials are assuring the public that the fire was not as harmful as what people wrote online.
Our MacKenzie Elmer heard from the Escondido Fire Department that their air monitors never picked up any dangerous levels of toxic air pollutants that one may worry about from a chemical fire like this one.
The Air Pollution Control District also worked to communicate that reports of a strong odor in North County were unrelated to the battery fire.
And as for the evacuations, the Escondido Police Department said their automated system mistakenly sent evacuation orders to cities and residents much further out than intended.
Elmer, who happened to tour the facility just hours before the fire started, writes that, even though the fire wasn’t as harmful as some have claimed, it was still bad timing for supporters of battery facilities like this one.
Those Popular ‘Compostable’ Bags are Not-So-Compostable
A couple of weeks ago, our MacKenzie Elmer set out to understand why many compostable and biodegradable products that companies say can help people compost more efficiently are not considered compostable by San Diego’s standards.
For example, HippoSak, is a popular brand of compostable bags that is advertised to break down in a home compost bin, but San Diego doesn’t consider them to be compostable because they won’t break down in the same way as regular food scraps.
HippoSak’s parent company, Crown Poly, claims to have a certification from a European organization verifying that it is compostable. But that European company told Elmer that HippoSak actually doesn’t have their stamp of approval.
Whether intentional or not, it’s an example of something companies and governments do often: Greenwashing.
Read the Environment Report here.
Sup. Desmond: Guv Should Pay Up For Conservatorship Expansion
In late July, Gov. Gavin Newsom scolded county leaders in San Diego and across the state in a letter urging them to immediately implement state conservatorship reforms.
Now County Supervisor Jim Desmond, a vocal critic of the Democratic governor, is trying to tee up a counterpunch. Today the Republican will ask fellow supervisors to send a letter to Newsom requesting $51 million annually for new services tied to SB 43, a new state law expanding eligibility for conservatorships to include people with severe substance use disorders.
The county is for now set to implement the state law in January after voting last year to push back the timeline to allow more time to prepare. Desmond argues the county needs help paying for detox treatment beds, locked behavioral health facilities, hospital services for people struggling with addiction and a program to link people who land in the hospital after an overdose with ongoing treatment.
Our Lisa Halverstadt recently revealed that the county has just 78 detox beds for Medi-Cal patients months before it implements the state law expected to put more pressure on the system.
“This expansion requires additional resources,” Desmond wrote in his board proposal. “It is not enough to simply have more people placed into a conservatorship if we don’t have the treatment, programs, and facilities needed.”
In Other News
- A real estate developer is suing to block San Diego from creating a homeless shelter in Point Loma, saying it could jeopardize existing plans for a new hotel in that area. (Union-Tribune)
- San Diego’s Congressional delegation is, once again, calling for a federal declaration of a state of emergency over the Tijuana sewage crisis following recent detections of high levels of toxic gasses near the U.S.-Mexico border. (KPBS)
- Cooler weather is (finally) coming to San Diego this week. (KPBS)
The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and Tigist Layne. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña and Scott Lewis.