What Voice Is Doing to Meet This Moment in San Diego 

I took the week off last week but didn’t leave. The kids and I decided to check out different beaches. My daughter got the thrill of sitting on her surf board as a sea lion frolicked next to her. My son and I were mesermized by the colonies of thousands of sandcrabs in La Jolla poking their little heads up and disappearing when we approached.

But my favorite natural San Diego wonder came that Thursday.

While surfing at Ocean Beach, I saw pelicans take over the pier – at least a thousand of them. It felt like the word had gone out on Pelican TikTok that it was time to party on the pier. They lined the rails like sailors coming into port. It was magical. The OB pier had been getting pretty depressing — a symbol of San Diego’s decline. Crumbling, dangerous and dirty, nobody thinks we will see it rebuilt any time soon. But that day, to see the pelicans make use of it – make it oddly beautiful, useful — was a relief. 

It was classic San Diego, the breathtaking natural environment covering for the bleak civic infrastructure. We always see such beauty and such bleak stuff at the same time around here. That same surf session, I heard news that haunted the rest of the week off: A eucalyptus tree fell onto a family June 29 at Villa La Jolla Park. The father tried to shield his two boys but one of them, a 4-year-old, later died from his injuries.   

We know eucalyptus trees are bad. We know they kill and maim every year. But we don’t do anything. We need our parks but we neglect them. As it tries to massively expand home building within established neighborhoods, the city is asking people to find their space in communal areas instead of backyards. But at the same time, its parks have miserable infrastructure – bathrooms that strike fear in kids, if they’re open at all. The Civic Center is depressing, dilapidated and a not exactly comfortable place to walk through at night. Balboa Park’s list of infrastructure needs is overwhelming. Then there’s the pier, my poor pier.  

The natural landscape of San Diego – those pelicans — will always mask these flaws, but the region is becoming more and more hostile to families. And they are leaving.  

Them leaving will only make it worse. Jakob McWhinney this week presented the stark data about plunging enrollment in San Diego schools. Kids are not leaving for private schools, or home schools, they’re just leaving. Birth rates are declining. And we are only barely beginning to face the likelihood that we will have to close neighborhood schools. 

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of San Diegans are in danger of losing their Medi-Cal coverage, or their at-home care. 

But San Diego has seen bleaker times and pulled through them. We are strong enough to face our biggest problems and find solutions.  

To do that, we have to know about them and discuss them frankly.  

So, as we finish our 20th anniversary year, Voice of San Diego is re-arranging its approach a bit. This month, we began our new fiscal year with a major addition: We have a new investigative reporter focused on City Hall, Mariana Martínez Barba. She is also a Report for America corps member. 

Her job is a big one: to track the city and its leaders as they deal with its financial problems, infrastructure holes and public safety needs. 

Martínez Barba’s addition allowed us to do something we have wanted to for many years: Put an investigative reporter on the job of watching and digging into what’s happening at the county of San Diego as well. The county has the big job of delivering on the state and federal mandates and services for some of San Diego’s poorest people and the federal government is set to make historic changes to that. How county leaders handle the massive cuts on the way will be a major story to understand and follow.  

The mayor of San Diego this year asked residents to think of the county when they see someone screaming in the streets. Was that fair? Why can’t they lead together and address the homelessness, mental health and addiction crisis plaguing our streets and parks as partners rather than foes? Nobody understands and has the ability to follow the starts and stops in the region’s effort to address behavioral health and homelessness better than Lisa Halverstadt and I can’t wait to see what she does.  

As it has been in centuries past, the cost of living in San Diego is at the heart of most of its problems. We have seen cycles of economic boom and bust – of housing shortfalls amid job growth. But we have never seen a cycle like this. For 25 years, with only a brief pause during the Great Recession, housing costs in San Diego have relentlessly climbed. Interest rates have now risen as well with no prospect of relief in sight.  

The fear of new housing and the desire to meet the demand with construction has always had a prominent place in San Diego’s political conversation but it’s at another turning point. It is more important than ever for journalists to make sure the facts are clear, the explanations are available and demonstrate the willingness to investigate corruption and conflicts as we grapple with the core driver of the cost of living crisis in San Diego: how much it costs to have shelter.  

We’ve now assigned our investigative reporter Will Huntsberry to that daunting task.  

We are committed not just to examining all the problems and dogging all the politicians about them but also to being a platform for solutions. This year, Politifest, on Oct. 4, will be different. Rather than it being a day of panels and debates, we are structuring the sessions as “Solutions Showdowns.” Each session will present a problem in the community (the sewage crisis at the border, for example) and one person will present their solution to the problem. Another presenter will offer another and so on, two to four presenters in each session. Then they will debate and discuss and the audience (live and online) will vote on the winner. The winners will present and discuss at the end of the event in our live podcast.  

As always, our journalists can only do their jobs with your knowledge, your tips and your willingness to educate them. And your donations keep them employed. We need this Voice to be stronger than ever and I’m going to work hard to make you proud this year. Thank you.  

You can reach me at scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org, Mariana for City Hall information at mariana.martinez@voiceofsandiego.org, Lisa for county stuff at lisa.halverstadt@voiceofsandiego.org and Will for land-use and housing tips at will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org.