When Jonathan Montanez, 37, sees yellow flashing lights and guys in orange shirts, he knows he must gather his stuff quickly.
“I surely don’t want to be out here, and I know my wife doesn’t want to be out here,” he says standing on a parched slice of land nestled by Interstate 5.
Montanez has been homeless for seven years and, for the last year, has been living on state property near freeways with his wife, Alyssa Gonzalez, 27, and their dog Diesel. He says state clean-up crews routinely push them out, but the couple usually finds another spot along the freeway.
That could be harder to do soon.
The city of San Diego has entered a one-year agreement with the state to clean up encampments along a 5-mile stretch of state freeways. San Diego is the first in California to enter into the agreement, which also allows the city to receive up to $400,000 in reimbursement.
The agreement includes portions of freeways in the neighborhoods of Little Italy, Sherman Heights, East Village, Barrio Logan and downtown San Diego.
“These are some of the biggest hotspots that we get complaints through Get It Done, which is one of the core reasons why we wanted to focus our initial efforts in this area,” said Walt Bishop, director of Government Affairs for the mayor.
In July 2023, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria signed an ordinance banning encampments on all public property. After that, many people moved to spaces near freeways to avoid police where city law does not apply to state property. Currently, only state agencies and highway patrol officers have the authority to sweep these areas. Residents have grown frustrated by the growth of these encampments, and city officials’ response that there’s little they can do about it.
In February, state Sen. Catherine Blakespear introduced a bill that would authorize cities to clear up encampments on state property. The city of San Diego is sponsoring that bill.
“The city of San Diego was receiving 300 complaints a month about people who were living in Caltrans property,” Blakespear said. “The city had no ability to deal with that.”
“Caltrans, of course, its main mission has to do with roads. Its main mission doesn’t have to do with homelessness,” she added. “The cities are the ones who have the relationships with nonprofits and a process to give people notice, to provide options, to connect them with services.”
A spokesperson with Caltrans said the agency does not comment on pending legislation.
For folks like Montanez, the bill creates more problems than solutions. “How are we supposed to get back on our feet and move forward if we’re constantly having to worry about where are we gonna go next?”
Last week, Gloria shared the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in downtown San Diego has dropped nearly 65 percent since its peak in 2023. The encampment where Voice of San Diego reported is right on the border of downtown in the neighboring area of Sherman Heights.
The Downtown San Diego Partnership has documented unsheltered individuals across the city with monthly counts since 2013. For the perimeter outside of the downtown neighborhoods, they counted more than 100 people so far this year.
Outside a large blue tarp cropped up right by the freeway entrance, Alisha-Nicole Harris, 36, has been camping near Montanez.
She had previously lived in St. Teresa of Calcutta Villa, an affordable housing unit at Father Joe’s Villages in downtown San Diego. Father Joe’s evicted her in May and she has been on the streets ever since with her pit terrier mix, Bubba. She is trying to take the eviction case to court. She’s worried about the proposed legislation.
“If they do that, then where do they expect us to go? Where will the people that stay out here go? There are no beds, no shelter beds,” she said. “There are no hotel vouchers, there’s nothing. Where the hell will we go? Do we just drop dead or disappear off the face of the Earth?”
The city is dealing with impacts from the budget cuts. The Rosecrans shelter, a 150-bed shelter for men and women that provided services for job training and mental health, is getting ready to close. According to reports by The San Diego Housing Commission, only 6 percent (128) of requests for shelter (2,216) in May were placed.
Franklin Coopersmith, deputy director in the Clean SD Division Environmental Services, said the agreement will allow city outreach workers to go on state property and provide resources for housing and shelters.
“There’s not enough shelter for the number of people. We know that — but we’re trying to offer what we can and that’s where safe sleeping comes in,” said Coopersmith. “We want to make sure that option is available at a minimum.”
On the other side of the freeway entrance, Edwin, “OG Mo”, 77, who asked to only be identified by his name and nickname, has also been looking for permanent housing after losing his siblings.
In 2022, he lost his sister to pancreatic cancer. A couple of months later, his brother passed too. Edwin said he could no longer keep up with the bills to pay for their shared apartment. His wife who passed eight years ago left him with some benefits, but he said it’s not enough for both housing and food. He’s hoping to make his way back to his hometown, Chicago, to reunite with the rest of his family.
“I’m just trying to find a place to live,” he said. “At my age I think it’s time to go home. I can’t change this.”
Bruce Higgins, of Old Farts with Hearts, a homelessness outreach group, is concerned about the bill’s impact on people who are already struggling to find a place to sleep for the night.
“The cheapest, most effective way to deal with homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place,” he said. “That means that the people who were already housed – stay in that housing. That means putting in a rent subsidy program.”
Higgins pointed out that by giving financial assistance to help individuals or families afford their housing by reducing their monthly rent, San Diego can make better use of public money. However, with the city running a $350 million deficit, Higgins said it’s hard to know how San Diego could afford it.
“One of the big problems of our society is that we don’t have a way to deal with people who fall all the way to the floor,” he said. “And that’s what we need. For right now, it’s gonna have to come for people like you and I – getting out there and giving people a hand.”
Meanwhile, the actual residents of Sherman Heights are OVERJOYED.
I don’t blame them
So Jonathan Montanez has been homeless for 7 years. He is 37. His complaint is ““How are we supposed to get back on our feet and move forward if we’re constantly having to worry about where are we gonna go next?”
Notice that he says “IF we have to..”.
So what has been doing for the last seven years from age 30 to 37? He is in the prime of his life. What efforts has put into getting getting back on his feet and moving forward? Clearly it isn’t working. Now he is worry about this?
Yea. I don’t think so. I think he just upset that his free campsite is going away.
I was thinking along the same lines. He’s 37, his wife is 27, no mention of disabilities. Even two minimum wage jobs would cover basic living expenses, including modest housing.
I live right near their outpost. They’re junkies. They’re new to the area though.
This publication just loves to alienate residents in order to help non-profits procurement grants. Voice does a real disservice to the community it purports to serve when it gives “voice” to the causes of the problem and ignores the “voice” of those victimized by the problem.
The reporter didn’t attempt to contact a single local homeowner or renter. She just let the junkies tell their sob stories.
Thank you. I was thinking the same thing. Was the reporter trying find sympatheic people? Because all she found was 3 examples of people who refuse to lift a finger to help themselves.
“Advocacy journalism.” What I think is funny is only days after the profile was published, Gloria announced he was targeting that very spot. It’s like he’s grown up and realized how out of touch this publication is. Finally.
Thank you. What you described is happening far too often now. Unfortunately there are very few honest reporters who cover both sides of the story.
If you were to drug test that bum AND his “wife” you would have your answer. Unfortunately, bleeding heart (and irresponsible) reporters along with poverty pimps like Bruce Higgins don’t tell the whole story because it does not fit their agenda.
Regarding Edwin, “OG Mo”. Doesn’t make sense. He is old enough to at least get SSI. Minimum SSI is $967 a month. He makes at least $1000 a month of income. One way flights to Chicago from San Diego can be bought for around $350. He can wait until the first of the month and use his SSI payment to buy himself an ticket to Chicago to his family there.
Why hasn’t he done that? He claims he has been homeless for 3 years. That’s 3 years without paying rent. So not one of those months he thought to buy himself either airline ticket, or bus ticket, to his family in Chicago?
SSI payments are reduced by his other income – he would probably not be eligible. And although many elderly people do not have cognitive impairment, many do. He’s 77 years old and may have been living with his siblings because he was not able to live on his own. That said, there is (or at least used to be) a program where the city would provide transportation home for people in his situation once they verified that there was someone willing to take them in. Too bad the reporter apparently didn’t tell him about it.
Alisha-Nicole Harris got herself kicked out of homeless shelter. You were given free shelter, free food, and you blew it. What do you expect? If you can’t even be civil enough that you get evicted from a homeless shelter, then you have no one but yourself to blame.
She asks “where do they expect us to go?” We expect you to go the homeless shelter. That’s is what it is there for.
Jonathan Montanez says “how are we supposed to get back on our feet” he’s 37 years old.. been homeless for 7 years.. no excuse for an able bodied 37 year old Man to be homeless for 7 years.. he has “Victim” mentality.. I was homeless back in the 80’s for 6 months but refused to give up on myself.. retired from San Diego’s largest Utility company 2 years ago.. own a beautiful home with property. stop with the excuses Montanez.. get a job and live a better life
Exactly. And it is a shame that we cannot drag the drug addicted bums like Montanez and his “wife” to jail until they get clean. That Alisha-Nicole Harris thing is also a joke. There is a reason “it” got kicked out of the homeless shelter but don’t expect the irresponsible reporter to provide that information because no one would have sympathy. These are just typical loser druggies who want to stay in their current state and enablers like Bruce Higgins make is easier for them to continue committing crimes and trashing our streets.
The people interviewed for the story are homeless. I don’t know what happen for them to become homeless, I just know that they are on the street and it is costing us a fortune to have them there.
I have seen estimates of the cost to the city to deal with the homeless which vary from $100,000 per person per year, to close to $1,000,000 for the addicted or severely mentally ill.
It would seem that our time and effort should be spent getting them off the street in order to save us money.
That is not happening now. Low income housing that starts at $2,000/mo. does not help the homeless. It just prolongs the problem.
Housing which will have to be subsidized with services, is the solution.
You can scream about spending our money to pay for worthless bums all you want, and they will stay on the street, where you are paying a fortune to deal with them, or you can house them and stop paying for that person.
If these folks used the Marston House as a restroom the way they use the Villa Montezuma, you’d be singing a different tune.
Sure, Bruce….you speak like the typical poverty pimp who has no experience or background on this subject. You and Mike McConnell should get married and move to San Francisco. In the end, you don’t want to see solutions because you would have to find meaningful employment.
I nearly hit homeless people crossing the Pershing on ramp to the 5N every day this week. It’s gotten so bad in the last month. They pretty much have a wagon train of bikes and shopping carts.
I agree with Mr. Higgins, He is not wrong!! We need more ways to create subsidize programs to help the people stay housed instead of failing on using funds to help the people stay housed and then make it harder to get them off the streets (drugs, alcohol, accustom to the life of living on the streets rent free), then struggling to get back on their feet, that prolongs everything they want to accomplish in life, it could be such as starting or finishing school, or even getting healthy mentally, physically or emotionally according to to each individuals current situation or circumstance that they are undergoing from their past decisions as human beings on this earth that are now projecting as life goes. Please I cant stressed enough about this. Please hear the people for what it is.
That’s right. Let’s give everyone free housing. Make tax payers who work pay for it because these people don’t want to. Let’s invite every freeloader in the country who wants to live rent free in San Diego to come on in. We have unlimited tax funds.
And you must live in the same encampment that the loser Montanez and that Alisha-Nicole Harris thing live in. You probably smoke the same trash they are smoking too….you are pathetic.
666
Help yourselves
On to the left side of Jesus
“How are we supposed to get back on our feet and move forward if we’re constantly having to worry about where are we gonna go next?” He and his wife have been homeless for 7 years according to the article. It doesn’t sound like they are doing much to escape the pattern. I see plenty of construction and landscaping laborers around town that aren’t homeless, and he looks able bodied. Either find a job that pays well enough to live in San Diego or move where housing is affordable. Pretty simple stuff. Time to stop coddling them and enabling their poor decision making.
Only politicians want to sink money into this instead of solve the problem because they are making money. No one believes for a second that these people aren’t drinking, on drugs, and have 0 ambition in life. They are homeless because we support this lifestyle, and they live great lives. They have phones, bikes, nice clothes, backpacks, food, laptops, you name it, and we pay for it.
Tell you what Slick, come with me this coming Sunday. Our group will be feeding the homeless at 17th St and K St from about 3:30p to about 5:00p. I’ll show you their ” Great lives.” No one should be allowed to live in such conditions.
I have made this offer repeatedly over the 5 yrs our group has been working with the homeless and not one commenter on their “Great Lives,” has taken me up on it. I will be easy to find, I am a short old man, with a beard and wearing a Blaze Green Safety Vest.
Tell you what, Mr. Fraud Higgins, why don’t you clean up all of the trash that your druggie friends leave from your “feedings” of these government sponges? No one needs to join in your enabling activities because those of us with lived experience are well aware that most of the bums you enable are lazy and drug addicted roaches. One day you will get your street justice for ruining the neighborhood that we employed and drug-free residents are working so hard to keep clean and bum-free.
Let’s follow the trail of actions on how we got here:
When Gloria was elected he promised to deal with the homeless issue in a humane way, but he would do so by building homeless housing with services so they stayed housed.
Gloria then set out to make it easy to build housing in San Diego, but it was market rate housing because that is where the money is for the developers that support Gloria. No homeless person can afford that housing.
As a result the homeless street population exploded to over 2,000 just in downtown. The rich voters had a fit and threatened Gloria’s career. He issued an order, “Clear the Streets! I don’t care where they go, but I want those streets cleared.” The City Council and Mayor were warned they would go to the freeways because that was state land.
Because there was no shelter space available the homeless did in fact go to the freeway margins, and began to die. We pushed them there.
Now we are going to push them off the freeways in a section through downtown. There is still no place for them, so where will they go? I expect we will play “Whack A Mole” for a while as they attempt to return to the streets. They could also move to freeway margins outside the enforcement zone. Or they could move to the Canyons, and create a huge fire danger.
We are paying a fortune to push the homeless around our city. None of this money solves the problem, you might as well flush the money down the toilet for all the good we are doing. “Another San Diego Special.”
Thats the way its always been. People think you can just legislate the homeless away, and theyll disappear or become someone elses problem. Hows that been working out?
Notice how the senile old fool Higgins just repeats the same BS trash in every comment he posts. He has no solutions and he is only enabling the bums to feed his ego. If there is a woodchipper somewhere he should jump in it after someone turns it on.