Everyone likes free money, right? Nope.
The Encinitas City Council recently rejected the opportunity to get nearly $4 million in state funds to house homeless residents.
“Just because someone wants to give us money doesn’t mean it aligns with what we’re doing,” said Councilmember Jim O’Hara.
O’Hara was referring to Encinitas leaders’ longstanding objection to a state policy called Housing First, which focuses on housing homeless people before requiring them to achieve sobriety or take other steps toward stability.
Though research has shown Housing First can be an effective approach to homelessness – and though the current round of state grant funding gives cities more flexibility in how they use the funds – Encinitas leaders weren’t sold.
Residents backed them up. Speakers at last week’s Council meeting urged councilmembers to pass on the money, saying helping homeless people would just encourage more of them to come to Encinitas.
Meanwhile, as our Tigist Layne has been reporting, neighboring Carlsbad and Oceanside have been using their state funds to clear encampments and house dozens of homeless residents.
Read the North County Report Here.
Everyone Will Be There
On July 9 you can come meet Tigist in Solana Beach for a special event. She’ll be talking about all things North County at our next Meet the Beat at La Colonia Community Center.
This is an opportunity for you to meet the reporter behind the newsletter and discuss local news with the entire Voice of San Diego community.
Meet the Beat North County
La Colonia Community Center
715 Valley Avenue, Solana Beach, CA 92075
You can RSVP for this event by clicking here.
“Pay Raise Day” for Hospitality Workers
Nearly a year after the San Diego City Council passed a law requiring higher wages for hospitality workers, employees at hotels and other venues will finally see the results.
The ordinance, which took effect Wednesday, boosts hotel workers’ minimum salaries to $19 an hour. Workers at major event centers, such as Petco Park and the San Diego Convention Center, now earn at least $21.06 per hour. The city’s minimum wage for other workers is $17.75 per hour.
Under terms of the ordinance, the salary rates will rise annually to $25 per hour by 2030.
The law applies to hotels with more than 150 guest rooms, several amusement parks and the city’s major event centers.
City leaders took a victory lap Wednesday, fanning out across the city to meet with hotel workers.
“For too long, the people who make San Diego the place millions want to visit haven’t been able to afford to live in the city,” said Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who authored the ordinance last year. “Today we’re delivering on a promise to those workers.”
Former Voice Contributor Kelly Davis Dies at 53
When the local Society of Professional Journalists chapter gave Union-Tribune reporter Kelly Davis its top award in 2023 for her relentless reporting on jail deaths, a long line of loved ones of those who had died stood up at the ceremony to share what her stories meant to them. Many in attendance – myself included – were brought to tears by the tribute to a tenacious-yet-humble reporter who more than earned her standing ovation.
Davis, whose reporting on county jail deaths spurred reforms and a state audit, died early Wednesday after a yearslong battle with cancer. The U-T published her last story just two weeks ago. Davis previously wrote for publications including Voice of San Diego and San Diego CityBeat, where she also wrote about homelessness, criminal justice and vulnerable people who are often forgotten. Davis never forgot them. She made a career of telling hard stories – and holding authorities accountable.
As Davis’s U-T reporting partner Jeff McDonald writes in a spot on obituary, Davis stuck to that mission even after county lawyers in 2017 subpoenaed her notes and other unpublished materials after her reporting on a jail suicide. Davis fought back with the help of a team of pro-bono attorneys and won.
Sam Schulz, who persuaded Davis to join the U-T in 2025, summed up Davis well: “She challenged herself, and all of us, to be better journalists, better people, to question our assumptions, to investigate human suffering and relentlessly seek accountability and ultimately relief. And she did this even when — especially when — those details and questions might seem most difficult, or most easily avoided.”
Thank you, Kelly Davis, for inspiring me and so many other reporters and fighting so hard to tell stories that would otherwise have gone untold. San Diego County is a better place because of your work. We’ll make sure the stories you fought so hard to tell aren’t forgotten.
– Lisa Halverstadt
DMV to Share License Data Despite Immigrants’ Fears
The California Department of Motor Vehicles is set to begin sharing drivers license and other information with a nationwide database, despite fears immigration authorities could use it to identify undocumented immigrants.
Our partners at CalMatters report state lawmakers authorized sharing the information after adding guardrails to attempt to ensure federal authorities can’t misuse it. State leaders say the data sharing is needed to comply with federal REAL-ID requirements
Under terms included in the new state budget, the DMV will begin sharing information with a nationwide database that enables other DMV’s to determine whether drivers license applicants already have a license in another state.
“The guardrails will not prevent” misuse of immigrants’ personal information, said Ed Hasbrouck of the civil liberties group Identity Project.
“Y.M.C.A.” Singer Dies at 74
You know the song. You’ve been through the motions.
Maybe you didn’t know that Victor Willis, lead singer of the The Village People, whose hit song “Y.M.C.A.” became a worldwide gay anthem, made his home in San Diego (Rancho Santa Fe, to be exact) for many years.
Willis died this week at age 74.
Willis left the band in the early 1980s and spiraled into what he described in a 2015 interview with the Union-Tribune as years of drug and alcohol addiction.
He found sobriety, married a San Diego attorney and music executive and settled in Rancho Santa Fe.
Willis embodied some of the tensions and contradictions of our weird political moment.
The idea for the Village People was born in a gay bar in New York and the group’s hits were staples of gay culture.
But Willis threatened to sue a media outlet that called “Y.M.C.A.” a gay anthem. And later in life he became associated with President Donald Trump, who made appearances at Village People concerts and used “Y.M.C.A.” as a song at his political rallies.
Somehow, the song transcended it all.
“Everybody knows ‘Y.M.C.A.’,” Willis told the Union-Tribune. “Everywhere I go, people tell me their little children know ‘Y.M.C.A.’ They don’t know Village People, but they know ‘Y.M.C.A.’.”
In Other News
- The vacancy rate for rentals in San Diego County is higher than it’s been in at least a quarter century. A surge in apartment construction combined with renters’ increasing reluctance to pay high rents is forcing landlords to offer deals to entice new tenants. (Union-Tribune)
- Dozens of San Diego State University employees on Tuesday formed a picket line outside the university president’s office amidst ongoing contract negotiations. They demanded fair wages for the union representing more than 36,000 non-teaching staff employees of the California State University system. (KPBS)
- Rachael Borrelli, former assistant director of the San Diego County Department of Animal Services, sued the county last month for defamation and whistleblower retaliation. Borrelli, who was fired by the county in January, alleges department employees spread rumors about her then retaliated when she complained to human resources. (KPBS)
- That massive traffic backup in Mission Valley yesterday? The cause was a police manhunt for a parolee who fled officers and hid in the reeds along the San Diego River. Officers arrested the suspect. (NBC San Diego)
- Some good news: More Latino students in San Diego County are graduating from high school than did 20 years ago, thanks to increased state funding for English language learners, greater focus on career training and support from community organizations. (KPBS)
The Morning Report was written by Jim Hinch and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.
