San Diego leaders have directed hundreds of thousands more dollars to the city’s first designated camping area as the growing homelessness crisis exacerbates the region’s shelter shortage.
The City Council voted this month to extend the use of the 20th and B safe sleeping site, by Balboa Park, which has more than 130 two-person tents.
Although critics have raised concerns about mold, food quality and the fact that, as of earlier this year, fewer than 20 individuals had been connected to housing, officials said the lot was a necessary stopgap.
“While the safe camping is not what anybody would want for the residents of San Diego, it does meet an individual need,” Councilmember Joe LaCava said from the dais April 8.
The city opened two camping areas last year, including the nearby O Lot, and county leaders are considering following suit in other communities.
The moves came as San Diego passed a camping ban that boosted penalties for living in a tent, and although there have been few prosecutions, the ordinance appeared to cause a drop in the downtown homeless population.
That doesn’t mean the problem got better overall. Countywide, more people became newly homeless than the number of individuals connected to housing during every month of the past two years, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
Hundreds do regularly ask for shelter. Yet data from the San Diego Housing Commission show the vast majority didn’t appear to get a bed during much of 2023.
Perhaps as a result, many people living outside have long asked for areas to legally camp, and some who’ve moved to the new sleeping sites have praised the amenities — like shuttles, meals and Porta Potties — as an improvement over sidewalk encampments.
Other residents have complained in interviews that the operation at times has been disorganized. Breakfast felt bare bones. The asphalt lots heated up in the summer, tents could become frigid in the winter and heavy rains have triggered three evacuations from the first area.
“We want to leave but we have nowhere else to go,” remarked Terra Woolery, a 45-year-old who said she’s lived at each location. Some belongings went missing amid storm cleanups and the disability showers weren’t always accessible, she added. “I want them to either fix it or let somebody else take over.”
A United Nations expert previously raised some of the same issues.
City spokesperson Matt Hoffman wrote in an email that the food contract only required “one snack” and one meal each day, and that the latter was dinner. He did acknowledge that “naturally occurring mold” had appeared on platforms below the tents and said the city was “ordering, treating and delivering” new ones.
“As this is a newer program to the City, we continue to evaluate program outcomes and make adjustments,” he added.
The nonprofit Dreams for Change runs part of the second site and all of the first.
As of late February, 577 people had been served at 20th and B, according to city records. Just 19 had found “permanent or other forms of long-term housing.”
It was not immediately clear how many had left for different reasons.
“We don’t have the subsidies, we don’t have the vouchers, we don’t have the permanent supportive housing that we need,” said LaCava, the council member. When “there is no place for them to exit, there’s no place to really show a dramatic ‘success.’”
Hoffman, the spokesperson, added that the housing statistics didn’t capture other victories, like connecting residents to medical care or rehab.
The program “is reaching individuals who have historically been hesitant to accept shelter services, and therefore, we know connections to other resources” could “take additional time.”
The council gave Dreams for Change more than $487,000 to keep the first site open through this summer. The annual budget for future fiscal years would be around $1.5 million.
The vote was 6-0 in favor, with council members Sean Elo-Rivera, Marni von Wilpert and Vivian Moreno absent.