City and county leaders are engaged in an ongoing quest to increase the number of shelter beds for homeless people across San Diego.
At the same time, local officials are supporting a legal effort to reverse a landmark court ruling that requires them to provide shelter space if they seek to ban people from living on the street and in other public areas.
The two goals are not necessarily incongruous. But if the legal bid succeeds, that could soften the motivation to provide more shelter for homeless people with no place to go.
That may not be the result. Regardless of the courts, society has an obligation to provide assistance to help people get off the street for humanitarian, public safety and sanitation reasons.
Hopefully, creating more shelter space and permanent housing — both are in short supply — for homeless people would remain a priority.
But sometimes it’s human nature to ease up when the pressure is off.
After all, part of the rationale from some officials for opening up safe sleeping campsites on parking lots in Balboa Park was that the additional beds could facilitate enforcement of the city’s public camping ban enacted over the summer.
Meanwhile, San Diego and other cities and states throughout the country are watching an appeal to the Supreme Court of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against a camping ban in Grants Pass, Ore.
The genesis of that ruling stems from a precedent-setting 2018 appellate court decision in Martin v. Boise, which held that, with some exceptions, cities can’t enforce camping bans against homeless people if shelter beds are not available.
The state of California, San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan, the city of San Diego and several other jurisdictions have filed legal briefs in support of the Grants Pass appeal.
On Tuesday, members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors expressed support for the appeal, but declined to direct county counsel to join the case. County officials noted that the California Association of Counties already had filed a brief in support of the appeal.
That discussion came as the four supervisors agreed to have staff draft a camping-ban ordinance for unincorporated land in the county.
What actually will be proposed — and what kind of support it will have — is unclear for now, but the outline is similar to the city’s law. The vast majority of public speakers at the supervisors’ hearing opposed the ordinance, according to Blake Nelson of The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Supervisor Joel Anderson, who proposed the ordinance, also asked in a letter that county staff develop a list of sites, including county-owned properties, that could be used for shelter space needed to enforce the law.
Anderson wrote that the county should “explore partnerships with other jurisdictions on regionally serving facilities.”
While there has been some collaboration among agencies across the region, there has been tension as well.
Mayor Todd Gloria months ago expressed frustration, contending other cities weren’t doing their part on homelessness, suggesting some unsheltered people from other areas lacking services come to San Diego.
Some cities in the county passed their own camping restrictions, in part, out of concern that homeless people would go there to avoid the crackdown in San Diego.
Under the San Diego city ordinance, camping is prohibited in parks, canyons, waterways and near schools, transit hubs and homeless shelters regardless of whether beds are available.
Elsewhere, a shelter bed must be available and offered before police can take action against an unsheltered person. The multi-step enforcement starts with a warning and then escalates to a citation and potentially an arrest.
The city recently moved to set aside more homeless shelter beds for San Diego police referrals “as officers continued to ramp up enforcement of the city’s camping ban,” according to the Voice of San Diego.
The move will expand the police set-asides from 100 to 150 beds. That’s only a small portion of the approximately 2,000 shelter beds in the city of San Diego, but the overall demand makes beds hard to come by.
KPBS reported that San Diego Housing Commission data showed 1,930 people experiencing homelessness requested a shelter bed for the night in September, and all but 393 were turned away.
Meanwhile, the homeless population has grown considerably, according to this year’s annual count, and reports from the Regional Task Force on Homelessness show that on a monthly basis more people become homeless for the first time than homeless people find housing.
More homeless shelters are needed, but establishing them is an expensive and time-consuming process. It took months for the city to get the two Balboa Park lots — which have a combined capacity of more than 500 tents — up and running.
Finding a location for a homeless shelter can be even more difficult, as they almost always run into neighborhood resistance. Opposition killed the initial proposal for Balboa Park.
For example: A possible shelter was mentioned for property with abandoned buildings near San Diego International Airport and southeast of Liberty Station in the city’s Homeless Shelter and Solutions Strategy released earlier this year.
Though no concrete proposal has been made for the so-called Barracks H site, the potential for a shelter there recently surfaced and triggered a petition opposing it signed by 800 people in two days, according to NBC 7. On Friday the Voice said the signature list had grown to 3,000.
The 2023 point-in-time homeless count earlier this year reported there were 5,171 unsheltered people in the county and a total of 10,264 experiencing homelessness, which includes those living in shelters and transitional housing.
The prospect of coming up with enough shelters and homes to meet the need seems slim to none, at least in the near future.
Officials supporting the Grants Pass appeal say overturning the requirement for available shelter beds to enforce camping bans would give authorities more flexibility. It also would allow them to take more aggressive action against unsheltered people who resist enforcement, or orders to at least move along.
That, of course, isn’t a solution. Whether it makes the situation better or worse remains to be seen.
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