Get to the point

The San Diego City Council operates under a system in which members tend to defer to a colleague when the issue at hand is geographic in nature. For instance, Scott Peters would take the lead on issues in La Jolla while Tony Young would be the go-to guy on matters in Encanto. Donna Frye in Clairemont, Brian Maienschein in Rancho Bernardo—you get the picture.

But such a system isn’t always a good idea, for the issue might have qualities that trump geography. Take homelessness, for example. When a City Council committee created a task force to address the need for permanent shelter for homeless citizens, it appointed Kevin Faulconer to chair it, because he represents Downtown, where the largest chunk of the homeless population lives. However, representing Downtown means maintaining close contact with downtown business groups, and seeking solutions that help homeless people doesn’t always mesh with seeking solutions that help people who wish homeless people would just go away.

Early indications suggest that Faulconer has given the business group priority, which convinces us that a better chairperson would have been Jim Madaffer, who has demonstrated throughout the years an interest in homelessness, or Toni Atkins, whose top priority has been affordable housing. (Atkins is at least a member of the task force and, ideally, will help keep the panel’s eyes on the prize.)

It’s become painfully obvious that Faulconer’s primary goal is to reinstate the police department’s enforcement of the city’s illegal-lodging law, which ostensibly bans homeless people from sleeping in public. In response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a handful of homeless people, claiming that it’s unconstitutional to deny folks the right to sleep outdoors when there’s no viable alternative, the city agreed to stop ticketing people for merely sleeping on public property between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.

Faulconer came right out of the chute talking during the first two meetings about getting those citations back in action. Attorneys representing the homeless people have been asked how many new beds it’ll take for them to agree to drop their case. In interviews with CityBeat, Faulconer has acknowledged that he’s heard from downtown business representatives unhappy with the illegal-lodging settlement and has sung the praises of Rachel Ortiz, a Barrio Logan activist who, at last week’s task force meeting, made no secret of her preference for a more punitive approach to solving homelessness. To sum up her thoughts on the matter: Toss ’em all in jail. Appalling.

Faulconer is a friendly guy and seems decent enough, but under his leadership, the task force so far has been a colossal waste of time. In addition to squandering precious hours discussing the illegal-lodging law (at the third meeting, his first appearance, task force member and developer Dene Oliver thankfully noted that law enforcement is not the purview of this group) the task force is now in the midst of discussing possible locations for next winter’s temporary shelter.

This thing is called the Permanent Homeless Facility Task Force—it’s right there in the name. It shouldn’t be using its limited time in existence talking about the temporary shelter. The winter facility should be handled by the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee, allowing the task force to get down to the business at hand: coming up with plans to site and finance a permanent intake center, where homeless folks can find temporary shelter and get routed to the services they need (such as substance-dependency treatment, mental-health treatment and domestic-violence help), and to site and finance permanent supportive housing units.

Much of the groundwork has already been done. The City Council in 2006 approved its Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, which, as part of a nationwide campaign, states, correctly, that the only effective way to attack chronic homelessness is with a “housing first” approach. Once people are housed, it’s much easier to begin fixing the problems that caused their homelessness. Once those problems are dealt with, the “hidden” costs of homelessness—emergency medical care, police work, jail stays and court time—will be reduced. Other cities have done it, and their experiences are documented. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

The task force must get right to determining exactly how many supportive-housing units are needed and then issue requests for proposals to developers, who can work with the city on locations and financing. This, in addition to developing an intake center, will be a gargantuan task burdened with the usual NIMBYism problems, but it’s terribly important, and the City Council, through this task force, has to think big and show real leadership.

And the first step is for Faulconer and his task force to stop tip-toeing, stop talking about side issues, stay on point and get it done.   

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