heART on Center
A lawsuit settled last year by the city of San Diego and two attorneys working pro bono for eight homeless men and women gives anyone without a place to sleep permission to bed down on public property between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. It’s a rule that’s made some downtown developers and business owners unhappy, as CityBeat has reported. Sidewalks, even if they line private property, are open to public access.
Also open to public access, it would seem, is the Civic Center concourse, the large plaza adjacent to City Hall. In fact, if anything fits the definition of public property, that’s it—“Dedicated to the present and future citizens of San Diego,” reads a plaque hung at the entrance to the concourse in 1965.
Several weeks ago, signs went up around Golden Hall, the 20,000-square-foot building that sits at the west side of the concourse. Golden Hall is rented out for, among other things, church services and music performances. It’s where people gather to watch the vote counts come in on election nights and where the city holds large employee meetings.
The signs cite a portion of the municipal code that pertains to private businesses that are open to the public and makes it illegal to loiter if the business owner doesn’t want you there. It also cites the state’s illegal-lodging law, the one that the lawsuit settlement overrides between the designated hours.
It’s pretty obvious to whom the signs pertain. So, since when did the concourse become private property? And what about the illegal-lodging ticket settlement?
Gary Jones, asset manager with the city’s Real Estate Assets Department, which oversees all city-owned land, explained that his department was looking for advice from the police and the City Attorney’s office on how to deal with complaints they’d received from organizations renting out Golden Hall. A spokesperson for the mayor, who directed us to Jones, said complaints included cheerleaders being harassed during a competition at Golden Hall and people smoking pot in the concourse.
“Though it’s a city-owned building, we book that facility for private users, so for certain periods of time, the use of the building is under contract with a particular user,” Jones said. He said Real Estate Assets consulted with a city attorney on the sign’s wording.
Apparently, no one consulted Chris Morris, head of the City Attorney’s Criminal Division—which would prosecute any violations of the sign’s terms, or the city attorney, Mike Aguirre. Morris wasn’t aware of the signs until CityBeat pointed them out; after checking with his deputies, he said no one had been cited for illegal lodging in the concourse since the signs went in. That conversation was followed by a call from Aguirre, who said simply, “The concourse isn’t private property.”
Sometime between Wednesday afternoon, when we last took a look at the signs, and Monday evening, someone covered over the word “private” in neatly cut rectangles of tape.
Jones said it was his understanding that people could still sleep in the concourse between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. if they didn’t cause problems—the guards who patrol the area under city contract with Wackenhut, a private security firm, were briefed on that, he said.
At 8 p.m. this past Monday night, the concourse was empty. But just outside that area, along Third Avenue and down B Street, it was a different story. One hour before the start of the settlement timeframe, more than a dozen folks were rolling out their sleeping bags. It’s an ideal spot because Third Avenue and C Street is where the only public restrooms in all of downtown are located.
Bea (she declined to give her last name) and an elderly man who declined to give his name altogether—we’ll call him “Max”—sat waiting on a bench just outside the concourse. Max said he doesn’t bed down until 9 p.m. “I’m a law-abiding citizen,” he said. When asked whether anyone sleeps in the concourse, Bea said she used to, but starting in December or January—she can’t remember exactly when—anyone sleeping there was asked to leave.
“It used to be a safe place to sleep,” she said, but now you don’t see no one in there because they know they’ll get thrown out.”
Both said the ouster was explained to them to be complaint driven.
“You’ve got 2 percent of the people who don’t follow the rules,” Max said.
Contacted the next morning, Aguirre said he didn’t know who’d taped over the word
“private.”
“But we have determined that the concourse is not private property,” he reiterated. He was about to draft a brochure, he said, a “good neighbor” pamphlet that, he felt, would be more effective than the signs and would be distributed to San Diego’s homeless population—guidelines to follow so as not to incur “the wrath” of people who might complain.
Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
