San Diego city leaders are offering tough when it comes to the homeless and encampments, proposing an ordinance that would ban camping on any public property, including sidewalks and city parks.
Homeless encampments have been growing in various neighborhoods across San Diego in recent years. During the pandemic, the city did not enforce many of the existing ordinances that dealt with things like illegal lodging because of public-health guidance.
Officials maintain that homeless encampments are unsafe for the people living in them, as well as the neighbors and business owners nearby. The catch is, for the new ordinance to be enforceable, the city has to provide shelter space for the homeless, and that, the mayor said on Thursday, is in the works.
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"I want to be clear: Once we have these resources in place, the answer from our homeless population can no longer be no," San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said on Thursday at a news conference. "They cannot say no to leaving the sidewalk or no, they prefer to being on the street. or no to services and help when we ask you to come off the street and we have a place for you to go. No is not an acceptable answer."
Another important thing to note with this proposed ordinance is that, regardless of whether there is shelter capacity, encampments will not be allowed at any time within a two-block radius of homeless shelters, schools or public parks.
Councilmember Stephen Whitburn proposed another ordinance that could help the city enforce the ordinance that prohibits encampments, this one establishing safe-sleeping parking lots, which would be similar to the safe lots where people can sleep in their cars, only it would allow people to bring their tents to a parking lot to set up and stay overnight.
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On Thursday, the city also announced that, beginning April 1, it will begin enforcing the city’s ordinance that prohibits people from sleeping in their cars unless they're in a safe parking lot
One place the city is considering for the safe-sleeping project is the Inspiration Point parking lot in Balboa Park off Park Boulevard. According to Whitburn, there is enough room for as many as 1,000 people to stay in the lot, which is half the number of homeless people who are on the streets in the city according to city figures.
