San Diego police sweeps homeless encampment one week before ban starts

San Diego is set to begin enforcing the controversial Unsafe Camping Ordinance at the end of July.

However on Monday, a week before the city was set to begin enforcement of the Unsafe Camping Ordinance, San Diego police were seen at an encampment at 17th and Commercial Streets in Downtown going from tent to tent asking people who had been living in an encampment there for weeks to move.

A city spokesperson said San Diego police address encampments daily and that this one posed a public safety hazard to pedestrians, vehicles and public transit. The spokesperson said teams had been working for weeks to create safe paths of travel for residents in the area there. 

The ordinance prohibits camping within a two-block radius of schools and homeless shelters, public parks, canyons and riverbeds — regardless of shelter bed capacity. It would also ban camping on sidewalks across the city if there is enough shelter capacity for police to move people from encampments to an alternative location.

Opening safe sleeping parking lots

In order to increase shelter capacity, the city has opened a safe sleeping parking lot at 20th and B Street in San Diego's Golden Hill neighborhood that has the capacity to shelter approximately 150 people in tents overnight.

The city also has plans to open an additional safe sleeping parking lot at the "O Lot" near the Naval Medical Center at Balboa. That parking lot, which is set to open in the fall, has the capacity to shelter 400 people. 

Closing the Golden Hall shelter and relocating its homeless residents

While the city has taken steps to increase shelter capacity, there are also temporary homeless shelters — like Golden Hall — that are scheduled to close sometime this year. The city has found another location for youth who were staying at Golden Hall to be relocated, and last week the San Diego Housing Commission announced that as many as 40 families who had been staying at Golden Hall would be relocated to a Travelodge hotel. A city spokesperson said they are still looking for a location to relocate single adults who had been staying at Golden Hall. 

The case for and against the ordinance

Michael McConnell, a homeless advocate, who was at the encampment Monday morning while police were doing the sweep, said enforcement isn't effective at addressing the root causes of homelessness. 

"These folks, they're just not going to disappear, they're just going to move to another block in front of somebody else's home or business. Meanwhile, we’re spending a great deal of public safety resources dealing with this instead of actually dealing with other real crimes," McConnell said. 

Proponents of the ordinance say it's necessary for the safety of the people who live in the encampments who are at risk of contracting illnesses and being hit by vehicles, and for residents and business owners who live and work around the encampments and often have to walk past drug activity and obstacles in the roadways and sidewalks to get to their jobs or homes. Critics of the ordinance said it criminalizes homelessness and is not a compassionate way of dealing with a vulnerable population.