The San Diego City Council has again declared a crisis over the lack of available shelters for a growing homeless population, a largely symbolic move that nonetheless highlights the upcoming closure of multiple facilities housing hundreds of beds.
Tuesday’s unanimous vote stopped short of declaring homelessness an emergency, which leaders recently said they wanted to do, apparently because local laws would have to be changed first.
But council members pledged to continue exploring how to further relax rules for opening new shelters.
“I want to make sure there are no unnecessary obstacles,” City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera told the head of the city’s homeless department. “I know we’re not using all the tools available.”
Declaring a shelter crisis allows officials to waive some health and safety rules to create temporary housing more quickly. However, San Diego has declared a crisis at least three times in recent years, most recently in February 2022, and those declarations do not expire, according to a staff report.
Tuesday’s vote was partly the result of a several-hour hearing a week ago on the most prominent and most controversial idea for adding more beds to San Diego’s overburdened shelter system: renting an empty warehouse in the Middletown neighborhood off Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street.
While there is broad agreement that the thousands of people sleeping on local streets need a place to go, many leaders opposed a deal that could eventually cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mayor Todd Gloria asked council members to share changes they would like to see in the lease. In the days since, it appears only three have done so so far. Kent Lee’s memo said paying the above-market rate of $1.95 per square foot was too high, that annual rent increases of 3.5 percent needed to come down to 3 percent or less and that the length of the lease, which is currently 30 years, was too long and too rigid. A better limit would be 20 years with the possibility of multiple five-year extensions, the council member wrote.
Lee also asked that the city conduct its own assessment of the building, rather than relying on the owner’s, and that it consider making a cash offer for the property, among other suggestions.
A joint memo from Sean Elo-Rivera and Henry Foster III also asked staffers to share more documents with the independent budget analyst and the city attorney (each agency had said it lacked access to some information about the proposal) and requested that estimates of how much the project would cost be revised once officials had a better idea of how many people could actually sleep inside.
While the structure is reported to be able to house more than 1,000 people, leaders have recently acknowledged that a smaller population is more likely.
The other six council members have not formally requested changes or immediately shared copies of what they had written.
Jennifer Campbell is still weighing her options, according to a spokesperson. Stephen Whitburn did not write a list, but “has been in communication with the mayor’s office, the city negotiator and the owner throughout this process pushing for the best possible deal,” legislative affairs director Bridget Naso said in a statement.
Raul Campillo decided not to create a memo because he “had made a large number of comments during the hearing and had nothing further to add,” Campillo’s chief of staff, Michael Simonsen, wrote in an email.
“They are treating us like landlords, but we pay rent like tenants,” Campillo said last week.
A mayoral spokesman did not immediately confirm that only three council members had submitted lists.
San Diego is expected to lose access to more than 700 beds by January. Some facilities are seeing permits expire while others are on land slated for new development.
If the council ultimately votes to define homelessness as an emergency, that could simultaneously allow officials to move even faster on shelters and reduce public oversight of certain decisions.
Sarah Jarman, director of the city’s homeless strategies and solutions department, said they could unilaterally give more money to service organizations and quickly contract with companies that provide key supplies, avoiding the need for a lengthy bidding process.
Staff members pointed to a San Francisco ordinance that allowed that city’s homeless department to ignore rules on “competitive bidding and other requirements for construction work” as a possible example to follow.
Original story in English
San Diego again declares a crisis over a lack of shelter. It’s still not clear where beds might be found.
