An effort to expand the mayor of San Diego's ability to declare an emergency regarding housing and homelessness was supposed to come before the city council Monday, but it was sent back to city staff, with Council President Sean Elo-Rivera saying in a statement, "In recent weeks, we have worked with urgency to bring the changes to the municipal code to help our city address our homelessness crisis."
Elo-Rivera said they are delaying discussing and voting on the item in order to give city employees an opportunity to "fully understand any potential impacts this amendment to the municipal code may have on them."
This proposal to change the city's municipal code comes as the city is slated to lose hundreds of shelter beds as multiple sites prepare to shutter in the coming months. The current municipal code allows emergency declarations for natural disasters and health emergencies but not for homelessness. The proposal from the council president's office would allow the mayor to circumvent competitive bidding processes and bypass city council approval on some contract negotiations with nonprofits.
“To hear the council president make a comment that they wanted the staff to be fully up to speed on these proposals tells me this was rushed,” former Assemblymember Lori Saldaña said.
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Saldaña is also concerned about addressing the homelessness and housing crises as though they are synonymous.
“San Diego has received hundreds of millions of dollars to address homelessness," Saldaña said. "One of the big problems is they're having housing agencies try to address homelessness."
Denise Thomas is living with her husband in a tent, pitched Monday just blocks from city hall. She emphatically believes homelessness in San Diego is an emergency.
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“It's a reality check for a lot of people," Thomas said. "[If they] knew how many people are actually out here homeless, they would not even think those numbers are possible."
Each of those numbers, Thomas said, is a person with a story. She said the city can do a better job reaching out to each individual experiencing homelessness.
“We're all equal on this earth," Thomas said. "This city needs to do more outreach on the streets."
Mayor Todd Gloria's office declined to comment on the proposed municipal code changes, noting it was Elo-Rivera's proposal, not the mayor's. A spokesperson did say that, even if the changes do come to pass, they would not apply to the lease at Kettner and Vine, where the city has proposed building a 1,000-bed shelter.
The council president's office said the city currently meets the parameters that would allow the mayor to declare an emergency under the proposed changes.
Gloria's 2024 opponent, Larry Turner, however, rejects giving the mayor any additional power, even if were to win that office in November
"We really need to change the system so that we've got a city council that has the same amount of power as a mayor so that they can really get some work done,” Turner said.
Thomas, meanwhile, just wants to know politicians are listening.
"There's not enough outreach, not enough outreach to the streets, that a lot of people think of us as bums, that we're just dirty, we're not worth it," Thomas said, "and that is not the truth. Not the truth at all."
