Hundreds of homeless people will be allowed to stay overnight in the city's iconic Balboa Park as soon as July, city officials said on Monday.
The so-called "safe sleeping sites" will be located at the city's operations yard, which is at 20th Street and Avenue B and is expected to open in July; and in a parking area south of the Naval Hospital called Lot O, expected to open in September or October.
San Diego's Homelessness Crisis
People opting to stay at the sites, which will be monitored by security, will be able to use on-site restrooms and will be fed and offered connections to other services as well.
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As attractive as those amenities might be, they could still be a tough sell to the unhoused population, especially Lot O, which appears to be a walk of nearly three-quarters of a mile just to Russ Boulevard, the southeastern corner of the San Diego High campus. In addition, its difficult to know in the relatively mild climate of May how the summer heat will feel coming off the surface of a parking lot.
The city floated a proposal earlier this year for as many as a thousand homeless people to stay at a safe sleeping site in the Inspiration Point parking lot adjoining the naval hospital's western side. That plan, however, met stiff resistance from the leaders of the park's institutions and was given up on.
The city says moving forward, homeless people must either sleep in a shelter or one of the safe sleeping sites, and can no longer live in encampments on sidewalks, in parks, canyons, riverbeds or elsewhere.
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, an ordinance the city is currently weighing that would ban camping may not be enforceable.
Those against an encampment ordinance argue there are not enough shelters to house the nearly 2,000 homeless in San Diego, and that charging them with a crime for sleeping on the street is not a solution to the problem.
“It is simply unacceptable to pitch a tent on a sidewalk when another, far safer option is available,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said earlier this year.
After the Land Use and Housing Committee's decision to pass the encampment ordinance to the full council for a vote, Gloria pledged new safe sleeping spaces.
“If we adopt safe camping along with safe sleeping, I think we are in a position to provide more options for people sleeping on the streets,” Gloria said.
"I want to be clear: Once we have these resources in place, the answer from our homeless population can no longer be 'no,' " Gloria said in March. "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 the 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.
The mayor expects to have an enforceable ordinance by mid-summer and safe sleeping arrangements available along that same timeline.
