Annual homeless tally considers people at safe sleeping camps and parking lots to be “unsheltered.” The San Diego mayor doesn’t think that’s right.
San Diego’s Safe Sleeping site during a recent visit by Mayor Todd Gloria and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan on Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in San Diego, CA. Homelessness in San Diego continues to rise. Most troubling is the increase in “unsheltered” homeless people — those living outside and not in one of the region’s authorized shelters.
“Simply put, unsheltered individuals on our streets and those residing in our sanctioned Safe Parking and Safe Sleeping facilities are not one in the same and should not be classified as such,” the mayor said in the letter dated Aug. 1. The math is a bit tricky here because to get an apples-to-apples comparison, the mayor’s office said it had to subtract more than 250 safe parkers from the 2023 count.
The federal government doesn’t consider legal camping in tents to be “shelter” but, perhaps somewhat ironically, allows the big tent shelters to count. Gloria considers both, and other shelter options, as part of a temporary solution, not a permanent one. “That’s exactly what we do at Golden Hall, what we do down on Imperial Avenue in our sprung tents and various places in the city. It’s the same thing. The environment is different but the outcomes are very similar.”
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