The San Diego City Council has again declared a crisis over a lack of available shelter for a growing homeless population, a largely symbolic move that nonetheless highlights the upcoming closure of multiple facilities which hold hundreds of beds.
Tuesday’s unanimous vote did not go as far as declaring homelessness an emergency, which leaders recently said they wanted to do, apparently because local laws would first have to be changed.
But council members pledged to keep exploring how to further loosen the rules for launching new shelters.
“I want to make sure that you don’t have any unnecessary hurdles,” Sean Elo-Rivera, City Council president, told the head of the city’s homelessness department. “I know that we’re not using every tool available.”
Declaring a shelter crisis allows officials to suspend some health and safety rules in order to more quickly create temporary housing. However, San Diego has declared a crisis at least three times in the last few years, most recently in February 2022, and those declarations don’t expire, according to a staff report.
The vote Tuesday was partially the result of an hours-long hearing a week ago about the most prominent, and the most controversial, idea to add more beds to San Diego’s overtaxed shelter system: Leasing an empty warehouse in the Middletown neighborhood by Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street.
While there’s broad agreement that the thousands of people sleeping on local streets need a place to go, many leaders balked over a multi-decade agreement that could eventually cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mayor Todd Gloria asked council members to share any changes they’d like to see in the lease. In the days since, it appears only three have so far.
Kent Lee’s memo said paying the above-market cost of $1.95 per square foot was too high, annual 3.5 percent rent increases needed to drop to 3 percent or lower and the lease’s length, 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, instead of relying on the landlord’s, and to consider making a cash offer for the property, among other suggestions.
A joint memo from Sean Elo-Rivera and Henry Foster III further asked staffers to share more documents with the Independent Budget Analyst and City Attorney — each agency had said it lacked access to some information about the proposal — and requested that estimates for how much the project would cost be revised once officials have a better sense of how many people might actually sleep inside.
While the structure can reportedly fit more than 1,000, leaders have recently acknowledged that a smaller population may be more likely.
The six other council members have either not formally requested changes or did not immediately share copies of what they’d written.
Jennifer Campbell is still weighing her options, according to a spokesperson. Stephen Whitburn didn’t write a list but “has been in communication with the mayor’s office, the city’s negotiator, and the landlord throughout this process pushing for the best deal possible,” legislative affairs director Bridget Naso said in a statement.
Raul Campillo chose not to create a memo since he’d “made a robust number of comments during the hearing and did not have anything additional to add,” Campillo’s chief of staff, Michael Simonsen, wrote in an email.
“We’re getting treated like the owner, but paying rent like a tenant,” Campillo said last week.
A mayoral spokesperson didn’t immediately confirm that only three council members had submitted lists.
San Diego should 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 eventually 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 homelessness strategies and solutions department, said they’d be able to unilaterally give more money to service organizations and quickly contract with companies offering key supplies, sidestepping the need for a drawn-out bidding process.
Staffers pointed to one ordinance from San Francisco, which allowed that city’s homelessness department to ignore rules about “competitive bidding and other requirements for construction work,” as a potential example to follow.
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