Homeless problem, wow has it gotten worse (Los Angeles, San Diego: hotel, homes)

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by moved

Wait until the new trolley line opens up, they'll all be moving to North County.

Oside is already packed with homeless.

[moved]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

Oside is already packed with homeless.

La Jolla isn't packed yet.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by moved

La Jolla isn't packed yet.

And never will be. I know this for fact as that was part of my beat. Anyone homeless on any drug got shipped straight to downtown and released downtown. Too much money in LJ. No one in SDPD wants to deal with homeless. Back in the day anyone who showed up late for work got "the van" and had to do homeless pickup. Get Pee'd on, spit on, had to shackle a bunch and it was just nasty. Some of these people had who knows what kind of diseases. The van would smell like ammonia from the drunks. I can smell that today like 20 years ago.

A good reason to be at work on time.

[joosoon]

Originally Posted by Suburban_Guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8atdeWR_mc

He's gonna "lift them up".... ok.
Also, new homeless czar just appointed the other day. We're all set to solve this problem for good.

[Frac]

There are also way more "van lifers" and other folks who live in cars/RVs. Take a drive around Mission Bay (especially at night) and see how many line the streets. Start at De Anza Cove Park and drive to Fiesta Island. There is zero enforcement. Also drive to the far side of the dirt lot at Torrey Pines Gliderport. There are a lot of them there too.

[Spartanacus]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

What is our Mayor going to do about this?

He is too busy trying to award businesses for mandating vax cards for their patrons. What a joke of a mayor and human being.

[moved]

Originally Posted by Frac

There are also way more "van lifers" and other folks who live in cars/RVs. Take a drive around Mission Bay (especially at night) and see how many line the streets. Start at De Anza Cove Park and drive to Fiesta Island. There is zero enforcement. Also drive to the far side of the dirt lot at Torrey Pines Gliderport. There are a lot of them there too.

This is true. There are people that live in their cars, but you would never know it, and they don't park in the same place every night, either.

[skeddy]

homeless figure ... nice weather, staying on prime real estate, plenty of social programs, food is not hard to find, I see trend of living on the streets increasing.

[510native]

Originally Posted by malcorub16

Comparably speaking downtown is looking much better than LA and SF because our city doesn't allow all day sidewalk camping like those cities do. Homeless have to pack up each morning and move along. Our homeless population is huge, we just do a better job of "hiding" it from our tourists.

I agree that downtown looks FAR better in terms of homelessness than either the Bay Area (where I live) or Los Angeles (where I have some family). I just spent last week in San Diego, staying at a large hotel downtown. We spent most of our time downtown, in Balboa Park, or at the beach. My husband and I kept marveling how how few homeless people we saw as well as that those we did see, without exception, did not appear to be hassling anybody or otherwise acting anti-social. I walked through the large park (sorry, the name of it escapes me now) behind the county administration building several times during our stay, and while I did see a few homeless people there, I never saw an encampment, never saw anyone shooting up, visibly drunk, etc.

I also marveled at how there was virtually zero litter in San Diego parks compared to parks where I live (let alone those in SF or LA). Oh, and no human feces. Sadly, there have even been homeless men defecating on residential streets in my own Bay Area neighborhood in the past year, and I live in a "nice" neighborhood.

To be clear, I don't doubt that the homeless problem in San Diego is as bad as residents say it is. I'm only saying that to a visitor from the SF Bay Area, it seemed--by comparison--almost non-existent. I don't live in San Francisco or Oakland, either, but in a very middle- to upper-middle-class suburb, and I honestly witness far worse behavior by homeless people here on a daily basis (screaming obscenities at people, threatening women and children, deliberately walking into or riding their bicycles into traffic, just to give few recent examples) than anything I saw in San Diego.

My husband and I concluded that the city authorities in SD must be very diligent at keeping bad behavior by homeless people under control in the areas favored by tourists, so I found this post very interesting since it confirms our conclusion. I wish the same could be said about the homeless issues in SF and many of its burbs. :-(

[malcorub16]

SD's homeless are more likely to set up camp in the canyons away from the busy streets of downtown....they are less likely to be bothered by law enforcement and can probably camp for weeks or months at a time before being pushed out. Homeless encampment fires seem to be a regular occurrence in the city.