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Mayor Gloria: Homeless camp cleanups will be more compassionate

In a 2016 photo, a police car trails a homeless man during a clean-up alongside 17th Street.
In this photo from 2016, a police car trails a homeless man during a cleanup alongside 17th Street in downtown San Diego.
(Peggy Peattie
)

People no longer will be roused from tents at night by crews cleaning sidewalks

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Ssn Diego Mayor Todd Gloria on Monday announced what he called a more compassionate approach to cleaning downtown San Diego’s streetside homeless encampments and said the new effort also will connect more people with services.

“We’ve learned enough that we can do this in a way that’s more respectful of those who are unsheltered, more safe for our city employees and ultimately more effective in our overall objective of reducing street homelessness,” Gloria said.

The city has cleaned sidewalks where homeless people sleep for years, and Gloria said the practice will continue and is especially important in light of the hepatitis A outbreak that killed 20 people and sickened nearly 600 over two years. Many of the victims were homeless.

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“I think many people well remember 2017 and the hepatitis A outbreak, and they’re not interested in reliving that,” he said. “The city isn’t either, and so there’s a reason to continue these efforts. But we can do it in a more humane way.”

Gloria said the new policy scales back the role of police in cleanups and creates a set schedule for the events, with none occurring during bad weather or at night.

Homeless advocate Michael McConnell, who has been critical of many city actions regarding homeless people and often posts videos of cleanups on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, said he was encouraged by the new policies.

“It’s definitely the most thoughtful and meaningful thing out of the mayor’s office in a long time,” he said. “When I first read through it, I thought somebody put some thought into this. While I’m not sure if it goes far enough, I’m hopeful that it will help.”

McConnell often was critical of former Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s approach to addressing homelessness, which included citing people who set up makeshift shelters with illegal lodging or encroachment violations, and he said he was encouraged by the direction Gloria was taking.

Gloria had said during his campaign that the city should end the criminalization of homelessness. As part of the new policy on abatements, the city’s term for cleanups, police will not cite homeless people for illegal lodging or encroachment violations when crews are cleaning sidewalks.

The announcement of the policy revisions comes two weeks after a crash near San Diego City College killed three homeless people and seriously injured several others. Gloria said the changes to the city’s abatement policy are unrelated and had been in the works for weeks.

“What I’m trying to do is resist this temptation I think you’ve seen from the previous administration to simply get distracted by a headline or a shiny object,” he said, adding that he is focused on consistent and thoughtful work to help homeless people.

While abatements happen throughout the city, the new policy will have the biggest impact in the East Village area where many homeless people often set up temporary shelters and sleep on sidewalks.

The most recent count of homeless people in that area was conducted earlier this month by the Downtown San Diego Partnership. The count found 721 people without shelter, including 439 in East Village, and 127 tents.

On cleanup days, homeless people who are in tents and other makeshift shelters often are one step ahead of crews from the city’s environmental services department who clear sidewalks of trash. Crews will throw away items left behind as people leave the site, but will store anything they find that is considered valuable.

Gloria said the practice has been seen as punitive by some people, and the changes are intended to take a more humane approach while still keeping city sidewalks clean.

Some of the changes already are in place, such as a new policy to not do cleanups during inclement weather when people are trying to stay warm and dry.

“That was a no-brainer,” Gloria said.

In another change that Gloria said was an easy call to make, cleanups will no longer happen after sunset or before dawn, allowing homeless people to sleep undisturbed while also keeping cleanup crews from working in the dark.

Notices announcing the cleanups will no longer be posted on paper taped to poles, but rather on permanent signs that will give a regular, set schedule, similar to signs for street cleaning, he said.

A paper sign gives a three-hour notice of a sidewalk cleanup.
Three-hour notices about sidewalk cleanups, such as this one posted Monday near the Petco Park parking lot, will be replaced by permanent signs listing consistent times and days of cleanups.
(Courtesy Michael McConnell.)

“There is an impression that this is sort of haphazard, it’s done irregularly, and led to confusion and an increase in tension between the city and non-city entities, whether they’re unsheltered people or property owners,” Gloria said.

The permanent signs also will contain information about where people can reclaim their possessions if they are taken and stored during a cleanup, which Gloria said also will help clear up some confusion. Those items will be kept in a city storage facility in Logan Heights for people to reclaim, and Gloria said the items will be brought back to people who cannot make it to the facility.

For McConnell, one of the best improvements to the new policy will be a set schedule for cleanups, which he said had been erratic in the past. He said he has seen a cleanup happen on one street at night, and then occur on the same street the next day.

“That’s just harassment,” he said.

In reworking the abatement policies over the past several weeks, Gloria said city officials heard from homeless people who also said they saw the cleanups as punitive.

“We have to address that,” Gloria said.

In one subtle change designed to alter that perspective, Gloria said police officers will be more in the background during cleanup days and will not turn on their vehicles’ emergency lights.

Outreach workers will walk in the neighborhood before cleaning crews arrive to talk with homeless people about various services available to them, a practice already in place with the Police Department’s homeless outreach team.

In a new expanded effort, those HOT officers will be joined by non-law enforcement outreach workers from People Assisting the Homeless, Gloria said.

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