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Pablo

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The proposed $6.4 billion ballot measure to expand the San Diego Convention Center includes money for homelessness and street repairs. But a new analysis finds even more could benefit those two programs.

The convention center funding is projected at $3.8 billion, but $1.4 billion is counted as excess after accounting for construction, maintenance, operations and promotion.

The excess could add to the $2 billion designated for homeless services and housing and $604 million for street repairs.

The convention center xpansion, while currently planned on the bayside, could be built on the Harbor Drive side under a backup plan.

The economic analysis of the measure is contingent on more hotel rooms and a higher hotel rates, which could increase from $178 today to $545 by 2061.

Here's the full story:
A proposed hotel room tax increase, headed for the November ballot, could generate nearly $1.4 billion in extra homelessness and street repair programs, even after spending billions on those efforts and a new convention center expansion.

That was one of the conclusions in an analysis of the $6.4 billion measure presented Tuesday by Warren "Skip" Hull, vice president of CIC Research, on behalf of the backers of a ballot initiative.

The measure would generate $2.4 billion for a convention center expansion, as well as maintenance and operations; $2 billion for homelessness; and $604 million for road repairs. Based on Hull's calculations, there would be an additional $1.4 billion that, while dedicated to the convention center, could also be used for homeless needs and streets.

He analyzed the revenues and expenditures proposed in the measure being sponsored by a coalition of hotel, homeless and labor interests.

"The projections are well within the scale in terms of where we've been," Hull said at a briefing held at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce offices.

Under the measure, which supporters still must qualify for the ballot, the present hotel room tax and tourism marketing surcharge would rise, starting next Jan. 1, from the present 12.5 percent to 15.75 percent for downtown hotels, 14.75 percent for Mission Valley- and Mission Bay-area hotels and 13.75 percent for hotels in the northern and southern peripheries of the city.

The measure's backers expect to begin collecting on Feb. 1 as many as 112,000 signatures to qualify the initiative for the Nov. 6 ballot.

The group hopes to secure two-thirds majority approval of San Diego city voters, the normal minimum required to raise taxes. A recent court decision suggests only a simple majority may be needed but some suggest that the ruling is still open to interpretation.

"It feels like something that has taken into account the entire ecosystem and created this cycle of benefit allows us to be responsible, proactive and forward thinking," said Carol Kim, political director of the Building Trades Council.

The measure calls for enlarging the existing convention center with an $850 million bond.That figure is about $200 million more than previously projected estimates to take into account unexpected costs and interest rates.

The approved plan would locate the expansion on the bay side of the building, but that location is the same site where a rival hotel project, Fifth Avenue Landing, is proposed.

The California Coastal Commission has already approved the bayside expansion, long the first choice of initiative backers, but the measure allows for an alternative location as long as it is contiguous and connected to the existing building, which first opened in 1989.

Gil Cabrera, chairman of the Convention Center Corp. board, said one solution would be to expand on the Harbor Drive side of the building to add 180,000 square feet of exhibit hall space to Hall H at the south end. That's 40,000 square feet less than desired but more ballroom and meeting space still could be added.

The advantage would be a shorter construction time but the disadvantage would be returning to the coastal agency for the design change. The cost would be about the same, he said.

The ballot measure does not define "physically connected," a phrase that follows a requirement that convention center improvements be "contiguous."

"It needs to be touching and connected," said Mike McDowell president and CEO of the San Diego Lodging Industry Association, who participated in the briefing.

The homelessness programs, including housing as well as services, would be accelerated in the first five years of the new tax to generate $147.1 million in cash for possible use in underwriting various bonds.

"The additional revenue would not be there if it were not for this measure," said Murtaza Baxamusa, planning and development director for the Building Trades Council's Family Housing Corporation. He also participated in the briefing.

The street repairs funding would start flowing in 2025 at $7.6 million and rising annually. The money, too, could underwrite bond payments.

The projected $1.369 billion in excess funds do not accumulate significantly until the last 10 years of the taxing program, when they would generate $1.1 billion between 2050 and 2061.

The initiative provides that the excess can only be spent on homelessness and street repair programs, once convention expenses are covered, and subject to annual council budget decisions.

The proponents, operating under the "Yes! For a Better San Diego" campaign banner, acknowledged that projecting revenues and expenditures over 42 years is subject to unexpected events.

But Hull said his estimates took into account two major incidents that dampened tourism and convention center business - the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and the 2008-'09 recession - and still saw a 4.1 percent annual growth rate.

"We cannot rule out that significant local disasters, global events and/or severe economic recessions may occur during the long-term financial forecast period that is presented in this analysis," Hull said.

He projects a 54 percent increase in city hotel rooms from the present 44,000 rooms to 68,000 rooms by 2061. And nightly room rates could grow from today's $178 to $545 over that same period, unadjusted for inflation. But that's not so surprising, he said, since the average room rate was $50 in 1977 when he began economic forecasting.

The figures do not include growth in Airbnb and other short-term rental transient occupancy tax revenue, which Hull estimated at $600 million from that source between 2019 and 2061.
roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley

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New hotel tax could generate $1.4B even more for homeless, street repair spending

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The proposed $6.4 billion ballot measure to expand the San Diego Convention Center includes money for homelessness and street repairs. But a new analysis finds even more could benefit those two programs. The convention center funding is projected at $3.8 billion, but $1.4 billion is counted as excess after accounting for construction, maintenance, operations and promotion.

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Pablo

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The San Diego Housing Commission on Tuesday announced it would award $50 million in competitive grants to affordable housing projects in the city over the next few years.

Tuesday's announcement was made in a press conference with Mayor Kevin Faulconer in front of a forthcoming downtown apartment building that will house individuals recovering from homelessness. The funding availability is fairly routine and was not unexpected.

Housing Commission President and CEO Rick Gentry acknowledged the amount was far short of San Diego's affordable housing needs.

"We think that we could probably double or triple this easily without saturating the marketplace if you will," he said. "But this is what we have to deal with right now and what we're making fully available."

The shortage of funding for low-income housing in San Diego and across California is well known among policymakers. Earlier this year the nonprofit San Diego Housing Federation had proposed a $900 million bond measure for the November ballot that would have gone to affordable housing projects. The measure faced several delays and competition for attention from another proposal to fund homeless programs and an expansion of the Convention Center.

The Convention Center measure ultimately failed to make it on the 2018 ballot, but that news came after the Housing Federation agreed to withdraw its measure to focus on the 2020 ballot. The group's executive director, Stephen Russell, said while $50 million was not a small amount of money, it was out of scale to the problem.

"We were proposing we'd need three times that for six years in a row to begin to make significant inroads into homelessness and affordable housing," he said. "We don't dismiss anything - this $50 million will be put to great use. ... But in terms of order of magnitude, we need to do much more."

Of the $50 million announced, $20 million would be reserved for permanent supportive housing for the homeless. Another $20 million would go to construction of new affordable apartments for low-income renters, and $10 million would go toward the rehabilitation and preservation of currently affordable homes that may otherwise be at risk of converting to market rate rents.

Russell said based on past awards of funding, the $20 million earmarked for permanent supportive housing would help fund roughly 200 new homes for formerly homeless individuals. The grants are to be awarded over the next two years.

The Downtown San Diego Partnership, which represents downtown businesses, conducts monthly counts of homelessness from the East Village to the Marina. Its August 2018 count found 964 people sleeping on the streets downtown.

The $50 million is earmarked for affordable housing and permanent homes for formerly homeless individuals. Observers say it is far short of what is needed to make serious progress toward housing San Diego's unsheltered population.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

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San Diego To Distribute $50 Million To Affordable Housing Projects

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The San Diego Housing Commission on Tuesday announced it would award $50 million in competitive grants to affordable housing projects in the city over the next few years. Tuesday's announcement was made in a press conference with Mayor Kevin Faulconer in front of a forthcoming downtown apartment building that will house individuals recovering from homelessness.

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Homeless advocate explains his opposition to Convention Center Expansion

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Homeless advocate explains his opposition to Convention Center Expansion

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Neglects to protect funding for San Diego's needs
Savannah p

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SAN DIEGO (KUSI) - It's a major upset for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and a coalition of business leaders. The issue of raising hotel taxes to expand the convention center will not be on the November ballot.

Homeless advocate Michael McConnell wants the city to prioritize funding to ease the homeless crisis and he was here to talk more about it. McConnel was against the "Yes! For a Better San Diego" bill being on the November ballot. He believes it didn't represent San Diego's real needs. His full interview can be seen above.

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Homeless advocate explains his opposition to Convention Center Expansion -

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SAN DIEGO (KUSI) - It's a major upset for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and a coalition of business leaders. The issue of raising hotel taxes to expand the convention center will not be on the November ballot. Homeless advocate Michael McConnell wants the city to prioritize funding to ease the homeless crisis and he was here to talk more...

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The Waterfront Convention Center Expansion Has Never Been This Hopeless

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The Waterfront Convention Center Expansion Has Never Been This Hopeless

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The movement to expand San Diego's Convention Center at its current site on the waterfront has never had a worse season.

Its most prominent backers are falling off, one by one. The city of San Diego no longer even controls the land it would need. (The people who do control it are rapidly advancing a plan to build a hotel on it.)

In court, the plan faces a passionate foe, who not long ago helped kill off a financing plan for the project that took years to put together. Were it to survive all this, it would need the support of two-thirds of voters. Yet two initiatives on the ballot right now would erase that hope.

The mayor is now openly promoting one of them.

Perhaps least helpful, the project's newfound critics are starting to talk about something rarely discussed before: how expensive and disruptive construction of the expansion would be.

The idea to expand the Convention Center at its current location is as dead as the idea to move the airport to Miramar.

Or is it?

Remaining backers are deeply committed. They think they can get the land back - maybe just have the government seize the lease. They think the legal challenge will fizzle, as will the competing initiatives. And the mayor, well, they will note the mayor says he doesn't really think the competing plan he supports will pass.

And getting two-thirds of voters to support? Were it to reach the ballot, it will mean something of a public affairs miracle has taken place, so they'll cross that bridge happily when it comes.

Last week, Tourism Authority CEO Joe Terzi told a crowd watching a debate about the stadium plan, Measure C, that one of his main reasons for opposing that measure was it would eliminate any chance to expand the Convention Center on the waterfront.

After all, the convadium would require a major increase in hotel-room taxes. If it succeeded, there would be little room to increase hotel taxes to expand the Convention Center. Thus, it must be stopped.

I asked Terzi how, given all that it faces, he remained so optimistic the old plan could someday be implemented.

"I'm an optimistic person," he said, before rattling off the other places that are expanding their convention centers.

He has very little to be optimistic about, however.

Start with the land. It's Port land - public land. But the Port leases out this land and the current lease is held by a company called Fifth Avenue Landing. The city basically purchased Fifth Avenue Landing's lease and was paying it off only to stop paying and give it back as expansion plans fizzled.

Now, the Port has given Fifth Avenue Landing approval to seek permits for a large hotel right on the plot of land Convention Center and city officials hope to use to build the expansion.

"We are now developing an outstanding hotel and marina on the property. We're excited about this project and 100 percent committed to seeing it through," Ray Carpenter, a partner with Fifth Avenue Landing, said in a written statement.

The hotel would be up to 850 rooms and include public plazas and a promenade with retail. It would also kill any remaining chance of expansion.

I asked Bob Nelson, a member of the Port Commission, which acts as a landlord for its valuable waterfront land, whether it was realistic to think a hotel might arise there and kill off the convention center's push.

"Oh definitely. They brought in an excellent, highly regarded hotel developer," Nelson said, though he cautioned that the Port's stamp of approval was just a first step. "It does not remotely suggest we will approve the project."

If their leaders wanted to make way for an expansion of the convention center, the Port and city would likely have to seize the lease through eminent domain or otherwise persuade Carpenter to sell after years of hardball negotiations.

Nelson said eminent domain is possible.

"The question would be 'Can a local governmental jurisdiction acquire a leasehold interest for a public use?' I think the lawyers would say yes to that," he said.

That's a thorny path to pursue. Yet it might be the easiest of the challenges to resolve to expand the Convention Center at its current site.

A harder challenge is that political will for the project is dissolving. Take Rep. Scott Peters. Go ahead, try to find someone who was a greater champion of an expansion than Peters, who served on the City Council and Port Commission. He is now a congressman.

Peters recently blasted the concept. The legal case that had thrown out an earlier financing plan had left the idea positively anachronistic, he wrote:

Now there is significant political opposition to ceding more waterfront to development. The $575 million contiguous expansion cost estimate was derived without engineering drawings, is wildly out of date and depends on a $200 million guarantee from the city's general fund. There has been no accounting for the lost profits the convention center would incur from closing over 200,000 square feet for two years during phased construction or for the increased costs of operating a larger facility; that means that our current annual subsidy of $3.4 million from the city's general fund will have to increase! (By the way, is it fair that the general fund pays this subsidy instead of the hotels that profit from the public's investment in the convention center, when those hotels are assessed some of the lowest tourist taxes in the nation?)

It was jaw-dropping to see an advocate become such an eloquent foe.

Yes, there's more.

Attorney Cory Briggs just filed his opening brief in a legal case to cut off the plan were it to somehow regain traction.

"More specifically, this lawsuit represents an attempt to uphold promises made at nearly every level of government and by the private sector going back to 1996, promises that no more of the South Embarcadero would be "walled off" to sate the appetite of a few greedy, politically connected special interests for prime waterfront real estate - the public's real estate - to the exclusion of everyone else," reads the brief's introduction.

Were it to survive this attack and keep what's left of its political supporters, the movement to build the Convention Center expansion would also need to advance it to the ballot and then get two-thirds support, most likely in 2018.

That's very difficult to picture. For one thing, even if the Chargers' Measure C fails, the team may still fight for hotel-room taxes to support whatever solution they propose next. After all, the mayor is now on the record as supporting that financing mechanism.

The other ballot measure on this topic, Measure D, crafted in part by Briggs, would prohibit the city from spending money on the Convention Center expansion.

If the mayor was unwilling to fight for the waterfront expansion this year, what makes it more likely in two years? The mayor also believes the Chargers won't leave no matter what happens to Measures C or D. If he's right, there's a good chance the football team will stay as a major opponent to the Convention Center expansion.

One guy is keeping this alive.

It's Steve Cushman, the onetime chairman of the Port Commission, who is on the Convention Center Corp.'s board of directors and has been the mayor's point man on this issue for a few years.

He wrote me just one sentence when I asked why he kept pushing to expand the Convention Center where it stood in spite of all the obstacles: "After two in-depth studies of our clients we continue to do our best to carry out their overwhelming desires for a contiguous expansion of our convention center."

Cushman once told me that making deals is what drives him.

For now, it's hard to picture how he pulls this one off.
Clarification: To quickly summarize the city's effort to control the land for a possible expansion of the Convention Center, I originally wrote that the city "basically subleased" it from Fifth Avenue Landing. It would have been more accurate to say the city purchased the lease and was forced to give it back after failing to make agreed payments and I changed the text.

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Convention Center's No Good, Very Bad Year for Expansion Hopes

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The movement to expand San Diego's Convention Center at its current site on the waterfront has never had a worse season. Its most prominent backers are falling off, one by one. The city of San Diego no longer even controls the land it would need.

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maliyah

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Supporters of a proposed $900 million housing bond in San Diego announced Tuesday that the measure won't be on the November ballot because they have decided to postpone their effort to 2020.

The measure was designed to help San Diego secure a greater share of state money devoted to homelessness and affordable housing by providing local matching funds typically required for such assistance.

But supporters of a separate November ballot measure to expand the convention center viewed the housing bond as competition because the convention center measure would also provide money to address homelessness. They expressed concern this summer that two tax increase measures related to housing and homelessness on the same ballot could prompt San Diego voters to reject both.

The San Diego Housing Federation, a nonprofit spearheading the housing bond, described the move as a tactical retreat in a news release on Tuesday.

"While we were polling strongly, going to 2020 is a strategic move that will enable us to support several statewide measures for affordable housing immediately while ensuring the success of our initiative in two years," said Stephen Russell, the federation's executive director. "We plan to build a strong, broad coalition of support over the next two years, as well as conduct significant campaign funding for a local affordable housing initiative in 2020."

The City Attorney's Office recently wrote language for the housing bond measure, which was scheduled to potentially be placed on the ballot by the City Council during the council's July 31 meeting.

Russell said his organization will campaign locally in favor of state Propositions 1 and 2, which are both on the November ballot. They would jointly raise approximately $6 billion for housing, home loans for veterans and housing to prevent homelessness.

The housing bond would have raised taxes on city of San Diego property owners an average of $72 per year to pay for 7,500 subsidized apartments for the chronically homeless, veterans, senior citizens, the disabled and low-income families.

A telephone poll of 600 likely voters conducted last November by supporters of the bond showed 73 percent support - more than the two-thirds required for approval.

The convention center measure would increase hotel taxes to pay for a long-awaited expansion of that facility, to repair roads and to boost funding for homelessness solutions.
david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick

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San Diego housing bond delayed until 2020 election

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Supporters of a proposed $900 million housing bond in San Diego announced Tuesday that the measure won't be on the November ballot because they have decided to postpone their effort to 2020. The measure was designed to help San Diego secure a greater share of state money devoted to homelessness and affordable housing by providing local matching funds typically required for such assistance.

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$147 million for homelessness programs in first five years (2019 - 2023)

$2 billion dedicated to homelessness over the life of the measure

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the tax increase would generate $2.02 bill for homelessness services

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Credit: Matt Hoffman/KPBS

A proposed ballot initiative to increase hotel tax revenue would generate $3.78 billion to expand and update the downtown convention center, $2.02 billion for homelessness services and $604 million for street repairs over four decades, according to projections released Tuesday by supporters.

The Yes! For a Better San Diego campaign released the data, which comes from a report completed by CIC Research.

Supporters hope to get the measure on the November ballot that, if approved by voters, would increase the visitor tax on hotel bills by 1.25 percent to 3.25 percent. Hotels closest to the convention center would see the largest hike.

During the first years of the tax increase, which would last 42 years, 59 percent of revenues would go toward the convention center and 41 percent to homelessness programs. Between 2025 and 2061, 59 percent would go toward the center, 31 percent to homelessness programs and 10 percent to city street repairs.
RELATED: Citizens Initiative Organizers To Offer In-Depth Look At Convention Center Expansion Plan
Supporters include hospitality industry leaders, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Father Joe Carroll of Father Joe's Villages, Bob McElroy of the Alpha Project and the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council.

They say the measure would offer long-term solutions to some of the city's most vexing problems.

"This is a really unprecedented coalition of individuals and groups coming together around creating a funding mechanism that addresses issues of incredible significance and is designed to both improve quality of life and continue to grow economic prosperity," said Robert Gleason, president and chief executive of Evans Hotels, which owns The Lodge at Torrey Pines and other local hotels. "They deserve to be addressed in a comprehensive and lasting way."

The campaign says the upgrades to - and expansion of - the convention center would generate $40 billion in economic activity over the life of the measure and create about 7,000 jobs.

The campaign expects to begin gathering signatures on Feb. 1 for the question to appear on the ballot.

The City Council is considering another ballot question proposed by Councilman David Alvarez that would earmark existing hotel tax revenue exclusively for homelessness prevention and housing programs.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

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Supporters Of Initiative To Increase Hotel Tax Revenue Say It Would Generate $2B For Homelessness

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A proposed ballot initiative to increase hotel tax revenue would generate $3.78 billion to expand and update the downtown convention center, $2.02 billion for homelessness services and $604 million for street repairs over four decades, according to projections released Tuesday by supporters.

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backgound info
maliyah prince

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Supporters of a proposed $900 million housing bond in San Diego announced Tuesday that the measure won't be on the November ballot because they have decided to postpone their effort to 2020.

The measure was designed to help San Diego secure a greater share of state money devoted to homelessness and affordable housing by providing local matching funds typically required for such assistance.

But supporters of a separate November ballot measure to expand the convention center viewed the housing bond as competition because the convention center measure would also provide money to address homelessness. They expressed concern this summer that two tax increase measures related to housing and homelessness on the same ballot could prompt San Diego voters to reject both.

The San Diego Housing Federation, a nonprofit spearheading the housing bond, described the move as a tactical retreat in a news release on Tuesday.

"While we were polling strongly, going to 2020 is a strategic move that will enable us to support several statewide measures for affordable housing immediately while ensuring the success of our initiative in two years," said Stephen Russell, the federation's executive director. "We plan to build a strong, broad coalition of support over the next two years, as well as conduct significant campaign funding for a local affordable housing initiative in 2020."

The City Attorney's Office recently wrote language for the housing bond measure, which was scheduled to potentially be placed on the ballot by the City Council during the council's July 31 meeting.

Russell said his organization will campaign locally in favor of state Propositions 1 and 2, which are both on the November ballot. They would jointly raise approximately $6 billion for housing, home loans for veterans and housing to prevent homelessness.

The housing bond would have raised taxes on city of San Diego property owners an average of $72 per year to pay for 7,500 subsidized apartments for the chronically homeless, veterans, senior citizens, the disabled and low-income families.

A telephone poll of 600 likely voters conducted last November by supporters of the bond showed 73 percent support - more than the two-thirds required for approval.

The convention center measure would increase hotel taxes to pay for a long-awaited expansion of that facility, to repair roads and to boost funding for homelessness solutions.
david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick

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San Diego housing bond delayed until 2020 election

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Supporters of a proposed $900 million housing bond in San Diego announced Tuesday that the measure won't be on the November ballot because they have decided to postpone their effort to 2020. The measure was designed to help San Diego secure a greater share of state money devoted to homelessness and affordable housing by providing local matching funds typically required for such assistance.

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Citizens Initiative To Expand San Diego Convention Center Starts Collecting Signatures

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Citizens Initiative To Expand San Diego Convention Center Starts Collecting Signatures

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savannah

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Credit: Matt Hoffman/KPBS

The organizers of a proposed ballot measure that would raise money for the downtown convention center and homelessness programs launched their signature-gathering effort Monday.

The Yes! For a Better San Diego campaign proposes a 42-year increase in the city's visitor tax that they say would generate $3.78 billion to expand and update the convention center, $2.02 billion for homeless services and $604 million for street repairs over the life of the measure.

They must gather 71,000 signatures for the issue to appear on the November ballot.

If approved by voters, the measure would increase the visitor tax on hotel bills by 1.25 percent to 3.25 percent. Hotels closest to the convention center would see the largest hike.
RELATED: Citizens Initiative Announced To Expand San Diego Convention Center

During the first years of the tax increase, 59 percent of revenues would go toward the convention center and 41 percent to homelessness programs. Between 2025 and 2061, 59 percent would go toward the center, 31 percent to homelessness programs and 10 percent to city street repairs.

The San Diego Police Officers Association endorsed the plan at a news conference Monday that kicked off the signature gathering.

Other supporters include hospitality industry leaders, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Father Joe Carroll and deacon Jim Vargas of Father Joe's Villages, Bob McElroy of the Alpha Project and the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council. They say the measure would offer long-term solutions to some of the city's most vexing problems.

The campaign says the upgrades to and expansion of the convention center would generate $40 billion in economic activity over the life of the measure and create about 7,000 jobs.

The City Council is considering another ballot question proposed by Councilman David Alvarez that would earmark existing hotel tax revenue exclusively for homelessness prevention and housing programs.

The organizers of a proposed ballot measure that would raise money for the downtown convention center and homelessness programs plan to launch their signature-gathering effort Monday.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

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Citizens Initiative To Expand San Diego Convention Center Starts Collecting Signatures

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Credit: Matt Hoffman/KPBS The organizers of a proposed ballot measure that would raise money for the downtown convention center and homelessness programs launched their signature-gathering effort Monday. The Yes!

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$147 million for homelessness programs in first five years (2019 - 2023)

$2 billion dedicated to homelessness over the life of the measure

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Micheal Mcconal

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For years, businessman Michael McConnell was a largely behind-the-scenes influencer devoted to reducing homelessness in San Diego.

Then McConnell decided he could make a greater impact speaking out to the public. He took to Facebook and Twitter, where he's collectively amassed more than 30,000 followers. He's since helped frame the conversation about San Diego's homeless crisis and police enforcement affecting those living on the street.

McConnell's shared countless photos and videos of homeless San Diegans' police interactions and of city workers confiscating their tents and other belongings.

McConnell, who spends many early mornings on downtown streets, has seized on moments and provocative images that drive home the power police officers have over the already chaotic lives of some of San Diego's most vulnerable. One post featuring a petite senior, head bowed, being handcuffed by an officer early one Saturday morning went viral. McConnell's camera has also rolled as groups of officers and police vehicles surround homeless camps. And he's introduced his followers to homeless San Diegans like Richard, a man arrested for settling in a tent who later made an emotional decision to give up his dog so he could enter a city-funded shelter. Those posts have drawn attention from city officials, reporters and lawyers. Attorney Scott Dreher, who's sued the city over enforcement involving homeless San Diegans, believes McConnell may have documented violations of settlement agreements dictating rules for police interactions with homeless San Diegans.

McConnell's used his social media megaphone to highlight other local strategies he finds questionable too.

Among the issues he's elevated and publicly questioned this year: a City Council-approved plan to sink $6.5 million into three new homeless tents and the region's sluggish response to the deadly hepatitis A outbreak that's hammered the homeless population.

McConnell's also been a key voice in discussions about potential homelessness ballot measures, even commissioning his own poll this summer to assess San Diegans' appetite for a future initiative.
This is part of our Voice of the Year package, profiling the people who drove the biggest conversations in San Diego in 2017.

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Voice of the Year: Michael McConnell - Voice of San Diego

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For years, businessman Michael McConnell was a largely behind-the-scenes influencer devoted to reducing homelessness in San Diego. Then McConnell decided he could make a greater impact speaking out to the public. He took to Facebook and Twitter, where he's collectively amassed more than 30,000 followers.

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How we can solve homeless problem with hotel tax

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How we can solve homeless problem with hotel tax

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Melannie Urquidez

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A coalition of tourism, business and homeless advocates and organized labor interests has launched a citizens' initiative to significantly increase the hotel room tax to fund an expanded convention center, homeless solutions and road repairs.

The proposed measure, which backers hope to qualify for the November ballot, seeks to revive a long-stalled effort to enlarge the bayfront convention center years after a court ruling nullified a hotelier-approved tax hike to finance the project.

San Diego's hotel and tourism leaders have long argued that the city is losing out on millions of dollars in business because the center is not big enough to accommodate larger, more lucrative conventions.

"Providing more opportunities to San Diegans is at the heart of this measure. It begins with the men and women who will build the convention center," said Carol Kim of the San Diego County Building Trades Council, which is backing the effort.

"For others, it will be the first chance they have to work for a living wage and healthcare. The contributions of these workers in this future building will bring millions of new dollars to San Diego tourism's economy each year, and it will be the success of their work that will bring millions more to help the homeless."

The group hopes to launch a signature-gathering drive within the next month. More than 71,600 valid signatures will be needed to qualify the measure for what will be a very crowded November ballot.

Under the measure, voters will be asked to raise the city's transient occupancy tax by 1.25 to 3.25 percentage points. The highest rates would be paid by those staying in downtown hotels, closest to the convention center.

Hotel guests now pay a 10.5% room tax, although there is an additional levy of 2% for hotels of 70 rooms or more to pay for tourism marketing.

The increase would raise an estimated $6.4 billion over 40 years, with the majority going to the convention expansion, estimated to cost as much as $685 million.

What is different from earlier proposals is that some $2 billion would be dedicated for homeless funding. An estimated $600 million would be dedicated for road repairs.

Advocates point out that funding for homelessness would get a big boost during the first five years, when 41% of the money collected, or $140 million, would go exclusively to addressing the city's growing homeless population.

Bob McElroy, president of the Alpha Project, said he supports the initiative because it would create a steady stream of income for groups that help the homeless.

"We've never had a consistent funding stream," he said, noting that even the three large tented shelters the city has created to help about 700 homeless people are funded only through July.

The money, if used smartly, could go a long way, McElroy said, noting that just last week he looked at a 159-unit building that could be bought for $7 million.

"It's just pennies on the dollar what new construction would cost, but we don't have the money for it," he said. "If we did, I could do this in two months."

Weisberg and Warth write for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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San Diego coalition wants to raise hotel room tax to fund homeless solutions, road repairs and more

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A coalition of San Diego tourism, business and homeless advocates and organized labor interests announced Monday that they are launching a citizens' initiative to significantly increase the hotel room tax to fund an expanded convention center, homeless solutions and road repairs.

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As societys population grows, San Diego's vacancy has taken a toll leaving growth to housing at only .5 annually. -zel

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In Liberal San Francisco, Tech Leaders Brawl Over Tax Proposal to Aid Homeless

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In Liberal San Francisco, Tech Leaders Brawl Over Tax Proposal to Aid Homeless

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San Francisco's tech companies dispute proposition C.
savannah pluma

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Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter and Square, is among the technology executives who have been fiercely opposed to a Nov. 6 ballot measure that would impose a new tax on companies.
Credit Credit Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

For months, technology companies in San Francisco have fought a local ballot proposition that would impose taxes on corporations to fund initiatives to help the homeless.

But last week, that unified front crumbled when Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, the online software company that is the city's largest private employer, broke from the pack. "Homelessness is all of our responsibility," he tweeted. Then the billionaire committed $2 million to passing the tax measure and criticized his fellow tech moguls for not caring.

Now San Francisco's tech community is in an uproar over the initiative, which is known as Proposition C and will be on the ballot on Nov. 6. Venture capitalists and companies including the online payments start-up Stripe are lobbying and donating money to defeat the tax. And Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter and Square, who opposes the measure, has publicly bickered with Mr. Benioff. On Friday, Mr. Dorsey tweeted, "We need to have long term solutions in place, not quick acts to make us feel good for one moment in time."

The vitriol among tech executives over the proposition has become "awkward," said Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator who represents San Francisco and surrounding areas and who is against the tax. Still, he praised the companies for becoming more involved in local politics.

The dispute over Proposition C raises the question of what responsibilities tech companies have for problems in their own backyards. Tech firms often receive blame for exacerbating inequality and driving up property values with their hefty employee pay packages, contributing to homelessness. The question of what these companies may owe their hometowns is magnified because many of them have taken advantage of local tax breaks to spur their own growth.

The debate is playing out beyond San Francisco and Silicon Valley. In Seattle, Amazon objected in May to a city tax that would have funded services for the homeless. After intense opposition, Seattle officials scuttled it.

In San Francisco, some tech companies, including Mr. Dorsey's Twitter, used tax breaks in 2011, which the city offered to keep them from moving away. In 2012, San Francisco also adjusted its tax code by switching from a payroll tax to a gross receipts tax, a change that favored the tech industry, which spends extravagantly to recruit top engineers.

Many of the tech companies that are against Proposition C declined to comment on the record. Opposing a measure that is aimed at reducing homelessness is tricky for the firms, especially in a city that has the seventh-largest homeless population in the nation, behind cities such as New York and Los Angeles.

But in public comments, Mr. Dorsey and others have argued that San Francisco officials, and not the companies, are best equipped to deal with homelessness. They have said that the city has a new mayor, London Breed, who was elected in June partly on her promise to combat the issue, and that she needs time to deliver on her campaign. Ms. Breed opposes the measure.

"I'm down to help in any way I can, as long as the mayor has the accountability," Mr. Dorsey said in an interview. He added that he was not worried about being perceived as opposing support for the homeless, "because it feels like the right thing to do to get into the nuance and bring out more of the concerns."

Those in favor of the new tax argue that they are not asking tech companies to come up with a strategy to save the homeless. Instead, they said, they simply want to raise taxes on the firms to fund resources. The extra money from the proposition could total $300 million a year and would effectively double the city's budget for addressing homelessness.

"You're either for the homeless or you're not," Mr. Benioff said in an interview. "Everyone is willing to say it's a terrible problem and it's getting worse, but only so many are willing to write a check to make it better."

Proposition C was put together by the Coalition on Homelessness, a local nonprofit group. The measure is designed to fund short-term shelters, permanent housing and mental health services for the homeless with a gross receipts tax and a payroll tax on companies above a certain size. The city estimated that nearly half of the businesses that would be affected by the tax are in tech and finance.

Sam Lew, policy director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said the proposition was a "no-brainer" because the funding would provide housing.

The measure qualified for the city ballot in July. Polling conducted by the opposition campaign in early September indicated that 56 percent of likely voters favored the tax, but that number decreased to 47 percent when they received opposition messaging.

In August, an executive at Dolby Laboratories, which makes entertainment systems, sent an email to more than 30 technology companies in San Francisco about the measure, asking if they planned to take a stand on it. Other companies on the email included Salesforce, Stripe, Twitter, GitHub, Uber, Lyft, Zendesk, Slack and Yelp.

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Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, who favors the measure, said in an interview: "You are either for the homeless or you're not."
Credit Jerod Harris/Getty Images for I.Ampuls

Executives at Salesforce and Stripe said they would most likely oppose the measure, according to the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times.

In one email, Darryl Yee, Salesforce's tax chief, said: "I grew up in SF and very much want to address the homeless problem, but the city's budget already seems pretty healthy, especially when you consider we're only a population of 800K."

Michael Yip, Stripe's head of tax, wrote back that tech companies might make sizable charitable donations to homelessness causes instead, "in hopes that this will be enough to sway the Mayor to publicly oppose this."

Twitter and Zendesk declined to comment. GitHub and Lyft did not return requests for comment. Yelp said it was "not active" on the issue.

Some tech companies began giving money to the campaign to fight the tax. In September, Stripe donated $20,000 to the "No on C" effort. In an editorial in The San Francisco Chronicle that month, its general counsel, Jon Zieger, wrote that "Prop. C will likely hurt more than it helps" because there was no comprehensive plan to tackle homelessness and the extra money might go nowhere.

Patrick Collison, Stripe's chief executive, later tweeted that the measure was "poor policy."

In a statement on Friday, Stripe said that homelessness was complex and that "solutions require careful interventions." It added, "Anyone who claims that Prop C is a matter of being 'for the homeless or against them' is selling a facile falsehood."

Early this month, Mayor Breed declared that she opposed the proposition, saying it was fiscally irresponsible. "I do not believe doubling what we spend on homelessness without new accountability, when we don't even spend what we have now efficiently, is good government," she said in a statement.

Mr. Benioff said early conversations within Salesforce focused on opposing the tax since "all companies are supposed to oppose all taxes. You kind of learn that in business school." But he changed his mind after talking with his co-chief executive, Keith Block, who often encountered homeless people on his walks to work.

"We said, you know what, I think we have to support this," Mr. Benioff said. He added that homelessness - not taxes - had become an existential threat to business in the city and that Salesforce might have to leave if the crisis continued.

On Oct. 8, Mr. Benioff announced his $2 million commitment to passing the measure and tweeted his support for the tax.

In response, Mr. Dorsey tweeted his opposition. Mr. Benioff then questioned Mr. Dorsey's philanthropy; Mr. Dorsey insisted that Mr. Benioff reread his arguments.

Mr. Dorsey now plans to give $75,000 to the campaign against the tax, a Square spokesman said. The funding would help spread a more nuanced message about the ballot initiative, Mr. Dorsey said.

Stripe has also recently donated an additional $400,000 to the campaign against the tax, according to public records. Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, gave $100,000, according to public records. In an email, Mr. Moritz said he agreed with Stripe's stance on the measure and noted that his foundation had recently given $11 million to Hamilton Families, an organization fighting homelessness.

Cisco's chief executive, Chuck Robbins, spoke in support of Mr. Benioff in a statement this week, saying, "We must end the homelessness and housing crises our communities are facing." He said he was supporting a proposition to fund affordable housing in San Jose, Calif., where Cisco has its headquarters.

In a phone call after their Twitter exchange, Mr. Benioff said, Mr. Dorsey told him that the tax in Proposition C was too high. Mr. Dorsey said he had merely pointed out the disproportionate impact that the tax would have on payment processors like Square. Mr. Benioff estimated Salesforce would pay $10 million annually for the tax; Mr. Dorsey said Square, a much smaller company, would pay $20 million.

Mr. Benioff has since continued taking digs at other San Francisco tech leaders and their stance on Proposition C. "They didn't know they didn't like it until they realized I supported it," he said.

Mr. Dorsey, when asked if he agreed with Mr. Benioff's characterization of their conversation, responded with a single word: "No."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Battle Brews Between Moguls On Homeless Aid In San Francisco. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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In Liberal San Francisco, Tech Leaders Brawl Over Tax Proposal to Aid Homeless

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For months, technology companies in San Francisco have fought a local ballot proposition that would impose taxes on corporations to fund initiatives to help the homeless. But last week, that unified front crumbled when Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, the online software company that is the city's largest private employer, broke from the pack.

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alleviating homelessness with proposition two and mental health assistance.
savannah pluma

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Basic health requires a stable home. But for so many people who regularly show up in San Diego emergency departments, a stable home is what they lack. This undermines my ability as an emergency physician to provide the highest quality of care to all of my patients.

Related: Proposition 2: First invest in our people

Proposition 2 on our statewide November ballot can help bridge this health care gap. Proposition 2 delivers a rational and proven solution to help the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness who are suffering from serious mental illness by building stable housing and coupling it with mental health services. Keeping housing and mental health services together are key to alleviating homelessness complicated by serious mental illness.

During my 17 years working as an emergency physician in Southern California hospitals, not a shift has gone by where I didn't treat at least one patient experiencing homelessness complicated by serious mental illness.

Since moving to San Diego five years ago, the situation has become more critical, and I'm now treating up to a dozen such patients each shift.

This is why Proposition 2 is so important for easing the public health crisis happening in emergency departments and communities across San Diego and California.

Emergency departments are frequently the last resort for people living with a serious mental illness who are homeless. With nowhere else to go, these patients arrive in hopes that my colleagues and I can help. But the truth is that emergency stabilization, a brief dose of prescriptions, or simple referrals to primary care doctors, psychiatrists, or counselors won't have a lasting effect. They are Band-Aids covering up the real problem.

Meanwhile, caring for chronic diseases often related to homelessness and serious mental illness burdens the entire health care system, particularly busy emergency departments that experience daily overcrowding.

This burden creates longer wait times for everyone. First responders are sent out on 911 calls to help people suffering from mental illness and homelessness but we all know these emergency workers can only do so much to ease their pain.

This cycle could be prevented with the help of Proposition 2 by providing a stable home that is coupled with community-based mental health services where patients regularly take their medications, adhere to treatment recommendations, undergo necessary therapy, and can ultimately heal and live with dignity.

Statewide, more than 134,000 people are living on our streets, and as many as a third of them suffer from a serious mental illness. San Diego County has more than 9,000 people without a home, with similar rates of serious mental illness, according to the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency.

The good news is we have a solution to help people hurting in this crisis.

Research shows providing people with a stable place to live along with mental health services promotes housing stability. This combination is known as permanent supportive housing. Permanent supportive housing significantly reduces public health costs, reduces suffering for patients, and achieves better health outcomes.

Proposition 2 will build 20,000 permanent supportive housing units under the "No Place Like Home" Program and pairs housing with coordinated care of mental health, substance use, medical care, and case management. Once people are stabilized, education and job training are provided.

Proposition 2 is funded under the Mental Health Services Act, a measure first approved by the voters in 2004.

Spending funds on supportive housing for people with a serious mental illness is consistent with the Act that voters approved. It simply accelerates the funding for supportive housing services, given the urgent homelessness crisis affecting our communities that is taking an especially heavy toll on people with serious mental illness.

Proposition 2 will strengthen partnerships between doctors, law enforcement, mental health and homeless service providers to help ensure care is coordinated and tailored to meet the needs of each person suffering from severe mental illness and homelessness, including those who are at highest risk of becoming homeless.

Helping people suffering from serious mental illness and homelessness is not easy. But we cannot afford to continue with our current revolving door of care in emergency departments and recurring calls to 911. The time is now to provide critical intervention with Proposition 2 by building supportive housing connected to mental health treatment and services for the people who need it the most.

Medical professionals, mental health advocates, public safety officials, affordable housing advocates and many more all agree - a supportive home is key to quality health.

On Nov. 6, vote yes on Proposition 2.
Fernandez, M.D., is a UC San Diego emergency physician and serves on the board of directors for the California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

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Basic health requires a stable home. But for so many people who regularly show up in San Diego emergency departments, a stable home is what they lack. This undermines my ability as an emergency physician to provide the highest quality of care to all of my patients.

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Claims rent control is not a solution to lack of housing but instead building more.
Savannah Pluma

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The headlines about California's housing crisis just keep coming, and the news is always grim. Last week, Bankrate.com reported the Golden State was the worst in the nation for first-time homebuyers, with the lowest percentage of homes available for sale and mortgage costs nearly double the U.S. average. Bankrate's analysis pointed out that high rents compounded California's home-affordability problem by making it difficult for families to save up for down-payments.

The cost of housing is so extreme for poor and ever-more middle-income families that it is distorting their lives. The latest stunning evidence: The story last month that the fastest rising rents in America were in Stockton, where demand is heavy because workers at companies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are relocating and accepting 150-mile-plus, four-hour-plus commutes. They have no choice - they can't afford to live where they work.

The crisis this reflects has spurred the introduction of more than 130 bills in the Legislature. Some of the measures are constructive proposals that would make it easier to add housing stock, which is a key goal of Gov. Jerry Brown. But many of the bills repeat failed past strategies, such as building government-subsidized housing that only helps a tiny fraction of those hammered by the cost of shelter.

Now momentum is building behind another failed strategy: rent control. Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, has introduced a bill to repeal a 1995 state law - the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act - that limits the scope of local rental control laws. Bloom and his three co-sponsors hope to take away rent-control exemptions for duplexes, condos and single-family homes and to let local-rent control laws cover far more properties than now allowed, including newer housing stock.

"We are at a time in California when, for the first time, the majority of people's quality of life is diminishing because so much of their income is going to pay for housing," Bloom told the Sacramento Bee. He's right. But economists who often quarrel on other issues say not only is Bloom's approach wrong, it will make the housing problem worse by disincentivizing new construction and encouraging landlords to reduce maintenance. In a 1990 survey of 464 U.S. economists, 93 percent agreed or generally agreed that "a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available."

Nothing has changed since 1990. Bloom needs to have a talk with another urban progressive, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. His city is the rent-control capital of America, with more than 1 million apartments subject to control of a city board. But for those without such protections, New York is one of the least affordable cities in the nation. This is why de Blasio wants to add hundreds of thousands of new housing units. He's grasped the obvious: Rent control is no solution to a housing crisis caused by a housing shortage. Adding housing is.
Twitter: @sdutIdeas Facebook: UTOpinion

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The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board

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Rent control no answer to California housing crisis

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The headlines about California's housing crisis just keep coming, and the news is always grim. Last week, Bankrate.com reported the Golden State was the worst in the nation for first-time homebuyers, with the lowest percentage of homes available for sale and mortgage costs nearly double the U.S. average.

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How to make housing more affordable in San Diego

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How to make housing more affordable in San Diego

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Reid Volk
This article talks about how we can solve the problem of affordable housing in San Diego.

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There isn't enough affordable housing being built in the city of San Diego. Lenders and banks aren't lending as much, apartment owners aren't caring, and builders aren't building as much since it's not as remunerative to build for income-constrained households.

This worsens the disconnect between the economics of the housing stock and the demographics of the families it's meant to serve, as shown by a recent Harvard University study on apartments. In San Diego, less than 10 percent of the rental housing stock is affordable*. With new federal tax policies, things could get worse.

A home isn't just a luxury that anyone can live without. It's a social necessity. Yet cities and states don't build housing, they plan for it and permit it, and then are dependent on private developers to build it at the rents or prices that yield them the highest returns. This is where inclusionary housing comes into play: By allowing the private sector to competitively perform at its optimal level within a uniform regulatory framework that achieves societal goals.

Inclusionary housing uses the planning and zoning process to create affordable housing and foster social inclusion within the marketplace. Since inclusionary zoning programs don't require direct subsidy dollars to create affordable homes and rentals, they're a market-based solution for affordable housing, according to Fannie Mae.

Inclusionary zoning ordinances are most effective in strong markets with optimum development incentives, and they are able to produce affordable housing that wouldn't otherwise be built, according to the Urban Land Institute. More than 170,000 affordable apartments and homes have been created through inclusionary programs nationally, according to an estimate by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

So what can the city of San Diego do to ensure that more homes down the pipeline are affordable?

It's time to revisit the city of San Diego's inclusionary housing ordinance. Residential builders have been challenging these ordinances in many cities statewide, most recently claiming that these were "unconstitutional takings," despite the crisis of affordable housing, and their popularity in being adopted by 170 cities in California. The city of San Diego inclusionary housing law was amended in 2006, after a settlement between the city and builders. The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the constitutionality of these ordinances in California Building Industry Association v. City of San Jose, and in 2016, the US Supreme Court declined to review the homebuilders' appeal. The court decided that these inclusionary set-asides are more similar to land-use restrictions, like setbacks, rather than a fee or exaction.

The San Jose decision affirmed the legality of affordable housing set-asides required by cities in the sale of homes. However, an appellate court decision - Palmer/Sixth Street Properties L.P. v. City of Los Angeles - created uncertainty for local governments to apply them to rental housing, by ruling that the rent restrictions were preempted by the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

Fortunately, as part of the housing legislative package last year, Governor Brown signed Assembly Bill 1505 (Bloom) to fix the Palmer problem. State law now explicitly allows a city to adopt an ordinance that requires as a condition of the development of residential rental units, a certain set-aside of affordable units, and also requires alternate means of compliance, such as in-lieu fees, land dedication, off-site construction, or acquisition and rehabilitation of existing units. The legislation was supported by housing advocates and labor unions across the state, including the State Building and Construction Trades Council; it was opposed by the San Diego County Apartment Association.

Here are four elements of the city of San Diego's current Inclusionary Housing ordinance that need improvement:

Require inclusion: The baseline should be an onsite requirement to build, and alternatives should discourage not building onsite. The original intent of the 2003 ordinance required "at least ten percent (10%) of the total dwelling units in the proposed development shall be affordable to targeted rental households or targeted ownership households..." and then stated that the requirement to provide affordable units could be met in alternative ways such as payment of an in lieu fee. In fact, the city of San Diego already had an onsite inclusionary requirement of 20 percent (set-aside land or units) with no in lieu of fees for the North City Future Urbanizing Areas. That requirement is still the law today. (SDMC Section 143.0450(d)). The 2011, amendment reversed the intent by requiring the fee with an option to build the units. Other cities are going for an onsite requirement. The city of San Jose, which already requires 15 percent of for-sale housing to be set-aside, wants to extend this requirement to rental, rather than charging a fee as it does currently. Measure JJJ of Los Angeles adopted by voter initiative in 2016, imposed a 15 percent inclusionary requirement for density increases, and 20 percent inclusionary for zoning use changes.

Require higher inclusion: State law allows cities to set any inclusionary requirement. However, a requirement above 15 percent, allows the state to intervene if the city's housing production goals are not being met. It is, therefore, likely that 15 percent will be the norm for newly adopted ordinances.

Plug the loopholes: Fees in lieu of building the units should reflect the costs to build the units. The method of calculation of the fee is laid out in the Implementation and Monitoring Procedures from the SD Housing Commission. It's based on the median prices for home sales and the average size of homes being sold, rather than the actual cost of construction of a comparable new unit. Home sales are just a small snapshot of the housing market and fluctuate from macroeconomic factors many of which are irrelevant to the construction of apartments. This is the reason why inclusionary fees fell almost 25% (from $9.36/sf in FY2017 to $7.03/sf in the FY2018 year, despite increasing costs and rents. Under Measure JJJJ of Los Angeles, the alternate methods of satisfying the requirements are:

building offsite (between 1-1.5 times the number of units depending on distance);

acquiring at-risk affordable units and converting them to non-profit, Community Land Trust, and/or tenant ownership; or

an in lieu fee equivalent to 1.1 times the required amount of on-site affordable units, multiplied by an affordability gap that is to be determined by a study which will be produced by the City of Los Angeles and adjusted on a biennial basis. Inclusionary fees that actually reflect the gap between market-rate and affordable-rate provision not only remove the economic incentive for developers to avoid building the units, but also augment the Affordable Housing Fund that can pool together resources and build more projects.

Create good quality jobs. Projects subsidized by inclusionary funds should have job quality standards for local residents so that we are not accelerating the demand-supply cycle for subsidized units by paying people less. The city of San Diego does not currently require the payment of prevailing wages on affordable housing funded construction even though the use of city funds for most other projects, including infrastructure, requires the payment of prevailing wages. Prevailing wage requirements also include the use of apprentices for a fifth of all hours worked. The City of Los Angeles requires prevailing wages and skilled and trained workforce for affordable housing. Alameda County just adopted 30% local hire requirements for all large Measure A1 projects and is targeted at disadvantaged workers in areas of high unemployment.

There is a moral imperative to act, in the face of our unprecedented homelessness crisis, and its direct conflict with new development. But the crisis on the streets is only the tip of the iceberg of the deeper struggle that thousands of individuals and families face in the continuum of hardship. This continuum extends from those struggling to make rent payments, to being evicted, to doubling up on families and friends' couches, to living in cars, to being homeless. At some point in the future, we need to have a serious discussion about a statewide inclusionary housing policy with matching state funds, that create a standard baseline and make it feasible for market-rate developers to start building housing that is affordable for all Californians.

__________________

*I estimate about 25,000 units in the city of San Diego are "affordable," with a variation in enforceability, from public housing to private covenants, to voluntary agreements, to evolving laws that govern them (like Single Room Occupancy hotels). San Diego Housing Commission's Housing Resource guide lists 164 apartment projects with a total of 15,869 units. However, if one views "affordability" as paying up to a third of household income on housing costs, independent of the underlying regulatory enforcement, then 44 percent of the rental stock would fall into this category. Based on the 2015 Census, 148,000 renter households, out of a total of 265,000 renter households in the city of San Diego, are paying more than a third of their income on rent. Of these, 72,000 are paying more than half their income on rent, and are considered severely cost burdened.

Murtaza H. Baxamusa, Ph.D., AICP is a certified planner, writer, and thinker. He develops affordable housing for the San Diego Building Trades Family Housing Corporation and teaches urban planning at the University of Southern California (USC). He has more than 12 years' experience in economic development and sustainable urban planning and has previously worked for the USC Center for Economic Development as well as the Center on Policy Initiatives. He has doctoral and master's degrees in Planning from USC, and a bachelor's degree with honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

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How to Make Housing More Affordable in San Diego

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By Murtaza Baxamusa / SanDiegoUrbDeZine There isn't enough affordable housing being built in the city of San Diego. Lenders and banks aren't lending as much, apartment owners aren't caring, and builders aren't building as much since it's not as remunerative to build for income-constrained households.

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New hotel tax in San Diego can help the homeless

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New hotel tax in San Diego can help the homeless

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Reid Volk
Talks about how the new hotel tax could generate so much money for tourism and for the homeless.

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The proposed $6.4 billion ballot measure to expand the San Diego Convention Center includes money for homelessness and street repairs. But a new analysis finds even more could benefit those two programs.

The convention center funding is projected at $3.8 billion, but $1.4 billion is counted as excess after accounting for construction, maintenance, operations and promotion.

The excess could add to the $2 billion designated for homeless services and housing and $604 million for street repairs.

The convention center xpansion, while currently planned on the bayside, could be built on the Harbor Drive side under a backup plan.

The economic analysis of the measure is contingent on more hotel rooms and a higher hotel rates, which could increase from $178 today to $545 by 2061.

Here's the full story:
A proposed hotel room tax increase, headed for the November ballot, could generate nearly $1.4 billion in extra homelessness and street repair programs, even after spending billions on those efforts and a new convention center expansion.

That was one of the conclusions in an analysis of the $6.4 billion measure presented Tuesday by Warren "Skip" Hull, vice president of CIC Research, on behalf of the backers of a ballot initiative.

The measure would generate $2.4 billion for a convention center expansion, as well as maintenance and operations; $2 billion for homelessness; and $604 million for road repairs. Based on Hull's calculations, there would be an additional $1.4 billion that, while dedicated to the convention center, could also be used for homeless needs and streets.

He analyzed the revenues and expenditures proposed in the measure being sponsored by a coalition of hotel, homeless and labor interests.

"The projections are well within the scale in terms of where we've been," Hull said at a briefing held at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce offices.

Under the measure, which supporters still must qualify for the ballot, the present hotel room tax and tourism marketing surcharge would rise, starting next Jan. 1, from the present 12.5 percent to 15.75 percent for downtown hotels, 14.75 percent for Mission Valley- and Mission Bay-area hotels and 13.75 percent for hotels in the northern and southern peripheries of the city.

The measure's backers expect to begin collecting on Feb. 1 as many as 112,000 signatures to qualify the initiative for the Nov. 6 ballot.

The group hopes to secure two-thirds majority approval of San Diego city voters, the normal minimum required to raise taxes. A recent court decision suggests only a simple majority may be needed but some suggest that the ruling is still open to interpretation.

"It feels like something that has taken into account the entire ecosystem and created this cycle of benefit allows us to be responsible, proactive and forward thinking," said Carol Kim, political director of the Building Trades Council.

The measure calls for enlarging the existing convention center with an $850 million bond.That figure is about $200 million more than previously projected estimates to take into account unexpected costs and interest rates.

The approved plan would locate the expansion on the bay side of the building, but that location is the same site where a rival hotel project, Fifth Avenue Landing, is proposed.

The California Coastal Commission has already approved the bayside expansion, long the first choice of initiative backers, but the measure allows for an alternative location as long as it is contiguous and connected to the existing building, which first opened in 1989.

Gil Cabrera, chairman of the Convention Center Corp. board, said one solution would be to expand on the Harbor Drive side of the building to add 180,000 square feet of exhibit hall space to Hall H at the south end. That's 40,000 square feet less than desired but more ballroom and meeting space still could be added.

The advantage would be a shorter construction time but the disadvantage would be returning to the coastal agency for the design change. The cost would be about the same, he said.

The ballot measure does not define "physically connected," a phrase that follows a requirement that convention center improvements be "contiguous."

"It needs to be touching and connected," said Mike McDowell president and CEO of the San Diego Lodging Industry Association, who participated in the briefing.

The homelessness programs, including housing as well as services, would be accelerated in the first five years of the new tax to generate $147.1 million in cash for possible use in underwriting various bonds.

"The additional revenue would not be there if it were not for this measure," said Murtaza Baxamusa, planning and development director for the Building Trades Council's Family Housing Corporation. He also participated in the briefing.

The street repairs funding would start flowing in 2025 at $7.6 million and rising annually. The money, too, could underwrite bond payments.

The projected $1.369 billion in excess funds do not accumulate significantly until the last 10 years of the taxing program, when they would generate $1.1 billion between 2050 and 2061.

The initiative provides that the excess can only be spent on homelessness and street repair programs, once convention expenses are covered, and subject to annual council budget decisions.

The proponents, operating under the "Yes! For a Better San Diego" campaign banner, acknowledged that projecting revenues and expenditures over 42 years is subject to unexpected events.

But Hull said his estimates took into account two major incidents that dampened tourism and convention center business - the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and the 2008-'09 recession - and still saw a 4.1 percent annual growth rate.

"We cannot rule out that significant local disasters, global events and/or severe economic recessions may occur during the long-term financial forecast period that is presented in this analysis," Hull said.

He projects a 54 percent increase in city hotel rooms from the present 44,000 rooms to 68,000 rooms by 2061. And nightly room rates could grow from today's $178 to $545 over that same period, unadjusted for inflation. But that's not so surprising, he said, since the average room rate was $50 in 1977 when he began economic forecasting.

The figures do not include growth in Airbnb and other short-term rental transient occupancy tax revenue, which Hull estimated at $600 million from that source between 2019 and 2061.
roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley

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New hotel tax could generate $1.4B even more for homeless, street repair spending

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The proposed $6.4 billion ballot measure to expand the San Diego Convention Center includes money for homelessness and street repairs. But a new analysis finds even more could benefit those two programs. The convention center funding is projected at $3.8 billion, but $1.4 billion is counted as excess after accounting for construction, maintenance, operations and promotion.

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New program to help homeless in San Diego

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New program to help homeless in San Diego

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Reid Volk
New program is putting homeless to work in San Diego to hopefully get them back on their feet.

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About a dozen homeless people who had been staying at one of the city's large tented shelters were back on the street Monday morning, but for a good reason.

The Alpha Project, which runs the shelter at 16th Street and Newton Avenue, hired some of its clients for a new work program that will help clean up downtown while also helping the homeless get back on their feet.

"This is the first time I've worked in a while," said Dawn Caiazzo, who wore a bright orange work vest and black rubber gloves as she picked up trash on Island Avenue near 16th Street. "It feels good."

Alpha Project CEO Bob McElroy said the crew cleaned up about 12 blocks on their first four-hour shift Monday.

"I'm really proud of them," he said.

McElroy said the new Wheels of Change work program was funded with a $70,000 donation from Dr. Carolyn Barber, an emergency room physician at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The money was enough to buy a van and pay workers $11.50 an hour for the next six months.

The program is based on the Albuquerque, New Mexico program called There's a Better Way. In that program, two vans pick up about 20 homeless people and bring them to work sites daily.

Similar programs exist in more than a dozen other cities, including Austin, Chicago, Denver, Lexington, Portland and Seattle.

The concept isn't new to San Diego. McElroy has been finding work for homeless people for the past 32 years through Alpha Project's Take Back the Streets program, which employs 30 to 50 people a day in brush abatement, recycling and other jobs.

When offered an opportunity to bring the Albuquerque program to San Diego, McElroy admits he was a bit reluctant.

"We're not going to pick up eight or 10 random homeless people and give them money that is going to be spent on drugs and alcohol," he said. "But it's a perfect fit for the shelter."

McElroy said case workers at the shelter will help people in the cleaning crews use their pay productively.

About 300 people stay in the Alpha Project's tented shelter, which is known as bridge housing because it is intended to be a temporary stay for people receiving help in finding housing, employment and assistance in overcoming issues related to their homelessness.

The crews will be back on the street on Thursday, and McElroy said the program soon will be expanded to three days a week.

Edwin Fisk, who has been homeless about six months and is staying at the Alpha Project shelter, was among the people in Monday's crew.

"It's better than sitting in a tent all day," he said. "It gives us something to do, you know? And you make money. Who wouldn't want to do that?"

Other people in the crew said they appreciate the chance to earn money, but also appreciate doing something to help the city.

"It's giving back to the community," Caiazzo said. "Hopefully it'll catch on and we won't have so much clutter around here."

Also on the crew was Nichole Hill, who moved into the Alpha shelter about three weeks ago after being homeless for 18 months.

"I get to give back to the community and have some extra money to get around," she said, adding that her pay will help her visit her 5-year-old son, who is staying with her parents.

In a year, she said she plans to have her own place and a job, and she also wants to volunteer with the Alpha Project or a similar organization.

"Being homeless makes you realize how it is, and you want to help other people," she said.

Crew member Regina Meals said she had been homeless five years, and Monday was the first time she had worked in many years.

"It means everything to me," she said about the opportunity. "I'm going to start my life all over again."

The Alpha Project tent is one of three similar bridge housing shelters that together serve about 700 people as part of a program Mayor Kevin Faulconer introduced last year.

"This is all about creating more opportunities for homeless individuals to lift themselves out of extreme poverty," Faulconer said Monday about the new work program. "Wheels for Change will help restore dignity by allowing people to earn a paycheck and begin to get back on their feet.

"For many this may be just the chance they need to begin turning their lives around," he said in a news release.

City Councilman Scott Sherman joined Faulconer in praising the new program Monday.

"An important step to a successful transition out of homelessness is re-exposure to the dignity of work," he said. "The Wheels of Change program provides the opportunity to participate in this confidence-building experience."

McElroy also said that the program was more about giving people in the program an opportunity to earn money. It also helps their self-esteem, he said, and may even change the image some people have of homeless people downtown.

"When they think of the homeless, they think of alcoholics or bag ladies, but here's these folks who are cleaning up the neighborhood," he said. "It's a great way to tear down barriers."

Besides cleaning up streets, people in the crews also will assist outreach teams to help them connect other homeless people with services.

"I'm a huge advocate of giving people a chance to be part of the solution," McElroy said.

About 100 people are on the waiting list to join a Wheels for Change crew, he said.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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New program puts San Diego's homeless to work

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About a dozen homeless people who had been staying at one of the city's large tented shelters were back on the street Monday morning, but for a good reason. The Alpha Project, which runs the shelter at 16th Street and Newton Avenue, hired some of its clients for a new work program that will help clean up downtown while also helping the homeless get back on their feet.

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California Ballots on Homelessness and Affordable Housing

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California Ballots on Homelessness and Affordable Housing

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Article explains different tactics California has tried to solve the problem of homelessness.

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Richard Vogel/AP

California state and city ballot measures offer a variety of strategies for improving access to affordable housing, and shrinking the homeless population.

Build more housing. Build more homeless shelters. Raise property taxes. Raise wealthy people's taxes. Raise everyone's taxes. Address the core of the problem. (First, though, define the core.) Spend more as a state. Spend more as a city. Leave everything as it is.

California hasn't yet identified which is the most effective solution for addressing its affordable housing problem, as rental prices rise to 2.5 times the national median, and homeless rates follow: In 2017, California held more than a quarter of the country's total homeless population.

And not everyone can agree on what's to blame, either.A recent poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times suggested Californians pointed to a lack of rent control and a lack of funding for low-income housing, as the primary drivers of housing unaffordability-far more than a lack of new construction. A similar April survey from the Mercury News had Californians blaming profit-maximizing developers first; then technology companies; then local governments with regulations deterring development. Yet another poll, administered by the Committee to House the Bay Area and sent to Bay Area policymakers and their staff, highlighted a lack of developable land; shuttered redevelopment agencies; and community opposition to building.

These questions aren't unique to California. Across the country, increasing access to affordable housing is on the mind, and will be a key issue in the voting booth. But CityLab is highlighting the region specifically because this November, California and several of its cities have specific measures on the ballot that represent a wide range of policy approaches to solving-or at least slowing-the crisis. Homeless advocates and state leaders are hoping that at least a few of them will stick.

Click through to jump to the one you're interested in: California statewide measures Prop 1, Prop 2, Prop 5, Prop 10; San Francisco's Prop C; San Jose's Measure V; and Oakland's Measure W.

Or just scroll through below for a round-up of the most consequential:

California's statewide measures

The first two propositions on the ballot use existing resources to increase the state's budget on housing initiatives by $6 billion.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has advocated for both measures as a potential solution to her city's homelessness problem, favoring them over levying a tax on local business. "Homelessness is a regional and statewide crisis requiring a statewide solution," she wrote in a statement. The San Francisco Chronicle endorses both propositions, as does the Los Angeles Times.

If combined, Props 1 and 2 could inject a vital boost to the affordable housing landscape, says Leslye Corsiglia, the Executive Director of SV@Home (Silicon Valley at Home), an affordable housing advocacy organization. In order to build it, "we need all the money we can get."

"$6 billion is not enough, but it is more than we've ever had," she continued. "The state has had a very limited amount of money for housing in recent years, so this is an opportunity for the state to have a larger role in building."

Prop 1: Housing Programs and Veterans' Loans Bond

Prop 1 would free up $4 billion in "general obligation bonds" for a variety of housing projects for low-income Californians. The money will be allocated to existing programs, and given out as loans and grants to local governments and developers on a competitive basis.

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$1.5 billion would fund the Multifamily Housing Program, which supports rental housing for low-income Californians. Another $1 billion of the fund would go to the CalVet Home Loan Program, which helps veterans buy farms and homes. (29 percent of the country's homeless veterans live in California, according to CalMatters.)

The rest would fund projects that build housing near transit stations or that offer "innovative approaches to creating or preserving affordable housing," for example; and programs that help with home purchase assistance for low-income buyers, improve infrastructure, provide forgivable loans, and offer grants and loans for farmworkers.

Prop 2: Use Millionaire's Tax Revenue for Homelessness Prevention Housing Bonds

After the state passed the Mental Health Services Act in 2004, California citizens started paying a 1 percent tax on all income over $1 million a year, which goes towards funding mental health services in the state.

Prop 2 wouldn't change that existing "Millionaire's Tax"-it would just start funneling $2 billion of the revenue bonds it already generates into funding homelessness prevention initiatives specifically for people suffering from mental health issues.

Prop 5: Property Tax Transfer Initiative

This initiative would lower the barriers to moving for some home-owners by allowing them to transfer the tax-assessed value from their old home to their new one, no matter how much the new one is worth, and no matter how many times they move, or to where. All owners who are aged 55 and older, severely disabled, and/or suffered property damage due to disaster would be eligible. (This expands Proposition 13, which allowed tax-assessed value transfers only for homes that were of equal or lesser value, and only within certain jurisdictions.)

The San Francisco Chronicle offered this example of how the change would look in practice:

Suppose their existing home is assessed at $500,000, they sell it for $1 million and buy a new one for $800,000. Because the old home's assessment was half its market value, the new home would be assessed at only $400,000, or half its market value. That $100,000 drop in assessed value wouldn't happen today.

Prop 5 is supported by the California Association of Realtors, who argue that by encouraging people to vacate their large homes, the measure could open up housing access for other families; and by targeting older residents, developers might be compelled to build more senior living communities.

But opponents warn that slashing property tax revenue-which nets local governments over $60 billion per year-would reward the mobile rich at the expense of public institutions. According to the State Legislative Analyst's office, public schools and local governments could lose more than $100 million annually in property taxes when the measure first takes effect, and up to $1 billion each per year as time goes on. It also found that home sales could increase by a few tens of thousands per year.

"For all of its wonderful qualities, California is also one of the most economically unequal states in the nation," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board. " Proposition 5 would take that inequality and compound it for generations to come."

Prop 10: Local Rent Control Initiative

Prop 10 focuses on changing regulations, instead of taxation: It would repeal a state law called the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act that, since 1995, has restricted California cities and local jurisdictions from expanding rent-control measures on residential property. In other words, Prop 10 wouldn't implement any new rent control policies anywhere, but it would unleash the possibility of passing broader ones everywhere.

Rent-control policies can keep rents stable rents for the duration of a particular tenancy, and stop them from being jacked up during vacancies. Advocates of Prop 10-led by the Coalition of Affordable Housing-say the measure will bring more fairness to housing pricing by stopping rental prices from inflating too much between every signed lease; and protect tenants by reducing forced evictions. "Prop. 10 is a limited measure that answers one question: who decides housing policy," they write. "[L]ocal communities or Sacramento special interests and powerful real estate investors?"

But opponents-led by the California Apartment Association and the California Rental Housing Association- argue that the citizen-initiated measure is poorly designed, and would discourage investment in new housing, when supply is sorely needed. It would put the pricing power in the hands of "bureaucrats" who could add fees on housing and increase rents in the process, they say, and add millions in new costs for local governments. And, because, it might make rental properties less lucrative for homeowners, it could incentivize people to turn them into "profitable uses like short-term vacation rentals, increasing the cost of existing housing and making it even harder for renters to find affordable housing in the future."

Local measures

Proposition C, San Francisco: Gross Receipts Tax for Homelessness Services

Prop C would try fixing San Francisco's homelessness problem with funds from another potential revenue source: big business, which in the Bay Area means Big Tech.

The measure would increase the gross receipts tax on businesses earning more than $50 million-a group of 300-400 companies in San Francisco-by an average of half a percent. That would generate $250 to $300 million a year, which would go towards homelessness prevention and solution services: Half towards building 5,000 units of affordable, permanent housing over the next eight years; and 10 percent towards helping install more than 1,000 new shelter beds. The measure would also allocate about $75 million to mental health services; and about $40 million to services that prevent housing-insecure individuals from becoming homeless ones.

It's a contentious measure. Mayor London Breed opposes it, along with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Lyft, and a who's-who of other tech companies in the city. Marc Benioff, CEO of San Francisco's largest employer, Salesforce, supports it, and has spent more than $5 million advocating for its passage.

Critics point to the relative steadiness of homelessness rates-paired with climbing spending-as evidence that the money the city is currently spending isn't working, and that more would be redundant. "Before we double the tax bill overnight, San Franciscans deserve accountability for the money they are already paying," Breed wrote in a statement. What's more, the measure was drafted without public input, she says, or meetings with the Board of Supervisors or herself. Besides, she argues, it could harm the local economy through lost jobs (though a recent study from the city's Office of Economic Analysis says impacts would be marginal), and could put San Francisco on the hook for "funding services for residents from other counties."

Supporters, meanwhile, say the homeless service budget isn't big enough-with about 7,500 people on the streets each night; 1,200 of them families and children-and that tech companies should have a hand in easing some of the burden.

Recommended

Measure V, San Jose: Housing Bond Issue

Measure V is significant because it marks the first time San Jose-deemed the least affordable metropolitan area in the country-has brought an affordable housing-related initiative to the polls, ever, says Corsiglia of SV@Home.

If passed, the city of San Jose will authorize up to $450 million in bonds to fund housing construction. Some is ring-fenced for low-income residents earning up to 30 percent of the AMI, and some for residents making between 80 and 120 percent of AMI, but the majority of the funds are to be for housing for those earning up to 80 percent of AMI.It will amount to an estimated property tax rate of $.08 per $1,000.

While Santa Clara County, where San Jose is located, passed a $950 million housing measure in 2016, most of that fund went to homelessness prevention and housing-Measure V targets the "missing middle" as well as the lowest-earning San Jose residents, wrote the Mercury News editorial board, and will bring the city closer to meeting its goal of building 10,000 affordable units. (San Jose's mayor says the bond would help the city break ground on at least 9,000.)

In an argument against the measure penned by the president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association and the chair of the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County, they argue again that money won't fix the affordable housing shortage; removing regulations on building more housing will. "You got to hand it to big government advocates, they've created this housing problem," the write, "and now they propose to solve the problem with more government and more debt."

Supporters note that the money will go toward building more housing.

Measure W, Oakland: Vacant Property Tax

Oakland's Measure W attempts to address two problems at once: That some properties in the city remain unused for much of the year, and that homelessness rates there are growing.

The measure would tax properties that are usedfewer than 50 days per year, raising an estimated $10 million in 20 years to fund homelessness services (and illegal dumping prevention programs). City Council member Rebecca Kaplan, who is championing the measure, says Oakland's 5,000 vacant properties outnumber its 3,000-member homeless population.

The main opponents of the bill are owners of underutilized land, who argue that instead of taxing vacant land owned by them, the city of Oakland should reassess its own vacant plots and-you guessed it-build more affordable housing.

About the Author

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This November on California Ballots: Solving the Housing Crisis

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Build more housing. Build more homeless shelters. Raise property taxes. Raise wealthy people's taxes. Raise everyone's taxes. Address the core of the problem. (First, though, define the core.) Spend more as a state. Spend more as a city. Leave everything as it is.

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The link between homelessness and housing

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The link between homelessness and housing

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Explains the correlation between unaffordable housing in San Diego and how it ends with people becoming homeless.

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By: Veronica Ma

What I've Learned

As a student of Social Studies at Harvard University, I have spent the past two years studying the economic, social and political forces that challenged societies throughout history and continue to challenge cultures around the world. To complement my education with the experience of working in the social sector, I took on a six-week opportunity at Father Joe's Villages. During my time here, I researched and presented information on the issues of homelessness, affordable housing and poverty. Importantly, I learned about how the agency creates solutions to help people who are homeless.

The research I did at Father Joe's gives me a deeper understanding of how complex and deep-rooted the causal factors of poverty and homelessness are. A major part of my work was illuminating the connection between lack of affordable housing and homelessness.

The Facts

Inflation-adjusted, the median rents in San Diego have increased by over 35% since 2000, while median incomes have increased by a comparatively modest 4%. Low income and severely low-income households spend over 60% of their income to pay for a place to live. With their proportion of income spent on housing soaring above 30%, these households are considered severely rent burdened. With less available funds to buy food, clothing, education and other important needs, their quality of life is often significantly lowered.

In San Diego, hundreds of thousands of households work tirelessly just to afford a home in a housing market that becomes more expensive each year. This issue is worsened by the severe lack of affordable housing in San Diego: with vacancy rates of apartments priced under $1200 at a low of 2.2%, finding affordable housing can seem impossible. Furthermore, many of these San Diegans are just steps away from experiencing homelessness: according to the city's Housing Commission, 46,000 households in San Diego are on the waiting list for the Housing Choice Voucher, the federal government's system of awarding affordable housing in the private market.

Why It's Important

We see and hear about homelessness nearly every day. Driving around downtown, we notice many individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness. Reading through the Union Tribune or watching News 8, we are stunned by yet another report about the severity of this issue in our city. However, the systemic socioeconomic impact of San Diego's housing market is less visible and rarely covered by media.

To have a proper level of empathy and understanding for our neighbors in need, it is our responsibility to learn about the socioeconomic causes of poverty and homelessness. Even more importantly, we must actively listen to the voices of people experiencing homelessness and seek to understand how we can contribute to solutions. During my time at Father Joe's Villages, I have become absolutely certain that the staff and volunteers I have met are committed to those important goals.

From my experience, I know that getting involved with Father Joe's Villages is an excellent way to educate and dedicate oneself to helping our neighbors. Whether you work here, volunteer here or donate to the cause, you are serving the mission.

I am a college student from the other side of the country, completely new to San Diego and far less knowledgeable than any of the people who work in this office. Despite my naiveté, I was welcomed with warm smiles and willingness to teach. The same people who get up before the crack of dawn to come to the office were the ones who patiently answered my questions and encouraged me to learn. For that, I am not only grateful but also confident about how Father Joe's Villages plays a leading role in ending homelessness, one life at a time.

About Turning the Key

Turning the Key will add 2,000 units of much-needed affordable housing specifically designed to serve people who have fallen into homelessness. Through our 67 years of experience, we've learned that sleeping on the street is often the final leg of an otherwise complicated path of unpredictable circumstances. Turning the Key makes easily accessible supportive services a core component to housing, which helps ensure lasting self-sufficiency for each individual.

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The Link Between Affordable Housing and Homelessness in San Diego

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By: Veronica Ma What I've Learned As a student of Social Studies at Harvard University, I have spent the past two years studying the economic, social and political forces that challenged societies throughout history and continue to challenge cultures around the world.

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Statistics on the growing numbers of homelessness

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Statistics on the growing numbers of homelessness

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Shea Conley
Data shows that throughout San Diego the numbers are only continuing to rapidly increases on the homeless population.

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows.

One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

At the same time, the number of unsheltered people dropped significantly in downtown areas that traditionally have had large populations of homeless who sleep in tents, makeshift shelters and cars.

The area near Father Joe's Village and surrounding blocks, however, saw an increase in unsheltered people, with the population reaching more than 400.

The population shift could give credence to the argument that the city's efforts to clear away downtown homeless camps last yearresulted in homeless people moving elsewhere.

It also could be a fluke. The annual count is taken in pre-dawn hours, with volunteers walking sidewalks or driving on dark streets with clipboards to look for homeless people huddled in doorways, sleeping in cars or tucked inside tents.

Weather, lighting and other conditions also can affect the number of people counted, possibly shifting the totals in areas from one year to another.

The Regional Task Force on the Homeless organized the Jan. 26 annual count, and on May 17 it released a report that found 8,576 homeless people throughout the county, a 6 percent drop from the previous year.

The report gave the number of homeless people in cities and unincorporated areas, but not individual neighborhoods.

Finding those numbers takes more digging.

To do the count, the task force broke down the city of San Diego into more than 300 census tracts, and totals of each can be found online, separate from its annual report.

The National Homeless Information Project, described by coordinator Michael Ullman as a grassroots collaboration to share information about homeless services, took a deeper dive into the data and compiled a chart comparing this year's count with one taken in January 2017, arranging them according to the greatest changes..

Even Ullman's report, however, only identifies neighborhoods by census tract numbers. The actual locations can be found by finding the tract numbers on the San Diego Association of Governments' 2010 census map, which was used by the task force in the point-in-time counts.

One of the largest changes was in the heart of Hillcrest, between University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard, west of Park Boulevard and east of state Highway 163. The unsheltered population in that area increased by 960 percent, growing from five to 53 people since 2017.

That neighborhood had the second largest percent increase in the county, followed only by a 1,400 percent increase around UC San Diego, where the population grew from one to 15

Another increase in Hillcrest was seen near the UC San Diego Medical Center, which was up 59 percent with an increase from 17 to 27 people.

Downtown, things changed in the other direction, especially north of Market Street and south of Ash Street or Russ Boulevard.

In that stretch in Golden Hill between 24th Street and Interstate 15, the number of homeless people on the street dropped from 155 to 26 since last year, an 83 percent decrease.

The 129-person drop was the largest decrease of any census tract.

The second biggest dip came just to the west in the eight blocks from Ash to Market Street between 9th and 11th streets.

In that neighborhood, which includes many tall office buildings and restaurants, the population dropped from 251 to 158, a 37 percent decrease.

West of that, the neighborhood between Ninth and State streets that includes City Hall and Civic Center Plaza saw a drop from 279 to 195 unsheltered people, a 30 percent decrease.

Sherman Heights also saw decreases. One neighborhood east of I-5 and between Market and Commercial streets saw the number of people on the street drop from 112 to 30, a 73 percent increase.

South of Commercial Street in Sherman Heights, another neighborhood saw the homeless population drop from 81 to 20, a 75 percent decrease.

Together, the homeless population in those five areas dropped by 459 people.

There's no way to know where they all went, but it's likely that the three bridge shelter tents that the city opened between the two counts may have had a role in the decline.

Together, the three have 674 beds, and two of the tents are in downtown San Diego.

It's also possible that the homeless people in areas with the biggest drops just moved slightly south, west, east or north, and some numbers suggest that may have happened.

Just to the west of neighborhoods that saw a decline, the homeless population grew 38 percent, from 90 to 124, in the Marina area that includes the Embarcadero and San Diego Convention Center.

To the east of neighborhoods that saw a drop, the area around City College saw a 117 percent increase, with the homeless population growing from 18 to 39 people.

To the south, the area with the largest and most visible homeless population got even more unsheltered people.

The neighborhood south of Market Street between I-5 and Ninth Street includes Father Joe's Village and the Neil Good Day Center, and this year's count saw the homeless population there grow from 361 to 435, a 20 percent increase.

Other areas with notable changes include North Park between University Avenue and Upas Street, where the population dropped 92 percent, from 52 to just four, and a Bankers Hill neighborhood north of Laurel Street, which had a 100 percent drop from 47 people to zero.

The homeless population in Balboa Park dropped 36 percent, from 108 to 69 people, and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood south of Balboa Avenue and west of Clairemont Drive increased 900 percent by growing from two to 20.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows. One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

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Despite outreach, downtown homeless population growing

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Despite outreach, downtown homeless population growing

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Jacob Merino-Herzog
Talks about how the homeless population sense December 2016 to August 2018 and its decrease because of the Hep. A outbreak and how it is now back on the rise.

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Downtown San Diego may appear to have fewer homeless people during the day, but the number of people sleeping on sidewalks, in tents and vehicles at night has continued to grow over the past few months.

According to the count by Downtown San Diego Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for a variety of business groups, 964 unsheltered people were counted downtown in August, including 582 in East Village alone.

That's 38 more people than were counted in July and 205 more than were counted in June. The population is higher than it was shortly before the city open large tented shelters that took hundreds of people off the street about nine months ago.

The latest number is far from the peak of downtown's homeless population, which reached a record high of 1,415 in December 2016. Since then, the population has gone up and down over time, dripping to 882 in January 2017 and reaching 1,335 in August of that year.

The downtown homeless population dropped after the tents opened last December and January, but fluctuated over the next few months.

Homeless people in the tents are not included in the Downtown Partnership's monthly count. If the 475 people inside the two downtown tents were counted, the homeless population in the area would be a record high of 1,439.

The Alpha Project and Father Joe's Villages operate the two downtown tents while a third is operated by Veterans Village of San Diego on Sports Arena Boulevard.

The tents are known as bridge shelters because they are intended to provide temporary bridge between life on the street and a permanent home.

San Diego City Council members approved funding for the tents last November and set a goal of having 65 percent of the tents' inhabitants leaving for permanent housing. The hope was that people who left the shelters for housing would be replaced by people living on the street, and the downtown population would begin to drop.

A report on the tents' progress in June, however, found only 12 percent of people leaving the tent have found permanent housing. It's unclear where the others went, but homeless advocate Michael McConnell, who opposed the tents, said they most likely just returned to the streets.

The uptick comes at a time when the San Diego Police Department has increased its outreach efforts to homeless people, sometimes working on the street with representatives from nonprofits in an attempt to get people into shelters or connect them with services.

The city also has upped its effort to help the homeless in recent months by opening a second storage center for homeless people to store their possessions. The new center coincided with a new law that prohibits people from leaving items in public places for more than three hours.

Shopping carts, baby carriages and other items often associated with the homeless disappeared from many downtown sidewalks following the new law. The latest data, however, indicates that the homeless people themselves have not.

Angela Wells, director of communications for Downtown San Diego Partnership, said the nonprofit doesn't speculate on what the numbers mean, but only provides the information to help the community understand the level of homelessness in the neighborhoods.

The counts are taken in the early hours of the last Thursday of each month.

San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless CEO Gordon Walker said he had not analyzed the data so had no comment about the increase.

Father Joe's Villages President and CEO Deacon Jim Vargas she could not speculate about why the population has increased. While the downtown tented shelters haven't caused the homeless population on the street to decrease, Vargas said they still have provided a necessary function.

"If it weren't for these bridge shelters, there would be more people on the street," he said. "It's proving effective in that regard."

Vargas said it's not possible to tell why the downtown homeless population has increased, but he rejects the idea that services such as Father Joe's are a draw for them.

"I remind people that the services are there because that's where the homeless are," he said.

McConnell said he had no clue why the population had increased, but that he knew the tented shelters would not reduce homelessness.

"It appears to me that the city is more focused on reducing the visibility of homelessness rather than reducing homelessness itself," he said.

The good news is that this year's monthly average of 874 homeless people downtown is 184 less than the monthly average in 2017 and 199 less than the monthly average in 2016, according to the data provided by the Downtown San Diego Partnership.

The population count from August, however, shows the impact of the city's tented shelters may have been negated by more homeless people coming downtown.

The Alpha Project opened downtown on Newton Avenue on Dec. 1, with 325 beds, and the Father Joe's Villages tent opened a 150-bed tent for families and single woman downtown at 14th and Commercial streets in January.

The third tent has 200 beds and was opened Dec. 23 by Veterans Village of San Diego on Sports Arena Boulevard.

Although they were slow to fill, the opening of the tents did appear to have a quick impact on the homeless population. The downtown homeless population was 1,012 in December 2017, and the number dropped by 208 in January.

The annual countywide point-in-time count conducted by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless also found a decrease in many downtown neighborhoods when its count was taken in January.

By February, however, the Downtown Partnership's count found the population had crept up from 804 to 863. In March, it jumped to 980, the highest monthly count downtown so far this year.

The upward trend isn't constant, however. The population dripped to 791 in April, rose to 904 in May, then dipped again to 759 in June.

Since then, the downtown population has continued to rise and surpassed some of the monthly counts of 2017, when the population was considered at a crisis level.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer's Press Secretary Greg Block said this week that he did not know why the population increased downtown, but the city had no plans to respond by opening a fourth tented shelter.

"Right now we need to focus at doing better at what we're doing, getting more people through these," he said about the goal of finding permanent housing for people in the tents. "And we need to build more housing before we invest more in another bridge shelter."

McConnell has been critical of the city's approach and argues it should be pursuing more permanent housing opportunities.

"Shelters in and of themselves don't reduce homelessness," he said. "It may take some people off the street temporarily, but as more people become homeless, you have tents full and now you have the streets full, and you haven't accomplished anything. I've said this over and over, and now the numbers are bearing that out."

Monthly counts conducted by the Downtown Partnership do not include interviews with people, so there is no way to know what brought them downtown, how long they had been homeless or whether they are local or from another city or state.

San Diego Padres General Partner Peter Seidler, who pushed for the tented shelters and helped fund their opening, said he also would like to know why the population has increased.

To help get answers, he said he and business owner Dan Shea, who joined him in advocating for the tents, have provided the Regional Task Force on the Homeless with several hundred thousand dollars to improve its Homeless Management Information System, which will help collect data on homeless people in the area.

"I think it's critical that we have accurate analysis and accurate facts with which to make decisions and conclusions," he said about the system improvements he expects to be in places in a few months.

Like Vargas, Seidler also defended the three tent shelters because together they help house almost 700 people and link them to services that can lead them out of homelessness.

Besides providing an overall count of homeless people, data from the Downtown Partnership also shows the population rises and drops in different neighborhoods over the months.

The southeast corner of East Village had the largest homeless population in this and in past years. Its highest count was 688 in August 2017 while this year's peak was 385 in July. The lowest population for the southeast corner this year was 294 in April.

In the Gaslamp Quarter, the population reached a high of 93 in March and dropped to a low of 39 in June.

The Downtown Partnership's methodology for counting changed in May to match the method used in the annual countywide count by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. In the change, the number of people assumed to be inside a handmade structure or vehicle shifted by a fraction.

Numbers dipped in most areas following the change, but it's unclear if that was caused by the new methodology, and the differences were insignificant.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Despite outreach, downtown homeless population growing

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Downtown San Diego may appear to have fewer homeless people during the day, but the number of people sleeping on sidewalks, in tents and vehicles at night has continued to grow over the past few months.

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Housing and Homelessness: How Father Joe’s Connects the Dots

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Housing and Homelessness: How Father Joe’s Connects the Dots

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Jacob Merino-Herzog
Article Uses facts and data to show how the lack of affordable housing in San Diego effects homelessness

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By: Veronica Ma

What I've Learned

As a student of Social Studies at Harvard University, I have spent the past two years studying the economic, social and political forces that challenged societies throughout history and continue to challenge cultures around the world. To complement my education with the experience of working in the social sector, I took on a six-week opportunity at Father Joe's Villages. During my time here, I researched and presented information on the issues of homelessness, affordable housing and poverty. Importantly, I learned about how the agency creates solutions to help people who are homeless.

The research I did at Father Joe's gives me a deeper understanding of how complex and deep-rooted the causal factors of poverty and homelessness are. A major part of my work was illuminating the connection between lack of affordable housing and homelessness.

The Facts

Inflation-adjusted, the median rents in San Diego have increased by over 35% since 2000, while median incomes have increased by a comparatively modest 4%. Low income and severely low-income households spend over 60% of their income to pay for a place to live. With their proportion of income spent on housing soaring above 30%, these households are considered severely rent burdened. With less available funds to buy food, clothing, education and other important needs, their quality of life is often significantly lowered.

In San Diego, hundreds of thousands of households work tirelessly just to afford a home in a housing market that becomes more expensive each year. This issue is worsened by the severe lack of affordable housing in San Diego: with vacancy rates of apartments priced under $1200 at a low of 2.2%, finding affordable housing can seem impossible. Furthermore, many of these San Diegans are just steps away from experiencing homelessness: according to the city's Housing Commission, 46,000 households in San Diego are on the waiting list for the Housing Choice Voucher, the federal government's system of awarding affordable housing in the private market.

Why It's Important

We see and hear about homelessness nearly every day. Driving around downtown, we notice many individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness. Reading through the Union Tribune or watching News 8, we are stunned by yet another report about the severity of this issue in our city. However, the systemic socioeconomic impact of San Diego's housing market is less visible and rarely covered by media.

To have a proper level of empathy and understanding for our neighbors in need, it is our responsibility to learn about the socioeconomic causes of poverty and homelessness. Even more importantly, we must actively listen to the voices of people experiencing homelessness and seek to understand how we can contribute to solutions. During my time at Father Joe's Villages, I have become absolutely certain that the staff and volunteers I have met are committed to those important goals.

From my experience, I know that getting involved with Father Joe's Villages is an excellent way to educate and dedicate oneself to helping our neighbors. Whether you work here, volunteer here or donate to the cause, you are serving the mission.

I am a college student from the other side of the country, completely new to San Diego and far less knowledgeable than any of the people who work in this office. Despite my naiveté, I was welcomed with warm smiles and willingness to teach. The same people who get up before the crack of dawn to come to the office were the ones who patiently answered my questions and encouraged me to learn. For that, I am not only grateful but also confident about how Father Joe's Villages plays a leading role in ending homelessness, one life at a time.

About Turning the Key

Turning the Key will add 2,000 units of much-needed affordable housing specifically designed to serve people who have fallen into homelessness. Through our 67 years of experience, we've learned that sleeping on the street is often the final leg of an otherwise complicated path of unpredictable circumstances. Turning the Key makes easily accessible supportive services a core component to housing, which helps ensure lasting self-sufficiency for each individual.

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The Link Between Affordable Housing and Homelessness in San Diego

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By: Veronica Ma What I've Learned As a student of Social Studies at Harvard University, I have spent the past two years studying the economic, social and political forces that challenged societies throughout history and continue to challenge cultures around the world.

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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Jacob Merino-Herzog
Talks about diffrent locations of homelessness and percentage of homeless in that specific area of SD

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows.

One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

At the same time, the number of unsheltered people dropped significantly in downtown areas that traditionally have had large populations of homeless who sleep in tents, makeshift shelters and cars.

The area near Father Joe's Village and surrounding blocks, however, saw an increase in unsheltered people, with the population reaching more than 400.

The population shift could give credence to the argument that the city's efforts to clear away downtown homeless camps last yearresulted in homeless people moving elsewhere.

It also could be a fluke. The annual count is taken in pre-dawn hours, with volunteers walking sidewalks or driving on dark streets with clipboards to look for homeless people huddled in doorways, sleeping in cars or tucked inside tents.

Weather, lighting and other conditions also can affect the number of people counted, possibly shifting the totals in areas from one year to another.

The Regional Task Force on the Homeless organized the Jan. 26 annual count, and on May 17 it released a report that found 8,576 homeless people throughout the county, a 6 percent drop from the previous year.

The report gave the number of homeless people in cities and unincorporated areas, but not individual neighborhoods.

Finding those numbers takes more digging.

To do the count, the task force broke down the city of San Diego into more than 300 census tracts, and totals of each can be found online, separate from its annual report.

The National Homeless Information Project, described by coordinator Michael Ullman as a grassroots collaboration to share information about homeless services, took a deeper dive into the data and compiled a chart comparing this year's count with one taken in January 2017, arranging them according to the greatest changes..

Even Ullman's report, however, only identifies neighborhoods by census tract numbers. The actual locations can be found by finding the tract numbers on the San Diego Association of Governments' 2010 census map, which was used by the task force in the point-in-time counts.

One of the largest changes was in the heart of Hillcrest, between University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard, west of Park Boulevard and east of state Highway 163. The unsheltered population in that area increased by 960 percent, growing from five to 53 people since 2017.

That neighborhood had the second largest percent increase in the county, followed only by a 1,400 percent increase around UC San Diego, where the population grew from one to 15

Another increase in Hillcrest was seen near the UC San Diego Medical Center, which was up 59 percent with an increase from 17 to 27 people.

Downtown, things changed in the other direction, especially north of Market Street and south of Ash Street or Russ Boulevard.

In that stretch in Golden Hill between 24th Street and Interstate 15, the number of homeless people on the street dropped from 155 to 26 since last year, an 83 percent decrease.

The 129-person drop was the largest decrease of any census tract.

The second biggest dip came just to the west in the eight blocks from Ash to Market Street between 9th and 11th streets.

In that neighborhood, which includes many tall office buildings and restaurants, the population dropped from 251 to 158, a 37 percent decrease.

West of that, the neighborhood between Ninth and State streets that includes City Hall and Civic Center Plaza saw a drop from 279 to 195 unsheltered people, a 30 percent decrease.

Sherman Heights also saw decreases. One neighborhood east of I-5 and between Market and Commercial streets saw the number of people on the street drop from 112 to 30, a 73 percent increase.

South of Commercial Street in Sherman Heights, another neighborhood saw the homeless population drop from 81 to 20, a 75 percent decrease.

Together, the homeless population in those five areas dropped by 459 people.

There's no way to know where they all went, but it's likely that the three bridge shelter tents that the city opened between the two counts may have had a role in the decline.

Together, the three have 674 beds, and two of the tents are in downtown San Diego.

It's also possible that the homeless people in areas with the biggest drops just moved slightly south, west, east or north, and some numbers suggest that may have happened.

Just to the west of neighborhoods that saw a decline, the homeless population grew 38 percent, from 90 to 124, in the Marina area that includes the Embarcadero and San Diego Convention Center.

To the east of neighborhoods that saw a drop, the area around City College saw a 117 percent increase, with the homeless population growing from 18 to 39 people.

To the south, the area with the largest and most visible homeless population got even more unsheltered people.

The neighborhood south of Market Street between I-5 and Ninth Street includes Father Joe's Village and the Neil Good Day Center, and this year's count saw the homeless population there grow from 361 to 435, a 20 percent increase.

Other areas with notable changes include North Park between University Avenue and Upas Street, where the population dropped 92 percent, from 52 to just four, and a Bankers Hill neighborhood north of Laurel Street, which had a 100 percent drop from 47 people to zero.

The homeless population in Balboa Park dropped 36 percent, from 108 to 69 people, and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood south of Balboa Avenue and west of Clairemont Drive increased 900 percent by growing from two to 20.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows. One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

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Blake, Jazmin, Maliyah, Savannah

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Nathan

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It goes without saying, no issue in the last two years has been more pressing in San Diego than our ongoing homelessness crisis. Thousands of San Diegans are on our streets and in need of a service pipeline that leads to housing. During my term on City Council, my colleagues and I have weathered a public health crisis and implemented critical new policies and interim programs, setting the stage for a more deliberate approach to execute long-term solutions. As the city continues to invest more in these programs, we need to evaluate the current programs and think more strategically and comprehensively about how we move San Diegans off our streets.

However, despite not having a comprehensive strategy that highlights gaps in our system of care for homeless San Diegans, on Tuesday the mayor will bring forward a proposed housing navigation center. This center would require a major investment in both start-up and ongoing costs, all without providing more available housing units for homeless individuals or demonstrating how homelessness would be reduced. We should not tie our hands for the foreseeable future while we fail to address the most critical gaps in our systems.

I was hopeful about the original vision for this housing navigation center, which included a central intake facility to provide an extremely low-barrier shelter opportunity for chronically homeless people and those living in encampments as well as a one-stop shop to connect individuals with a variety of providers and on-site access to currently scattered services.

However, that vision is gone in this proposal. The housing navigation center is no longer designed as a central intake facility for the city overall. Rather, it would simply be another one of many downtown access points for services. It's unclear how this major investment would be different and add value to other nearby efforts - including the bridge structures for which the Council just approved additional funding - and unclear whether enhanced services at existing locations could more easily fill the same role.

Since the housing navigation center proposal process began, the city's homelessness system shifted dramatically. The City Council made important decisions that effectively brought housing navigation to the homeless with three temporary bridge shelters, expanded safe parking opportunities, a new storage facility and more. The city's experience with the bridge structures shows the biggest need is identifying and producing housing to which we can navigate homeless individuals. These rapid changes should shift priorities and serve as a warning against such a large long-term commitment to a single facility. The acute problem San Diego faces now is simply not having enough of the right housing for our fellow San Diegans, and until the city addresses the number of units available, this proposal is a navigation center to nowhere.

Instead, there are immediate steps we can take today to bring units online and address the known logjams in the city's system. That includes master leasing units in bulk, starting a flexible housing pool to support deposits, sharing housing and landlord incentives, and converting rundown motels and hotels from neighborhood nuisances. We can expand the successful family reunification program outside downtown, provide targeted, proactive street outreach throughout the city, expand PATH Connections Housing, which was designed to be a one-stop service shop, and further improve the housing navigation services in our bridge shelters and safe parking sites at remote service locations and with our homeless outreach team.

It would demonstrate leadership to reevaluate, reassess and change direction. The city purchased a building for a need we thought existed; since then circumstances have changed and the Council has learned that resources would be more effective elsewhere. The city is not locked into this proposal, and as the situation on the ground has significantly changed, the planning should too. While I've worked closely and effectively with the mayor to address homelessness, we fundamentally disagree on this, because I see fatal flaws in the housing navigation center budget and contract that fail to convince me this is a viable path toward reducing homelessness.

There are programs that work in San Diego, and we should put our resources into actions with real impact as an overall plan is finalized. Then we can have a thoughtful discussion on the best use of this valuable city asset. At my request, the Housing Commission is currently working with national experts to develop exactly that plan, which will be completed as early as summer 2019. Since it's not currently clear how a navigation center would specifically reduce homelessness, the city should consider how that money can be more effectively used elsewhere.

The city has a fiscal and moral imperative to use its limited resources as effectively as possible to address the homelessness crisis. That's why we should focus on opportunities to make a difference now, and wait on a housing navigation center until a time it makes sense in our ecosystem.
Chris Ward represents San Diego City Council District 3 and is chair the Select Council Committee on Homelessness and vice chair of the San Diego County Regional Task Force on the Homeless.

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One Big Thing Missing From the Latest Homelessness Proposal: Homes - Voice of San Diego

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It goes without saying, no issue in the last two years has been more pressing in San Diego than our ongoing homelessness crisis. Thousands of San Diegans are on our streets and in need of a service pipeline that leads to housing.

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Melannie Urquidez

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SAN DIEGO COUNTY, CA - The Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to direct staff to investigate ways to promote the construction of homes for low- and middle-income families in unincorporated San Diego County.

They'll focus on six areas where the county could make changes: streamlining the permitting process, correcting problematic laws and codes, rolling out incentives, updating community plans and modernizing land development codes.

The chief administrative officer will report back to the supervisors within six months on actions county government can take in those areas.

The move was met positively by representatives from the building industry, who said the process of planning, permitting and building new homes can be arduous and stymies the supply of affordable houses.

"Everybody's been talking about the housing crisis for months, if not years," said Matthew Adams of the Building Industry Association of San Diego. "We all know the root causes, we all know the consequences ... now it's time to solve it."

Nearly half of people in San Diego County are what's known as "housing-cost burdened," which means they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent or other housing costs.

The median price of a home in San Diego County is $550,000. In unincorporated areas, where county government has direct control, that number rises to $585,000, according to county staff.

A family earning the area's median family income of $81,800 would need to set aside 30 percent of their income for five years in order to save for a $110,000 down payment while also paying rent at their current residence, which on average ranges between $1,800 and $2,200, according to county planner Tara Lieberman.

The cost of housing in San Diego County and lack of affordable options has prompted many people to move to Riverside County, where the median home costs $354,600. One in five San Diego region workers live outside the county. While they save money on housing, they're left with long commutes that contribute to road congestion and pollution, county staff said.

Among the solutions county staff plan to explore are shortening the time it takes to build a house due to regulatory hurdles, increasing density bonus programs, updating some 15 community plans by 2030 and overhauling the land development codes, which were written in 1975.

Unincorporated areas are home to 492,500 of the region's 3.3 million people and account for the vast majority of land in San Diego County.
By City News Service / Image via Shutterstock
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San Diego County To Study Affordable Housing Solutions

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SAN DIEGO COUNTY, CA - The Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to direct staff to investigate ways to promote the construction of homes for low- and middle-income families in unincorporated San Diego County. They'll focus on six areas where the county could make changes: streamlining the permitting process, correcting problematic laws and codes, rolling out incentives, updating community plans and modernizing land development codes.

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Who Should Pay for a City’s Homelessness Crisis?

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Who Should Pay for a City’s Homelessness Crisis?

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Sonya Moran

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Eric Risberg/File/AP

California cities are angling to charge big business for housing, after a notable failure in Seattle. They might have a better shot.

Big businesses want lower taxes. Cities-and many of the people who live in them-want lower rates of homelessness. Lately, the compatibility of these two desires is being tested, as local governments across the U.S. float a new strategy to help the growing number of unsheltered people on their streets: Asking businesses to pay a greater share in funding aid.

Last week, a coalition of homelessness advocates, non-profits, and tenant groups in San Francisco secured an initiative for November's ballot that, if passed, would almost double the city's spending on homeless shelters using an increased gross receipts tax.

"There's so much wealth in San Francisco that we can [use to] address a longstanding issue," said Mary Howe, the executive director of San Francisco's Homeless Youth Alliance. "This is an opportunity for all of us to come together: We all benefit from seeing people move beyond poverty and homelessness."

This news comes justweeks after Seattle-home to companies like Amazon and Starbucks, along with the third-largest homeless population in the country-capitulated on a similar plan. After weeks of debate, the city's council had passed a per-employee tax on Seattle's largest corporations that would have raised $47 million for affordable housing and homeless initiatives. Though the charge had already been negotiated down to almost half its original size after an ultimatum from Amazon, a broader anti-tax coalition formed swiftly: The e-commerce giant, along with Starbucks, Vulcan, and other city-based outfits, campaigned hard to put a referendum on the November ballot. And, mere days before their repeal was slated for approval, Seattle's city council voted to overturn the measure themselves.

"The opposition has unlimited resources," one Seattle city council member put it, tearfully, as she voted against the head tax that she (and every other city council member) had once supported.

The rapid reversal of Seattle's tax raised alarms-surrender was swift and complete-but the blow hasn't yet deterred other cities from similar efforts. San Francisco's proposed initiative, called Article 28, falls in line with plans out of other California cities: Mountain View, home to Google's headquarters and 23,000 of its employees, will put an increase of their business license tax to a vote in November, with a plan to use the revenue for local transportation and housing projects. Cupertino, which hosts a large Apple presence, demurred on passing a head tax of its own this year, but Cupertino mayor Darcy Paul reportedly attended Mountain View's planning meeting to glean inspiration for a future tax draft. And in June, Philadelphia's city council passed an extra tax on construction projects by a slim margin, which will raise $22 million to spend on affordable housing. (San Jose, Redwood City, and Sunnyvale already have per-employee taxes, but the funds aren't earmarked specifically for housing projects.)

It's no coincidence that the tension is especially apparent in cities with large tech presences, where rapid economic growth has often been coupled with rising inequality. In San Francisco, that discrepancy is increasingly stark. Based on a 2017 count, more than 7,000 people experience homelessness in San Francisco each night. One in five of them are under 25. The shelter system has a 1,000-person wait for its 2,500 beds.

"San Franciscans should not have to step over homeless people or walk out their doors and see tents on sidewalks, and homeless people should not be forced to live in these conditions," the initiative reads. "The intent of voters in adopting Article 28 is to significantly decrease the visible presence of homeless people and tent encampments on City streets by eliminating chronic homelessness."

Already, the city spends almost $300 million on homeless initiatives each year. Interim mayor Mark Farrell increased the city's homelessness spending by $29 million this spring, directing most of the budget towards programs "intended to keep people from falling back into homelessness," including opening four new navigation centers. But proponents of the initiative want to double the budget, and allocate the extra money not only for homelessness prevention or recidivism reduction, but to help people currently on the streets by building more housing.

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"The city spends about 3 percent of its $10-11 billion budget on housing and homelessness," said Kate Chaloemtiarana, a volunteer with the Coalition on Homelessness, one of the San Francisco-based organizations that drafted the bill. "The reason we feel that that isn't enough is that most of that is spent on people who are currently housed-that leaves only 1 percent on people that aren't."

California cities aren't able to implement local income taxes of their own, notes the city's Chamber of Commerce Vice President Jim Lazarus, so an increase to the gross receipts tax like the one proposed is the closest they can get. Each year, the existing gross receipts tax nets the city $800 million in revenue from the largest 900 to 1,000 businesses that operate in San Francisco.

Article 28 proposes hiking this tax up by an average of half a percent, allowing the city to use the excess $300 million to decrease shelter wait times, fund mental health and substance abuse care facilities, and raise the resources needed for the city to implement the Housing First model of prioritizing permanent housing. Within five years, proponents of the initiative hope to house at least 4,000 homeless people and set up 1,000 more shelter beds.

On any given day, 7,000 people in San Francisco are homeless. Some camp out in BART stations. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

"We understand that businesses making a ton of money aren't going to be happy to hear they have a new tax coming," said Chaloemtiarana. "But we operated on making sure that this measure was as much of a no-brainer as it possibly could be: That's why it's a half a percent tax."

Chaloemtiarana is right: Even though it might seem a small change to the businesses making $50 million-plus a year, not everyone's happy. The most vocal critiques so far have come not directlyfrom local tech giants like Twitter, which hasn't commented, but from San Francisco's Chamber of Commerce, which was consulted in the drafting process. Though the Chamber hasn't yet taken a formal stance, vice president Lazarus says that the proposal is just bad tax policy: In 2012, San Francisco started a conversion from a payroll tax to the current gross receipts tax that still hasn't been fully completed. Keeping the rates and exemptions straight is getting soupier, says Lazarus, and adding another structural change to the gross receipts tax without fully phasing out the payroll one would be premature.

"Meanwhile, a childcare tax [is being decided], there's a transportation network company tax at the Board of Supervisors, there's now a homeless gross receipts tax, and a cannabis gross receipts tax," he said. "We have all these moving pieces. So that's one of our concerns: Tax policy generally."

However, he acknowledges that San Francisco's tax isn't as onerous-nor as doomed-as Seattle's was. "That was a head tax[charged per employee], which is even more difficult to justify when you're trying to retain jobs," he said. And, as Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, told the Associated P, "I suspect that local companies don't have the same kind of relationship to the political establishment as they do in Seattle. There's no Amazon here. It's not like a company town."

By getting the initiative on the ballot via petition, advocates appealed to public support, but now, they're hoping to galvanize city leaders. San Francisco's new mayor London Breed, who made housing and homelessness a key part of her campaign, has not yet commented on the proposal.

Mountain View's tax is less radical, and has the full support of the mayor, Lenny Siegel, who helped draft the bill. In June, the city council voted unanimously to push it through to the November ballot. Rather than focus on affordable housing or homelessness specifically-projects with clear community benefits but with a less direct impact on high-earning Google employees-Siegel says the city will use 80 percent of the funds for transportation projects, including infrastructure to connect Google's autonomous bus fleet. "We're talking about spending the money on things that will benefit our employers," he said. Ten percent will go directly towards building more affordable housing.

And unlike in Seattle, where opposition from Amazon was fierce and immediate, Google hasn't yet publicly commented on the measure. "Google had their chance-if they were going to oppose it, they should have done it by now," Siegel said. Google declined to comment.

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Siegel says the city's relationship with companies is not antagonistic, and, citing favorable public opinion polling, he predicts the tax will pass easily. Nonetheless, its fate was, for a moment,stickily entwined in a broader tax controversy; one that, too, pitted state politics and business interests against one another. To counter a proposed state-wide soda tax in California, lobbyists for the beverage industry had weighted the state ballot with a measure that would require a two-thirds vote on any local tax initiative, instead of a 50/50 one. It was a move state senator Scott Weiner called "truly vile" and Governor Jerry Brown called "an abomination"-and that would have made it virtually impossible to pass any local taxes in Mountain View or elsewhere. "We easily have enough for majority vote but not quite enough for a two-thirds vote," Siegel said. (A spokesperson for the American Beverage Association, meanwhile, insisted in a statement, "Our aim is to help working families by preventing unfair increases to their grocery bills.")

In the end, it was Big Soda that emerged victorious. By June, Governor Jerry Brown had preemptively banned soda taxes state-wide, prompting the soda lobby to strip the ballot of their offensive measure.

The win was a fraught one: Although it will give Mountain View's tax a greater chance of passing, it served as another example of who has been winning when businesses and government's priorities come into conflict.

About the Author

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Can Cities Charge Big Business for Growing Unaffordability?

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Big businesses want lower taxes. Cities-and many of the people who live in them-want lower rates of homelessness. Lately, the compatibility of these two desires is being tested, as local governments across the U.S. float a new strategy to help the growing number of unsheltered people on their streets: Asking businesses to pay a greater share in funding aid.

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Opinion: Homelessness Is Spilling into San Diego’s Residential Neighborhoods

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Opinion: Homelessness Is Spilling into San Diego’s Residential Neighborhoods

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An opinion piece about how affordable housing and raising taxes will not help homelessness. A direct counter to what we are doing we can use this to know what are counter argument statement will be.

Eliana Bentley

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By Mark Powell

San Diego's elected officials have spent decades trying to tackle the homeless crisis, but the problem still exists today and does not appear to be getting better anytime soon.

San Diego County has the fourth largest homeless population in the United States with an estimated 9,160 homeless people. We are behind only New York City, Los Angeles County and King County in Washington. With so many people experiencing homelessness it is unrealistic to think that building a handful of apartments will eradicate the crisis and it often appears that is how our local government is electing to handle the problem.

Only 15 percent of San Diego County's homeless population resides in downtown. The remaining 85 percent live in other areas of San Diego. For decades the homeless problem was confined to downtown San Diego and the beach areas, but it has now spilled into residential neighborhoods resulting in even louder public outcry for a solution to the homeless crisis.

A large number of San Diegans believe that the homeless dilemma is directly related to our affordable housing crisis and that spending tax dollars on building reasonably priced housing is the best solution. However, funds to help the homeless could be much better spent. Tax dollars should first be used for residential treatment facilities and impatient hospitals, and if there is money left over then build apartments for the chronically homeless. Let's treat the problems not the symptoms to insure our homeless population gets the professional help they need to return to society.

Increases in the homeless population also bring increased calls to police for service which costs money, and there are not enough police officers to respond to every call involving a homeless person acting bizarre in public. Ignoring the mentally ill homeless population also poses a safety risk to the public and the homeless. Although the vast majority of homeless are peaceful, there have been some serious violent crimes committed by homeless individuals, a fact which has law enforcement concerned.

We know that about two-thirds of the homeless have substance-abuse problems and approximately 30 percent of people experiencing chronic homelessness have mental illness. Mentally ill homeless should be given the same care we give to people who have other types of health issues, such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer. Government should do all that it can to help the homeless receive the care they need, and if the homeless individual refuses treatment or services and ends up breaking the law, they will need to face the legal consequences, which include arrest and incarceration.

Municipalities and local governments need a more assertive and proactive approach to manage homelessness. Quite a few of our elected officials spend a great deal of time and money on attempting to solve the homeless crisis through building homes or apartments, but what we really need to build are inpatient residential treatment centers like the Alpha Project that are specially designed to help the homeless with drug and alcohol abuse. San Diego also needs more psychiatric hospitals to help homeless individuals with mental health issues.

Most homeless individuals with mental health issues in San Diego end up at Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital, the largest privately operated psychiatric hospital in city. We could use more hospitals like Mesa Vista. San Diego will spend millions of dollars building housing and shelters for the homeless, and although these efforts may be done in good faith, they do not address the problem: substance abuse and mental illness.

The high cost of health care might account for the trend of releasing mentally ill homeless patients back onto the streets as quickly as possible to free up hospital beds. While discharging patients out of psychiatric hospital beds saves the health care system money, it could actually increase taxpayer cost overall by shifting care to more expensive jails and prisons. Releasing mentally ill homeless people back onto the streets without a support system is reprehensible, and most homeless shelters will refuse to admit a person who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs or is mentally unstable.

Cities and elected officials must start dealing with homelessness as an ongoing core function of local government. The relationship is clear; substance abuse and mental illness are the major contributing factors for many people becoming and remaining homeless. Without a proactive approach, the homeless will remain living in our streets, alleys, parks and canyons.
Mark Powell is on the board of directors for the San Diego Association of Realtors and is a member of the San Diego County Board of Education.
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Opinion: Homelessness Is Spilling into San Diego's Residential Neighborhoods - Times of San Diego

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Share This Article: San Diego's elected officials have spent decades trying to tackle the homeless crisis, but the problem still exists today and does not appear to be getting better anytime soon. San Diego County has the fourth largest homeless population in the United States with an estimated 9,160 homeless people.

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Cost of living statistics for other cities to use in comparison

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The monthly cost of living in San Diego runs around $1,600 for the average renter. And $2,200/month for renters who live alone. Get the full details here!

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San Diegans think homelessness is getting worse, would support spending more tax dollars to help, new poll shows

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San Diegans think homelessness is getting worse, would support spending more tax dollars to help, new poll shows

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Junaid Etemadi

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Most San Diegans think homelessness is getting worse, and they would support spending more tax dollars to help, a new poll shows.

They also cite housing costs as the single largest cause of the problem, and they believe elected officials bear the most responsibility for reducing it.

The results of the Survey USA poll, taken Wednesday through Friday, come a week after the release of an annual count that tabulated the number of homeless people in San Diego County at 8,576, down 6 percent from a year ago, although the drop may have been due in large part to a change in the way occupants of RVs were assessed.

The Point-in-Time tally also registered an 11 percent drop in the number of unsheltered homeless, those sleeping on the streets in tents, under tarps, and in parks or cars.

Despite those apparent gains, 60 percent of the poll respondents said homelessness in San Diego is getting worse. Only 11 percent said it is getting better, and 24 percent said it has stayed the same.

Women were more pessimistic about the situation than men, Democrats more downbeat than Republicans, and those ages 50 to 64 the most critical of all - 73 percent of them said homelessness is worse.

Asked whether they would suppport or oppose spending more tax dollars on the homeless, 55 percent opted for additional money, with 24 percent opposed and 21 percent "not sure."

That result held steady across almost all classifications of gender, age, race, political party affiliation, ideology, income level, educational attainment and neighborhood type, with a handful - Republicans, Asians, conservatives and rural residents - falling below 50 percent in their support for more spending.

Liberals were the most likely to back additional money, at 74 percent.

Poll respondents were split in their identifications of "the largest single cause" of homelessness. The top choice, at 33 percent, was the cost of housing, while 22 percent said "substance abuse," 20 percent "mental illness" and 18 percent "job loss."

Those answers differ from what the homeless report, as measured in the recent street count. The top three causes they cited, in order: "loss of job," "money issues" and "cost of housing." Substance abuse was sixth, and mental illness was not listed (although it might be included under "disability," which was the fifth-highest cause).

In the poll, San Diegans were also asked whether the homeless become that way here, or elsewhere. Almost half, 46 percent, said it is a homegrown problem, while 37 percent said elsewhere. (In the self-reported survey of the homeless, 74 percent said they started living on the streets in San Diego.)

So who bears the responsibility for reducing homelessness? Fifty-three percent of the poll respondents said "elected officials" do, easily the top choice among five options. The homeless themselves and their families were next, at 18 percent, followed by service providers (9 percent), "someone or something else" (4 percent) and business leaders (3 percent).

City officials opened three large dormitory-style tents for the homeless last winter, and a majority of poll respondents - 51 percent - said the structures are helping. Only 20 percent said the tents aren't beneficial, with the remainder undecided.

When asked how long they would support the tents remaining open, 47 percent said "indefinitely." Just 7 percent support closing them now. Officials recently extended the contracts for the tents through September.

Poll respondents also showed a willingness to support a range of other assistance programs. Clear majorities back emergency shelters (77 percent), subsidized housing (60 percent), free meals (71 percent) and counseling (73 percent).

A large number, 72 percent, also said they would support placing assistance programs in various parts of the county to draw the homeless away from the city of San Diego, where almost 62 percent of them now congregrate, according to the recent count.

However, there was opposition to two programs that have received increased government funding recently, storage faciliites (62 percent opposed) and one-way bus rides for the homeless to reunify with relatives in other cities (53 percent opposed).

The poll, sponsored by the Union-Tribune and 10News, surveyed 800 adults. It has a "credibility interval" ranging from plus or minus 3.8 percentage points to 4.5 percentage points.
john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com

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San Diegans think homelessness is getting worse, would support spending more tax dollars to help, new poll shows

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Most San Diegans think homelessness is getting worse, and they would support spending more tax dollars to help, a new poll shows. They also cite housing costs as the single largest cause of the problem, and they believe elected officials bear the most responsibility for reducing it.

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How no affordable housing causes homelessness

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How no affordable housing causes homelessness

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Melannie Urquidez

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As home prices continue to ascend, many aspiring buyers are priced out of homeownership - or as one study found, priced out of having a home at all.

The DataFace, a San Francisco-based data agency, combed through the pages of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) latest Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) and found that eight of the 10 states with the highest homelessness rates also have the nation's highest median home prices.

According to the AHAR, there were approximately 554,000 homeless individuals in the U.S. in 2017, and 193,000 of those individuals were "unsheltered," meaning they had no access to emergency shelters, transitional housing or safe havens.

The total number of homeless people rose (+0.7 percent year-over-year) for the first time since 2010, and the number of "unsheltered" homeless people increased a whopping 9 percent from 2016.

The District of Columbia, Hawaii, New York and California had the highest concentration of homelessness, ranging from 110 homeless residents per 10,000 (D.C.) to 34 homeless residents per 10,000 (California).

Oregon (34 per 10,000), Washington (29 per 10,000), Nevada (27 per 10,000), Massachusetts (26 per 10,000), Alaska (25 per 10,000) and Colorado (20 per 10,000) rounded out the top 10 states with the highest incidences of homelessness.

The states with the highest homelessness rates also had some of the nation's highest median home prices in 2017.

On a state-by-state basis, Hawaii had the highest median sales price ($599,000), followed by the District of Columbia ($550,000), California ($499,500), Massachusetts ($419,900) Colorado ($400,000), Washington ($350,000), Oregon ($350,000) and New York ($340,500).

Utah ($334,900) and Connecticut ($300,000) were the only states within the top 10 that had below average homelessness rates - 9 per 10,000 and 10 per 10,000, respectively.

"More affordable housing options are needed to combat the homeless crisis, particularly in states on the West Coast," concluded data scientist Kizley Benedict in the report.

The DataFace isn't the only company to make the connection between rising home and rent prices and homelessness.

According to Zillow, there is a direct correlation between rising rent prices and rising homelessness rates in the nation's 25 largest metros, including New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Seattle.

In New York City, there are currently an estimated 76,411 homeless people. Zillow data scientists projected that a 5 percent increase in rent would lead to an additional 2,982 people living on the street by 2018. In Los Angeles, there are currently an estimated 59,508 homeless people, and a 5 percent increase in rent would lead to an additional 1,993 people becoming homeless.

"We've seen so much pressure in rental housing markets that it's created a rental affordability crisis that has spilled over into a homelessness crisis at lower income levels," said Zillow Senior Economist Dr. Skylar Olsen in a statement.

"Often, the rental demand in these markets isn't being met with a sufficient supply. There are several cities grappling with this problem, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. This report puts a number on the link between rising rents and homelessness, highlighting the very real human impact that rent increases are having across the country."

In response, Zillow has pledged to give $5 million over the next five years to help combat homelessness, and HUD has offered $2 billion in homeless assistance grants through its Continuum of Care (CoC) Program, which "provides funding for efforts by nonprofit providers and state and local governments to quickly re-house homeless individuals and families to minimize trauma and dislocation."

The DataFace Methodology
The count of homeless collected by the Department of Housing and Urban Development are point-in-time (PIT) estimates taken on one night in the last 10 days of January each year. Data is recorded on the national, CoC (Continuum of Care) and state level. Data and reports can be downloaded here. The number of homeless per 10,000 residents for 2017 was calculated by dividing the raw counts of homeless by the total number of residents of the particular state. Count of residents per state was obtained from the "2016 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates" on census.gov. Data can be downloaded here. The data for median listing price by state are prices as of November 2017 and can be downloaded here. Email Marian McPherson

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Skyrocketing home prices are driving up homelessness rate

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As home prices continue to ascend, many aspiring buyers are priced out of homeownership - or as one study found, priced out of having a home at all. The DataFace, a San Francisco-based data agency, combed through the pages of the U.S.

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Mass amounts of high demand products, good areas and workers are low. The amount of money people are willing to throw down on a house increase value which is hurting local economy now that renters are asking for more. -zel

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Mass amounts of high demand products, good areas and workers are low. The amount of money people are willing to throw down on a house increase value which is hurting local economy now that renters are asking for more. -zel

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Photo by Adriene Hill / CalDream

Five Reasons California's Housing Costs Are So High, With Charts and Graphs
GUEST:
Matt Levin, data reporter, CALMatters
Transcript
Why are California housing costs so high? At its most basic level, it's a story of supply and demand - lots of people want to live here, and there aren't enough homes to go around.

But there are lots of uniquely California factors - from the shape of our coastline to Prop 13 - that have attached a painfully expensive price tag to the California dream. The median price of a home is now well over half a million dollars - that number is about $240,000 nationally. More than 20% of Californians pay more than half their income for housing.

Here are five reasons the state's housing market got so out of whack.
REASON #1: WE HAVEN'T BUILT ENOUGH HOUSING
Experts who study California's housing crisis argue about lots of things. Is rent control good or bad? Will that new shiny high-rise going up in your neighborhood help or hurt housing costs? How much should we blame "not in my backyard" NIMBYs for our problems?

But there is one principle the vast majority of housing experts agree on: Over the past few decades, California hasn't built enough housing to keep up with the number of people who live here.

The state housing department estimates that we need to build 180,000 new housing units a year to keep prices stable. Over the past ten years, we've averaged less than half of that.

Even when new construction was booming in the early and mid-2000's, new homes and apartment buildings weren't being built in coastal cities where the vast majority of Californians work. While places like the Inland Empire and Central Valley saw a building craze, places like San Francisco and Los Angeles basically flatlined.

We're also not keeping up with other states.

Places like New York and Massachusetts have built a lot more housing per capita than we have in recent years. That hasn't made those places cheap, but it has helped to alleviate some cost pressures.
REASON #2: DEMAND TO LIVE AND WORK AND OWN IN URBAN CALIFORNIA HAS REACHED A BREAKING POINT, AND PART OF THAT DEMAND IS GLOBAL
Over the last decade, Californians have increasingly tried to cram themselves into major urban centers that are already jammed with residents.

The Bay Area is the poster child here. Between 2000 and 2007, Bay Area cities accounted for only four percent of the state's total population growth. Between 2010 and 2017, nearly 20 percent of all new Californians were either being born in or moving to the Bay.

While the tech industry certainly bears much of the responsibility for that trend, the increased demand to live in California's urban cores extends beyond Silicon Valley. The urban parts of L.A. and San Diego have all seen a major increase in people wanting to live and work there, which means increased competition for rental housing.

And we're not just talking about apartment rentals. Here's a pretty amazing graph.

The number of single-family homes occupied by renters grew by more than 400,000 over the last ten years, while the number of owner-occupied units dropped during the Great Recession and has yet to recover.

So who owns these houses? The vast majority are "mom and pop" investors and wealthy individuals buying one or two additional properties. Foreign buyers, primarily from China, have also become increasingly enamored with California real estate. Last year, nearly one in four California single-family homes were sold in all-cash transactions, an indication of investor appetite for California real estate.

Overall, investors are a relatively small part of the housing market, especially when viewed from a statewide lens. But in certain local markets, investors compete directly with California families for homes.
REASON #3: PROP 13 DILUTES A CITY'S INCENTIVE TO BUILD NEW HOUSING
Why hasn't California built enough housing to keep up with its population?

Most housing researchers agree that part of the reason is Proposition 13, the landmark 1978 ballot initiative that capped how much local governments could collect from property taxes. While intended to protect California homeowners from unmanageable property tax bills, Prop 13 has produced a host of unintended consequences.

Imagine you're a city, sitting on a huge plot of vacant land. You could zone that land for housing or for commercial use, like a hotel or a Target. Your city obviously needs more housing - prices are sky high.

Easy decision, right?

Nope.

Prop 13 has made development decisions much more complicated. Because property taxes are capped, local governments have become increasingly reliant on other revenue sources. That vacant land is much more valuable to the city's coffers if a big box retailer gets built on it, as opposed to a multifamily apartment building. Housing nerds call this the "fiscalization of land use."

There's debate about just how much Prop 13 is to blame for the state's housing shortage. But talk to local elected officials and you'll see the issue isn't just a hypothetical dilemma.
REASON #4: IN MOST PARTS OF CALIFORNIA, THE PROCESS TO GET NEW HOUSING APPROVED IS DIFFICULT, TIME-CONSUMING AND EXPENSIVE
It can be hard to be sympathetic to developers. From time immemorial, it feels like they've complained about rules and regulations they say make it harder to build their projects. The builder who designed Stonehenge probably thought there was too much bureaucracy involved.

While it may be tough to trust developers, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong. The process by which a piece of land is approved for new construction can be incredibly cumbersome, time-consuming and risky. While good data on exactly how much this adds to housing costs is hard to come by, typical approval time for projects in San Francisco is over a year, while in L.A. it's eight months. That doesn't include when land needs to be "rezoned" for residential development, which can take even longer.

Why the lag? Here's the laundry list.

- Multiple Layers of Government Review: A housing project often must go through multiple government agencies, including the planning department, health department, fire department, building department and perhaps most importantly, a city council.

- Lots of Avenues for "Not In My Backyard" Voices: The review process for new developments gives ample opportunity for local residents to express their opposition. Locals may fear that new housing projects will change the character of their neighborhoods, increase traffic and hurt their property values. If a city councilmember votes for new housing, he or she may have to face dissatisfied voters.

- An Often Misused Environmental Law: The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, requires that local agencies consider the environmental impact of a new housing development before approving it. That sounds like a worthy goal, but the law has often been abused to prevent new developments - even environmentally friendly ones with high-density housing and bike lanes. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, CEQA appeals delay a project by an average of two and a half years.

- Local Growth Controls: Two-thirds of California coastal cities and counties have adopted policies that explicitly limit the number of new homes that can be built within their borders or policies that limit the density of new developments. Subtler growth controls include not zoning enough land for new development or requiring supermajorities to approve new housing.
REASON #5: LAND, LABOR AND RAW MATERIAL COSTS ARE HIGHER IN CALIFORNIA THAN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. AND THOSE COSTS ARE RISING
Unfortunately, California's coastline topography makes it more expensive to build here than most other places. Also, there's the ocean. You can't expand into the ocean.

Limited land plus tons of demand means high land prices. In many markets in California, the bulk of a single family home or apartment building's value is in the land it is built on.

But while the land itself is what typically eats up most of a developer's budget in California's hottest markets, it's not the only cost-driver. Construction labor and the cost of the raw materials have been rising over the last five years, and are higher in California than other parts of the country. According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, construction labor is about 20 percent more expensive in major California cities than in the rest of the country.

On the labor side, a shortage of skilled construction workers bears much of the blame. When the housing market crashed in the late 2000's, construction workers left the industry in droves. And those same workers haven't come back.

Construction today just doesn't seem to have the same appeal to younger workers. Firms are struggling to recruit younger workers to supplement and eventually replace a graying workforce.

Building codes and environmentally-friendly design requirements in many California cities require different types of raw building materials to be used, some of which can be pricier than elsewhere in the country. And nationwide, the cost of vital resources like lumber and concrete are on the upswing.

There are plenty of reasons beyond the five we've mentioned here that help explain why California housings costs have gotten so out of control. The task of making California affordable again - or at least relatively affordable again - defies a simple silver-bullet solution.

CALmatters' Ben Christopher contributed to this report.

The California Dream Project is a statewide collaboration focused on issues of economic opportunity, quality-of-life, and the future of the California Dream. Partner organizations include CALmatters, Capital Public Radio, KPBS, KPCC, and KQED.

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Five Reasons California's Housing Costs Are So High, With Charts and Graphs

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Photo by Adriene Hill / CalDream Five Reasons California's Housing Costs Are So High, With Charts and Graphs GUEST: Matt Levin, data reporter, CALMatters Transcript Why are California housing costs so high? At its most basic level, it's a story of supply and demand - lots of people want to live here, and there aren't enough homes to go around.

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Local employers worry about lack of affordable housing, study finds

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Local employers worry about lack of affordable housing, study finds

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Sonya Moran
Because of the lack of affordable housing this article reflects of the employers perspective of this issue.

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SAN DIEGO - A San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce study released Tuesday found that employer satisfaction with the local housing supply has never been lower.

The regional housing crisis has decreased affordability, created longer commutes and frustrated employees and employers alike, the study found. It projects a continued shortage in North County specifically, among a "substantial imbalance of housing and jobs."

Limited housing has strong economic implications, said Sean Karafin, vice president of policy and economic research with the chamber.

"Employers, in greater and greater numbers, are losing talented employees to places like Seattle, Austin and Denver, where housing is more affordable and there are more options for employees and their families," he said. "This means that employers will look to grow in our competitor regions instead of right here in San Diego."

San Diego-based London Moeder Advisors authored the new study as an update to a 2016 document.

Without significant action, the study forecasts a worsening shortage well into the future and ever-increasing housing costs whether a home is for sale or rent.

The consequences of not significantly bolstering the supply could become "irreversible," according to the study, which said the "inability to reconcile housing supply and demand is likely to fuel an unprecedented economic challenge for the region, as employers are weighed down by the plight of their employees unable to find or afford their preferred housing type."

The study found that anticipated demand for single-family homes, in particular, will be considerably higher than the potential for such structures in local housing plans, which often focus on urban apartments and condominiums.

"Younger millennials, and millennials who have yet to start families, may be continuing to prefer urban apartments and condominium living. But we shouldn't assume the same is true for those starting families," said senior principal Gary London, who wrote the study. "We need to focus on providing housing options for this growing population looking for that single-family feel by producing cluster-detached, rowhomes and townhomes, among other options."

A San Diego Association of Governments housing need determination called for an additional 42,852 units to be built between 2012 and 2016. There were only 20,103 new units built during that frame, or 46.9 percent of expected growth.

Additionally, a large number of units are being developed away from job centers, the study said.

"Ultimately, we have concluded that there will be an economic price to pay, as housing growth is not aligned with job growth. The situation tugs at the heart of our region's economic sustenance," it said.

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Local employers worry about lack of affordable housing, study finds

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SAN DIEGO - A San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce study released Tuesday found that employer satisfaction with the local housing supply has never been lower. The regional housing crisis has decreased affordability, created longer commutes and frustrated employees and employers alike, the study found.

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 Demolish hundreds of housing units at Peñasquitos Village, or PQ Village, and replace them with roughly 600 new units.

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 Demolish hundreds of housing units at Peñasquitos Village, or PQ Village, and replace them with roughly 600 new units.

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Andrea Baez

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On Monday, the San Diego City Council will consider a proposal to demolish hundreds of housing units at Peñasquitos Village, or PQ Village, and replace them with roughly 600 new units. The project, now known as Pacific Village, had encountered significant opposition from the community because it would only set aside 60 affordable housing units, resulting in a net loss of affordable units during an affordable housing crisis.

However, the San Diego County Building & Construction Trades Council last week facilitated a meeting in which the builders offered a revised relocation package to PQ Village residents that included 12 additional off-site low-income units. In exchange, the community groups Save PQ Village and San Diego Organizing Project have agreed to drop their dissent at Monday's meeting.

But what the builders, Atlantic & Pacific and Lennar Homes, are asking the City Council to do remains a violation of the long-standing community plan - and it should be rejected.

The project is being portrayed as a victory for affordable housing advocates but would ultimately add 269 above-median income units and result in 272 fewer low-income units. If the City Council approves Pacific Village, then it will perpetuate the slow-bleed of low income housing for our most vulnerable neighbors.

Even though the city's general plan states that affordable housing should be spread across the city "so that no single area experiences a disproportionate concentration," the San Diego Housing Commission has identified no affordable units in District 5 or PQ.

The city's general plan also states that San Diego is supposed to work towards "a variety of housing types and sizes with varying levels of affordability in residential and village developments," yet the median price of homes is $725,900 and the median rent price is $2,295 in that area. Also consider that the cheapest unit for sale at the moment is $550,000, but the median income for a family of four in San Diego is $63,400.

Thus, a family would need an annual income of $66,253 - without other debt - to qualify for a 4.5 percent loan and a 3.0 percent down payment.

So on its face, the Pacific Village project is not in accordance with the city's general plan because it would further undercut the policy for mixed income development city-wide.

City Councilwoman Georgette Gomez estimates in her recent Housing Action Plan that more than 1,300 federally subsidized affordable homes in San Diego were lost between 1995 and 2016. Another 1,371 units are converting to market rate over the next 5 years, including PQ Village Apartments.

Unlike most communities, the Rancho Peñasquitos Planning Board preserved low-to-moderate income housing to the older part of Peñasquitos called "The Village." Now that the housing market has returned to 2006 values, the landowner understands that it is profitable to remove the low-income units and replace them with more above moderate-income units.

In July 2017, the Rancho Peñasquitos Planning Board conditionally approved the Pacific Village project so long as there were at least 65 low income units. However, the city Planning Commission approved the project with only 60 low income units in December 2017.

This isn't the first time the owners of the property have attempted to ignore public calls to increase low-income housing. The approval of the Cresta Bella Apartments Project in 2009, although it increased density, led to a net loss of 213 low-income units. Under a ministerial permit, the project did not require approval from the Rancho Peñasquitos Planning Board or City Council, even though the community plan preserves the land for low-income units.

That set a precedent the developer in this current case is likely to leverage.

It's also problematic that several of the non-profit groups providing support and training to the residents have strong ties to developers and labor groups. The various stakeholders convinced leading community members last week to drop their opposition to the project in exchange for $1,500 more relocation money and the promise of affordable housing units off-site in Del Norte and for staying neutral at Monday's City Council meeting. But in the process, Lennar agreed to a relocation amount that is less than the industry standard of $5,000 per unit, or what Los Angeles Relocation Program requires from its landowners.

The message to other landowners and developers is that they need only pay a small fee to buy off affordable housing advocates and residents in exchange for their silence. Some of the Save PQ Village members who disagreed with the developer's agreement splintered off to create another group, known as Village United, to continue advocating for PQ residents.

The fate of future low-income units rests in the hands of the City Council on Monday. It will either exercise political cowardice and rubber stamp the project. Or it will exercise political courage and support our numerous community plans that encourage increasing mixed-income housing throughout San Diego.
Melinda Vásquez is a mortgage attorney and vice chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party's North Area Caucus. See anything in there we should fact check? Tell us what to check out here.

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The Fate of Affordable Housing Rests with the San Diego City Council - Voice of San Diego

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Elected officials will consider a Rancho Peñasquitos housing proposal on Monday that will result in fewer units for low-income residents. The proposal is at odds with the city's long-term goals and will set a bad precedent. It should be rejected.

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Citizens Initiative to raise hotel tax to benefit homeless population

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Citizens Initiative to raise hotel tax to benefit homeless population

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Blake D.
Proponents say they envision pulling in $2 billion for homelessness over 42 years, more than double the amount the mayor’s measure pledged.

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San Diego business and labor leaders are celebrating the New Year with a revamped pitch to raise hotel taxes to bankroll a Convention Center expansion, homeless services and street repairs.

Backers of the new citizens' initiative took cues from Mayor Kevin Faulconer's failed 2017 measure but made significant changes.

The biggest one: A promise to invest more of the increased hotel-tax hauls to homelessness services, housing and other initiatives. The initiative would raise the tax more than the previous plan sought and would put off the investment in street repairs.

Faulconer's measure would have thrown just 18 percent of new cash at homelessness causes and nearly two-thirds at Convention Center and tourism-related wants. Democrats and labor leaders came out against Faulconer's measure arguing that it should have done more to address San Diego's homeless crisis.

We're still waiting on detailed projections but initiative language released by the campaign promises far more money will go to homelessness, especially in the first five years of the measure. They're estimating about a $140 million haul during this period.

"We decided to frontload homelessness dollars since it's such a crisis right now," said Carol Kim, a Building Trades Council official who helped hash out a deal with tourism leaders. "We wanted to deploy those dollars as quickly as we can."

After that, homelessness will continue to get just under a third of new cash coming in. Proponents say they envision pulling in $2 billion for homelessness over 42 years, more than double the amount the mayor's measure pledged.

The new measure accomplishes this in two ways.

First, it holds off on dollars flowing to road repair projects during the tax hike's first five years and promises about a third less over the next 37 years than Faulconer's measure earmarked for those projects.

It also relies on a steeper tax increase.

Last year, hoteliers maintained that Faulconer's proposed 1-to-3 percent tax hike, depending on the proximity of hotels to the downtown Convention Center, was as much as they could muster without hurting local tourism.

This year, they agreed to tack another .25 percent increase onto hotel bills.

"Ultimately, the industry realized that an incremental increase of the amount we were talking about - a ¼ percent increase across these districts and a change in the percentages - would provide a really meaningful and significant addition to the homelessness funding and that that was of great importance to the industry," said Robert Gleason of Evans Hotels, one of the key negotiators on the tourism side.

Hoteliers fit in another big edit too.

Tourism leaders have long been fixated on a contiguous Convention Center expansion. Now they're offering themselves some breathing room.

Faulconer's measure strictly linked funding to the waterfront, contiguous expansion approved by the Coastal Commission years ago.

The initiative includes new language indicating the Convention Center expansion must simply be "physically connected to the existing Convention Center" - and removes language suggesting the project approved by Port and state Coastal officials is the only option.

Some observers are reading this as though it opens up the door for an expansion across the street from the Convention Center with a walkway connecting the two facilities.

That would be convenient given the fact that the city and the Convention Center Corp. no longer controls the land need for the long-sought waterfront expansion. The partners who do are moving forward with a hotel that would permanently block the long-envisioned bayfront Convention Center expansion.

Laura Fink, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said this change wasn't an accident.

"That was done so that there would be some flexibility with respect to location," she said. "That was done deliberately."

Fink, Gleason and Mike McDowell, president and CEO of the San Diego Lodging Industry Association, both emphasized Monday that the focus continues to be on the long-envisioned waterfront expansion for now.

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How the New Push to Increase Hotel Taxes Differs from the Old One

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The new hotel-tax initiative pushed by business and labor leaders promises to invest more money in homelessness and opens up the possibilities for a Convention Center expansion that isn't on the waterfront. (It would also raise the hotel tax higher than has been proposed in the past.)

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Sales tax increase in Bakersfield looking to increase funding for homelessness and other programs.

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Sales tax increase in Bakersfield looking to increase funding for homelessness and other programs.

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Nathan

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In a shocking turn of events, the city of Bakersfield's sales tax measure has gained enough votes to pass.

In a 97-vote decision, yes votes edged out no votes by one-tenth of one percent. The tax measure currently stands at 50.05 percent yes votes to 49.95 percent no votes, or 45,835 to 45,738, according to an update released Monday by the Kern County Elections Office.

There are no ballots left to be counted, Assistant Registrar of Voters Karen Rhea said in an email.

Measure N, which will raise the sales tax in the city from 7.25 percent to 8.25 percent, initially appeared to fail on election night after the first returns showed a seemingly insurmountable deficit of 1,500 votes that grew to 2,600 a few days later.

But as the Elections Office counted mail-in and provisional ballots in the weeks after the election, the deficit began to erode.

As of last week the measure was within 14 votes of passing, gaining momentum that seemed to make it destined to pass.

Measure N has passed by 97 votes as the results stand now.

"Those of us who deal with complaints every day - and felt we were out of viable options about how to deal with that in the big picture - to have the chance now to address those issues in a comprehensive way is a very good feeling," said City Manager Alan Tandy.

The tax increase would raise an estimated $50 million per year for the city.

City officials have said they would hire 100 police officers if the measure passed, which would allow the Bakersfield Police Department to respond to a greater amount of complaints in person.

The city has received complaints about the kinds of calls it responds to. On low-level calls such as residential break-ins that had already occurred, crime victims have been asked to fill out an online form rather than speaking to a police officer.

With the additions to the police force, BPD should be able to expand the services it offers to residents.

Tandy said it will take three years to recruit, train and put on active duty all 100 officers the city plans on hiring.

In the meantime, he said the city will initiate other services.

"We have a list of things that are going to happen quite promptly so that people will see enhancement to public safety right away," he said.

The city has said it will hire staff for economic development purposes, increase homelessness abatement efforts and restore cuts from several years ago that occurred at the Bakersfield Fire Department.

"Now we're given an opportunity," said City Councilmember Andrae Gonzales, who campaigned in favor of the sales tax. "We're given the opportunity to show the entire community what we can do when we have additional resources."

He predicted that many improvements to the city's quality-of-life elements would be enacted as a result of the tax increase, including upgrades to the city's downtown.

"For years and years and years, the city of Bakersfield has been doing more with less," he said. "And at some point you begin doing less with less. So now we're able to really take it to the next level."

The Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce, which supported the tax increase, also celebrated the passing of Measure N.

"The Measure N campaign was an unprecedented coalition of business, public safety, labor and community groups that came together to build a safer, stronger Bakersfield," Chamber President and CEO Nick Ortiz said in an email. "With the Measure's apparent passage (with today's updated totals), the Chamber's charge now is to work with the City to ensure the funds are spent in a manner consistent with the community's priorities."

But the passage of Measure N initiates a "nightmare scenario" for the Kern County government.

The county also put a 1 percent sales tax increase on the ballot, which was soundly voted down by voters.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood initially proposed the tax increase to the Board of Supervisors.

He said he worried that if the city passed a sales tax increase without a similar increase in the county, the city would go on a police officer hiring spree that would result in droves of deputies leaving the Kern County Sheriff's Office.

The department already faces a shortage of active-duty deputies, which could be exasperated now that Measure N has appeared to pass.

Last week, Youngblood said that he had no plans for mitigating the situation, but he would work with the County Administrative Office to try to prevent the bleeding of deputies from the county.

Attempting to allay the county's worries, Tandy said in an email that historically 90 percent to 95 percent of BPD hires had been either entry-level employees or laterals from across the state, not just the county.

The sales tax will take effect beginning April 1, Tandy said, with the first influx of cash arriving near the end the current fiscal year.

The city will now go about making a flush budget for the next fiscal year with the increase in funding. The county will, once again, prepare for what could be another lean year.

You can reach Sam Morgen at 661-395-7415 or smorgen@bakersfield.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @smorgenTBC.

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Bakersfield sales tax passes in final vote update

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In a shocking turn of events, the city of Bakersfield's sales tax measure has gained enough votes to pass. In a 97-vote decision, yes votes edged out no votes by one-tenth of one percent. The tax measure currently stands at 50.05 percent yes votes to 49.95 percent no votes, or 45,835 to 45,738, according to an update released Monday by the Kern County Elections Office.

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How the homeless are taken into account when paying taxes

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It's that time of year again when everyone must do their taxes. Of course, most people experiencing homelessness don't file tax returns and wouldn't suffer a penalty for not filing because they make little to no money.

Contrary to what many people believe, though, many homeless people are employed, at least part of the time. According to a 2002 national study by the Urban Institute, about 45 percent of homeless adults had worked in the past 30 days, only 14 percentage points lower than the employment rate for the general population at that time.

There are some advantages for low-income households when filling out their taxes. Low-or moderate-income households who earned an annual income less than $14,590 for single adults and $20,020 for married couples (filing jointly without dependents) will qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program and can receive a maximum credit of $495 for single adults and higher amounts for households with dependent children.

A new consideration this year for people living in shelters or on the streets is the requirement under the Affordable Care Act that everyone have health insurance. If you don't have health insurance and you don't qualify for Medicaid, you will have to pay a fee or a "shared responsibility payment." The good news is that almost all homeless people qualify for Medicaid. If you don't qualify for Medicaid and are homeless you can be exempt from this requirement.

Here is some basic information and guidance on filling taxes for persons experiencing homelessness and their service providers:

First, anyone making an annual income less than $10,150 as a single person or $20,300 as a married person filling jointly is under the threshold for filling taxes and therefore not required to file a tax return.

In states with Medicaid expansion, all persons experiencing homelessness should qualify for Medicaid, assuming they make less than 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, which is $16,105 a year for single adults. (Community providers are already working hard to get everyone who's eligible covered. People can apply anytime, even if open enrollment has ended.)

In states that chose not to expand Medicaid, anyone making an annual income of more than $10,150 as a single person or $20,300 must file a tax return and have health insurance in order to avoid paying a penalty fee, which is either a small percent of his or her income or a flat sum, whichever is the higher amount.

Fortunately persons who don't qualify for Medicaid, but are experiencing financial hardships, such as homelessness, can qualify for exemptions to the health insurance mandate. There are many other exemptions that may benefit persons experiencing housing instability but who are not literally homeless.

All that is required to establish housing status as homeless is filling out a form. No other documentation is required for establishing homelessness status. If someone applying this exemption doesn't hear back before filing his or her taxes (or is submitting the application concurrently), the tax preparer should write "pending" on Form 8965, Part I, in the space requesting the Exemption Certificate Number.

Health insurance is important. Be sure to confirm that you or someone you are working with is not in fact eligible for Medicaid or cannot afford other types of insurance before seeking an exemption.

Happy filing!

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Homelessness and Taxes: Tax Credits and The Affordable Care Act - National Alliance to End Homelessness

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It's that time of year again when everyone must do their taxes. Of course, most people experiencing homelessness don't file tax returns and wouldn't suffer a penalty for not filing because they make little to no money. Contrary to what many people believe, though, many homeless people are employed, at least part of the time.

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The article talks about why raising taxes isn't a good strategy because it makes more people less able to afford housing

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The article talks about why raising taxes isn't a good strategy because it makes more people less able to afford housing

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Jazmin Garcia
leaves less people able to afford housing, food, and makes them more likely to be homeless - makes problem bigger

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Josue Sanchez
Backers of a proposed initiative that could dramatically increase taxes for commercial and industrial properties by undoing some protections imposed by 1978's proposition 13.

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SAN DIEGO - Backers of a proposed initiative that could dramatically increase taxes on commercial and industrial properties by undoing some protections imposed by 1978's Proposition 13 submitted thousands of petition signatures Tuesday in hopes of getting the issue before voters in 2020.

Members of Schools and Communities First, the statewide coalition backing the initiative, held news conferences in San Diego and other locations around California to announce the submission of about 850,000 petition signatures to county registrars. The group needs 585,407 valid signatures to get the proposal on the statewide November 2020 ballot.

The group had initially been trying to get the measure on this November's ballot, but opted to delay two years.

The initiative would create what is known as a "split roll" system by revamping Prop 13, which imposed limits on annual property tax increases regardless of changes in market value. The initiative would require instead that commercial properties be assessed at current market value, but would maintain the caps for residential property.

Proponents say the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act would raise up to $11 billion a year, with the proceeds going toward schools and local infrastructure.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association - the namesake of which authored Proposition 13 - has blasted the proposed initiative as a tax grab. Other opponents, such as state Board of Equalization member George Runner, warned that the idea of a "split roll" would do more harm than good. He noted that if property taxes sharply rise on commercial properties, the owners will pass along the costs to tenants, such as small business owners who will pay the price in terms of increased rent, and those costs will eventually be passed on to consumers.

"The fanciful fiction of split roll is that business owners pay more, yet homeowners will somehow remain unaffected," Runner said recently. "In truth, when prices rise that burden falls squarely on everyday people. If you're running a laundromat you can't absorb dramatic increases in rent. You'd be forced to pass those costs on to your customers."

A recent report by the state Legislative Analyst's office found that the measure could generate $6 billion to $10 billion a year. But the report also warned there could be side effects such as businesses relocating or opting not to move to the state in the first place, so the initiative's actual impact is difficult to assess.

Proponents insist, however, that the measure will close a tax loophole and restore funding for schools and services such as parks, libraries, health clinics, trauma centers, affordable housing and homeless services.

"We can no longer afford to keep giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires and big corporations," according to proponents.

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Initiative to increase commercial property taxes submitted for 2020 ballot

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SAN DIEGO - Backers of a proposed initiative that could dramatically increase taxes on commercial and industrial properties by undoing some protections imposed by 1978's Proposition 13 submitted thousands of petition signatures Tuesday in hopes of getting the issue before voters in 2020.

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Mayor Muriel Bowser's (D) proposal to raise the District's sales tax to finance increased city services to fight homelessness is badly misplaced [" 6% D.C. sales tax proposed," Metro, April 3]. Raising taxes leaves people, including poor people, less able to afford housing, food and whatever else they need. And while emergency shelters and other services may have their place, they do not address the root causes of homelessness.

We have property taxes on buildings, which punish the construction of housing. We have income and payroll taxes, which punish earning a living. We have sales taxes, which keep people from spending their money on what they need. No wonder we have poverty and homelessness.

If we instead taxed the value of land - not buildings - we would not discourage the construction of housing; instead, we would make it unprofitable for speculators to hold land out of use and make people waste time and gasoline commuting past vacant lots. With more housing built when and where it was needed, we would have less urban sprawl and more, cheaper housing available. That would do more good than almost any other government effort to fight homelessness.
Nicholas D. Rosen, Arlington

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Raising taxes isn't a good strategy to help the District's homeless

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Mayor Muriel Bowser's (D) proposal to raise the District's sales tax to finance increased city services to fight homelessness is badly misplaced [" 6% D.C. sales tax proposed," Metro, April 3]. Raising taxes leaves people, including poor people, less able to afford housing, food and whatever else they need.

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Backlash prompts San Diego to more closely study proposed housing law

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Backlash prompts San Diego to more closely study proposed housing law

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Brandon Banuelos
-Some people don't want to build affordable housing.

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Backlash against a proposal that aims to boost low-income housing construction has prompted San Diego officials to order a study by outside consultants and to create a panel of community leaders to debate it.

The new law would require developers building apartment complexes to include units reserved for low-income residents. The city wants to ensure the law doesn't backfire by choking off housing construction amid a local affordability crisis.

The city has hired Keyser Marston Associates to analyze the highly anticipated "inclusionary housing" legislation to determine how aggressive San Diego can be without scaring off housing developers.

The city has also created a 25-member working group that includes supporters and critics of the proposed legislation, which would be based on laws enacted by other California cities facing severe shortages of affordable housing.

The local housing shortage has pushed the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment above $1,500 and the average home price above $600,000.

Supporters say the legislation could play a key role in solving the city's housing crisis, while also making many neighborhoods more diverse racially and economically.

Critics, including some local developers and business leaders, warn that the legislation could choke off housing construction at a crucial time by slashing the profit margins of developers.

Both groups say it's essential for the city, with help from consultants, to find the sweet spot at which the law's requirements will increase the number of low-income units being built without stifling overall housing construction.

Keyser Marston will study eight market-rate housing prototypes to determine the impact on construction decisions that a variety of proposed inclusionary requirements might have.

Initial discussions indicate city officials plan to require somewhere between 15 percent and 30 percent of the units in a new project be reserved for low-income residents.

The prototypes will be representative of projects now being built around the city, said Jenny van der Keyde, policy director for the San Diego Housing Commission, during a recent meeting of the City Council's smart growth committee.

The consultants will also study the viability of allowing developers to pay hefty fees to the city instead of including low-income units in their projects. The fees, if large enough, could be used by the city to build low-income units elsewhere.

Van der Heyde said Keyser Marston has also been asked to create a formula for determining the fees and a mechanism for having the fees increase or decrease based on market conditions and inflation.

Finally, the consultants will study how to handle smaller projects for which requiring a developer to include low-income units might be impractical.

The series of studies will be posted online for 30 days when they are complete, likely in December.

Councilwoman Georgette Gomez of City Heights, who is spearheading the inclusionary housing legislation, has set a goal of having the council approve something by the end of the year.

Critics say city officials should slow down because the legislation is too important and too fraught with risk to rush it.

Stefanie Benvenuto, public affairs director for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, told the smart growth committee that the city shouldn't let the acuteness of the problem prompt hasty action. She said chamber members generally support new inclusionary housing requirements because many run businesses that rely on low-wage workers.

"We understand very clearly that these folks are absolutely critical to our economy, to our workforce and to our city's success," she said.

Matt Adams, vice president of the local chapter of the Business Industry Association, was less enthusiastic. He said the new requirements will impact market rate rents, sale prices and production levels. He warned that similar legislation in San Jose and Portland has significantly reduced housing construction in those cities.

"We don't want to repeat those mistakes down here," he said.

Adams also said that while he's appreciative of being included on the 25-member panel of community leaders, the first two meetings have made it clear that supporters of inclusionary housing don't fully understand the risks.

"There are a quite a few members that understand the need, but don't really understand how to get these units produced," he said. "We're working double time to make sure the proper information is brought forward."

Gilman Bishop, a local developer, said the new requirements would come as construction has already become nearly cost-prohibitive in several San Diego neighborhoods.

He said even without the new requirement developers are reluctant to build in places like Sherman Heights and Encanto because rents are too low - and in places like Hillcrest and North Park because land costs are so high.

"There is a tipping point in housing development where it no longer pencils out," he said.

Supporters acknowledge such concerns and say the Keyser Marston study will help the city craft the right approach. They also tout the potential benefits of the new requirements.

In addition to providing thousands of new rent-restricted units for low-income people, they could reshape the demographics of a city where low-income minorities dominate southeastern areas and whites dominant northern neighborhoods.

Those racial and economic trends could shift when new apartment complexes and other rental projects are required to include a significant percentage of subsidized units for low-income residents.

Councilman Scott Sherman said he supports that idea, but said government regulations on the free market often don't have the desired consequences.

"I worry about what government does sometimes with the best of intentions," he said.

San Diego has actually had an inclusionary housing ordinance since 2003, but appellate court rulings in 2009 have prevented the city from enforcing much of it and discouraged discussions about making it more aggressive.

A new state law enacted in January, Assembly Bill 1505, authorizes cities and counties to require inclusionary units as a condition of development of residential rental units.

San Diego's ordinance requires developers of multifamily buildings to set aside 10 percent of units on-site for people with low incomes, or to cut the city a check that officials call an "in-lieu fee."

The court rulings had limited the city's options to just collecting the fees, which critics say don't come close to covering the costs of the low-income units the developers get to avoid building.
david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick

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Backlash prompts San Diego to more closely study proposed housing law

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Backlash against a proposal that aims to boost low-income housing construction has prompted San Diego officials to order a study by outside consultants and to create a panel of community leaders to debate it. The new law would require developers building apartment complexes to include units reserved for low-income residents.

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Why San Diego must create a roadmap to solve homelessness

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Why San Diego must create a roadmap to solve homelessness

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Maliyah Prince
Background info and possibly solution from Jim Vargas ( CEO of Father Joes)

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Every day, I feel the weight of the challenge San Diego faces in addressing our homelessness crisis. And every day at Father Joe's Villages, I am blessed to meet someone who tells me about their incredible dedication to helping our neighbors in need. I am lucky to work alongside hundreds of other people across the county who are invested in making sure that everyone in San Diego has a place to call home.

Despite the committed leaders and residents investing their time and resources to help those in need, San Diego's homelessness crisis persists year after year. In fact, from 2017 to 2018, the number of families without shelter in our community increased by 12 percent and we remain the city with the fourth largest population of homeless people in the nation.

The secret to achieving success is not so secret. In order to dramatically reduce homelessness in our community, we need two things: more housing and services for those on the streets, and a clear plan on how to deploy them.

At its core, San Diego's homelessness crisis is a housing crisis. We have a rental vacancy rate of around 3 percent, one of the lowest in the country. Rents surged by 4.9 percent in July alone.

For many in lower income brackets or on fixed incomes, this deadly combination of minimal vacancy, high prices and steep competition leaves them with nowhere to go but the streets.

San Diegans have heard about a myriad of well-intentioned attempts to increase the housing and services our community so desperately needs.

Most recently, residents followed along with the news regarding just one of these many endeavors - the proposal to raise hotel taxes and dedicate some of those funds to addressing homelessness. It is disheartening that this effort may not move forward, as additional financial resources for housing and supportive services are the only way to impact our region's crisis.

However, in order to effectively execute on any new funding - and in order to make the case to the public for such funding - we must develop a coordinated and clearly articulated strategy for ending homelessness in the San Diego region. This is fundamental.

It may surprise many to learn that there is no such plan. San Diegans hear about many valuable efforts moving forward, but they also see clearly that the net results of these various investments have not been able to move the needle for those suffering and for our community at large. Without a regional strategy, this pattern will continue.

Without a coordinated regional plan, the many efforts of our leaders have a limited capacity to create lasting change. Decision makers, funders, service providers and residents are forging ahead with good intentions, and with much-needed programs, but without a road map that articulates exactly what kinds of housing and services we need and the achievable steps to reach our destination. Instead, officials are left to address a regionwide issue with local responses, creating a patchwork of stand-alone initiatives.

A clearly articulated plan would outline both a near-term strategy to get people off the streets today, and long-term plan to house them tomorrow. We must take immediate action while also putting in motion long-term plans to create housing and solve the root of the problem.

Homelessness is a regional issue that requires a regionwide response.

As the central convening body on homelessness, the Regional Task Force on the Homeless (RTFH) is best positioned to take the lead on initiating and implementing the coordinated plan our community needs. It will undoubtedly need additional resources and support, but I am confident that all of us, from service providers to elected officials and business leaders, stand ready to assist in taking this critical step forward to tackle our homelessness crisis head on. With this foundational tool in place, dedicated San Diegans can forge ahead with hope. With a clear road map defined, we can feel confident that our investments will help more people move off the streets for good and create a San Diego where everyone has a place to call home.
Vargas is president and CEO, Father Joe's Villages.

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Why San Diego must create a roadmap to solve homelessness

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Every day, I feel the weight of the challenge San Diego faces in addressing our homelessness crisis. And every day at Father Joe's Villages, I am blessed to meet someone who tells me about their incredible dedication to helping our neighbors in need.

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Nathan Keodara
Debate whether future online retailer taxes should go to homelessness or tax cuts.

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Thanks to a Supreme Court decision earlier this year, the District may legally impose sales taxes on online purchases from retailers who lack a physical presence in D.C. Policymakers are set to green-light such taxes on Tuesday, during one of their final meetings of 2018, but they disagree about what the millions of dollars in anticipated annual revenue should fund: homeless services and other programs, or a reduction in certain commercial property taxes.

Currently, the " Internet Sales Tax Amendment Act of 2018" favors the latter. Phil Mendelson and Jack Evans-the chair of the D.C. Council and the Ward 2 councilmember, respectively-quietly filed the legislation in July, days before the Council broke for summer recess. Evans' finance committee held a public hearing on the bill in October and advanced it the following month. On Nov. 13, the Council approved the measure 12-1 in the first of two required votes. At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman requested a discussion on the bill and voted "no."

"This bill levels the playing field for our locally owned businesses, and then quickly unlevels it," Silverman said, noting that online retailers would have to pay sales taxes, like brick-and-mortar retailers already do. "The good the bill does is undone by how the bill spends the tax money it collects." Silverman said the measure would enrich large, wealthy property owners because it would direct new revenue from online sales taxes toward tax cuts for commercial landlords whose properties are assessed at more than $10 million (starting on Oct. 1, 2019).

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Specifically, the legislation would reduce the real estate tax rate for this subset of " Class 2" commercial properties from $1.89 per $100 of assessed value to $1.85 per $100 of assessed value. The difference between the two rates may seem minuscule, but it amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks for a landlord of a multimillion-dollar property annually. Lawmakers set the current, higher rate this past spring as part of the District's fiscal year 2019 budget. It is one of several tax increases they approved for dedicated Metro funding.

The bill exempts "small sellers"-out-of-state retailers whose gross receipts from D.C. sales total less than $100,000 a year or who make no more than 200 D.C. sales a year-from the online sales taxes. "Digital goods," such as audiovisual works and e-books, would be taxed.

The D.C. Chief Financial Officer projects that over the next four years, the new online sales taxes would generate about $96.9 million in revenue for the District. But the proposed tax cuts would take up about $75.8 million-or almost 80 percent-of that revenue. Meanwhile, all of the revenue produced during the first several months of the internet sales taxes, some $14 million, would fund the District's Commission on the Arts and Humanities. This leaves a net revenue increase of about $6.7 million by the end of fiscal year 2022 (on Sept. 30, 2022).

But the proposal has rankled advocacy groups devoted to the needs of low-income residents, including the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. They say that in the midst of an affordability crisis, the District should use the new revenue from internet sales taxes on social programs and supportive housing, not tax breaks for the owners of D.C.'s highest-valued properties. They also underscore that the measure repeals budget language from 2013 through which lawmakers lined up online sales tax revenue for Metro and homeless services, in expectation of congressional action that did not take place.

"D.C. has an incredible opportunity with this new revenue stream created by the online sales tax that allows us to back our commitments to end homelessness," says Jesse Rabinowitz, an advocate with Miriam's Kitchen who described the Council's choice on Dec. 4 as a "moral" one. "Votes have consequences. We know that D.C. is in the middle of a homelessness crisis and 45 people died without the dignity of a home last year." With the projected revenue, the District could create hundreds of additional units of affordable housing, Rabinowitz added.

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who chairs the human services committee, says she is working on an amendment to the bill that would help accomplish just that. As of Monday afternoon, the draft amendment would designate funding for D.C.'s Local Rent Supplement Program and permanent supportive housing units, according to Nadeau's office. But it was unclear whether the amendment would have the necessary seven votes to pass on Tuesday.

"D.C. has an incredible opportunity with this new revenue stream...to back our commitments to end homelessness."

At a press conference on Monday, Mendelson, the Council chairman, said he would not support any such amendment. He defended the current version of the legislation, saying the government should not raise taxes "unless it absolutely has to," and that commercial property owners often pass tax increases on to their office and retail tenants, including brick-and-mortar stores. He added that the Council has in recent months increased funding for homeless services as well as affordable housing.

Last month, San Francisco voters approved a ballot measure, Prop C, that directs the city to further tax large tech companies to bankroll homeless services. It may face a legal challenge.

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D.C. will tax most online retail sales. Should the money pay for homeless services or tax breaks?

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Thanks to a Supreme Court decision earlier this year, the District may legally impose sales taxes on online purchases from retailers who lack a physical presence in D.C.

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Lack of affordable rentals hurts families, communities, economy

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Lack of affordable rentals hurts families, communities, economy

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Junaid Etemadi

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The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund's Community Housing program promotes financial security and community stability by expanding the availability of rental housing for families of modest means. We do this by changing the ways affordable housing is produced and financed and by changing the laws and policies that influence housing development.

For many years, housing developers across the state have almost exclusively built expensive homes, which are more profitable than those for families with lower incomes. Communities reinforced this trend by creating zoning that discouraged the creation of affordable housing.

New Hampshire's nonprofit housing organizations have fought both of these trends with multifamily housing that is well-designed, well-constructed and well-maintained.

Even so, the state has a small fraction of the housing it needs for its working families and people on fixed incomes. Waiting lists for rent assistance are years long. Many of our poorest families pay half of their income for rent; some pay even more. Homelessness is rising.

The lack of stable, affordable housing hurts families, the communities they live in and the state's economy.

People who pay too much of their income for rent are less able to save for the future or to take advantage of opportunities to become financially secure.

Families are destabilized, and children's education is disrupted, by frequent moves in search of lower rents.

Children's health often suffers from living in poorly maintained apartments, and because so much of the family income goes to rent, they often lack nutrition and medical care.

The state's rise in home prices and rents, coupled with much-slower wage growth, has dramatically increased homelessness among the state's working poor.

The rising number of homelessness people strains the budgets of towns and cities that, by law, have to shelter them and provide for their basic needs.

When employees leave to seek cheaper housing, productivity suffers. Many employers fear the continued lack of affordable housing will hurt their ability to attract and retain skilled workers.

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Lack of affordable rentals hurts families, communities, economy

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The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund offers loans and technical assistance to expand the number of homes available to families with modest means, and to keep those homes affordable. We do this in close collaboration with the state's nonprofit housing d

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Pros and Cons about raising taxes on the rich

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What Could Raising Taxes on the 1% Do? Surprising Amounts

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When it comes to paying taxes, most Americans think the wealthy do not pay their fair share. There is a sharp divide, however, between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to taxing the rich, who provide most of the cash for political campaigns. All the Republican tax proposals, in fact, cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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Junaid Etemadi

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows.

One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

At the same time, the number of unsheltered people dropped significantly in downtown areas that traditionally have had large populations of homeless who sleep in tents, makeshift shelters and cars.

The area near Father Joe's Village and surrounding blocks, however, saw an increase in unsheltered people, with the population reaching more than 400.

The population shift could give credence to the argument that the city's efforts to clear away downtown homeless camps last yearresulted in homeless people moving elsewhere.

It also could be a fluke. The annual count is taken in pre-dawn hours, with volunteers walking sidewalks or driving on dark streets with clipboards to look for homeless people huddled in doorways, sleeping in cars or tucked inside tents.

Weather, lighting and other conditions also can affect the number of people counted, possibly shifting the totals in areas from one year to another.

The Regional Task Force on the Homeless organized the Jan. 26 annual count, and on May 17 it released a report that found 8,576 homeless people throughout the county, a 6 percent drop from the previous year.

The report gave the number of homeless people in cities and unincorporated areas, but not individual neighborhoods.

Finding those numbers takes more digging.

To do the count, the task force broke down the city of San Diego into more than 300 census tracts, and totals of each can be found online, separate from its annual report.

The National Homeless Information Project, described by coordinator Michael Ullman as a grassroots collaboration to share information about homeless services, took a deeper dive into the data and compiled a chart comparing this year's count with one taken in January 2017, arranging them according to the greatest changes..

Even Ullman's report, however, only identifies neighborhoods by census tract numbers. The actual locations can be found by finding the tract numbers on the San Diego Association of Governments' 2010 census map, which was used by the task force in the point-in-time counts.

One of the largest changes was in the heart of Hillcrest, between University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard, west of Park Boulevard and east of state Highway 163. The unsheltered population in that area increased by 960 percent, growing from five to 53 people since 2017.

That neighborhood had the second largest percent increase in the county, followed only by a 1,400 percent increase around UC San Diego, where the population grew from one to 15

Another increase in Hillcrest was seen near the UC San Diego Medical Center, which was up 59 percent with an increase from 17 to 27 people.

Downtown, things changed in the other direction, especially north of Market Street and south of Ash Street or Russ Boulevard.

In that stretch in Golden Hill between 24th Street and Interstate 15, the number of homeless people on the street dropped from 155 to 26 since last year, an 83 percent decrease.

The 129-person drop was the largest decrease of any census tract.

The second biggest dip came just to the west in the eight blocks from Ash to Market Street between 9th and 11th streets.

In that neighborhood, which includes many tall office buildings and restaurants, the population dropped from 251 to 158, a 37 percent decrease.

West of that, the neighborhood between Ninth and State streets that includes City Hall and Civic Center Plaza saw a drop from 279 to 195 unsheltered people, a 30 percent decrease.

Sherman Heights also saw decreases. One neighborhood east of I-5 and between Market and Commercial streets saw the number of people on the street drop from 112 to 30, a 73 percent increase.

South of Commercial Street in Sherman Heights, another neighborhood saw the homeless population drop from 81 to 20, a 75 percent decrease.

Together, the homeless population in those five areas dropped by 459 people.

There's no way to know where they all went, but it's likely that the three bridge shelter tents that the city opened between the two counts may have had a role in the decline.

Together, the three have 674 beds, and two of the tents are in downtown San Diego.

It's also possible that the homeless people in areas with the biggest drops just moved slightly south, west, east or north, and some numbers suggest that may have happened.

Just to the west of neighborhoods that saw a decline, the homeless population grew 38 percent, from 90 to 124, in the Marina area that includes the Embarcadero and San Diego Convention Center.

To the east of neighborhoods that saw a drop, the area around City College saw a 117 percent increase, with the homeless population growing from 18 to 39 people.

To the south, the area with the largest and most visible homeless population got even more unsheltered people.

The neighborhood south of Market Street between I-5 and Ninth Street includes Father Joe's Village and the Neil Good Day Center, and this year's count saw the homeless population there grow from 361 to 435, a 20 percent increase.

Other areas with notable changes include North Park between University Avenue and Upas Street, where the population dropped 92 percent, from 52 to just four, and a Bankers Hill neighborhood north of Laurel Street, which had a 100 percent drop from 47 people to zero.

The homeless population in Balboa Park dropped 36 percent, from 108 to 69 people, and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood south of Balboa Avenue and west of Clairemont Drive increased 900 percent by growing from two to 20.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows. One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

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Josue Sanchez

It gives a lot of facts relevant to 2018 and also talks about homeless veterans.

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Imagine if someone took a look at your bank account on the last Friday in January every year. What would it reveal about your financial health?

It wouldn't include checks you've written that haven't been cashed. It wouldn't include money you've earned but not deposited. If you're better off this year than last, is it because your income is going up or did you get a one-time holiday windfall from a relative? Are you really headed in the right direction?

That's the kind of dilemma that arises in San Diego after the annual homeless count. Service providers, policy makers and the public try to figure out what the numbers say, and what they don't. What they mean.

This year's tally, released Thursday, showed a decrease in the number of homeless people in the county, from 9,116 in 2017 to 8,576, a 6 percent drop. The number of homeless living on the street (as opposed to shelters and temporary housing) also went down, from 5,621 in 2017 to 4,990, an 11 percent change.

Elected officials, who have spent millions of dollars and countless hours tackling what has become one of the nation's most vexing problems, especially on the West Coast, were encouraged by those results.

"If things had gone up, I would have been depressed," said county Supervisor Ron Roberts, chair of the board of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, which coordinates the annual count.

But he and others are cautious about drawing too many conclusions. "It gives us momentum to move forward," San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said. "It is not mission accomplished."

Part of their hesitation comes from the well-documentated limitations of what's known officially as the Point-in-Time Count, which everybody involved acknowledges can't possibly find and tally every homeless person, especially in a county that has 627 census tracts and covers 4,261 square miles.

And part of it is the numbers themselves, which are sometimes more puzzling than illuminating. After years of community focus on helping homeless veterans, for example, why did their numbers go up 24 percent in the new tally, including a 45 percent jump in those who are unsheltered?

"The biggest head-scratcher is what's going on with veterans," said San Diego City Council member Chris Ward.

Those trying to reduce homelessness on a daily basis said they've come to see the annual count as more of a public-awareness tool than a full accounting. Almost every media outlet in town reports the tally, and for a short while anyway, the issue is front and center.

"It's a one-night, one-time snapshot," said Gordon Walker, chief executive officer of the regional task force. "It doesn't provide all the answers."

Why it matters

So why do it?

The count is required by the federal government for regions that want to receive homeless-assistance money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This year, San Diego County got almost $20 million.

Although the regulations call for a biennial count, San Diego does it annually, always on the last Friday in January, and it's a huge undertaking. The county has the fourth-largest homeless population in the nation.

On Jan. 26 of this year, from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., more than 1,300 volunteers fanned out across the county to tally the unsheltered homeless sleeping in tents, on sidewalks, in cars. They were assigned to specific census tracts to avoid duplication. Some walked the streets in teams; others drove.

They counted 4,990 people, including 1,262 in vehicles and 1,253 in tents or hand-built structures. ("Counted" in this case means using a multiplier of 1.75 for tents and 2.03 for vehicles.)

A report last year by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty called efforts like this "severely flawed" because they result in "significant" undercounts of the homeless. It pointed to a 2001 study that estimated the nationwide population- 553,742 last year - is really 2.5 to 10.2 times larger.

It's not just the inherent difficulties of finding people who are sleeping in out-of-the-way places, according to the report. HUD also regularly changes its guidelines for the tabulations, making year-to-year comparisons problematic.

For example, the definition of "chronically homeless" changed several years ago, and this time there was a shift in how domestic-violence victims and people in recreational vehicles are counted.

Another study, led by a University of New Hampshire statistician, looked at housing costs and concluded last year that the number of people living on the streets in San Diego County could be 50 percent higher than what the Point in Time count shows.

Walker said he's reasonably confident that this year's count is solid. The task force's written report notes that "the county methodology cannot guarantee 100 percent accuracy. Many factors may contribute to missed counting opportunities."

The street count is just one part of the annual tabulation. To determine how many homeless people were in emergency shelters and temporary housing on Jan. 26, the operators at more than 60 local facilities provided head-counts.

The result: 3,586 homeless people were in shelters. That includes 1,947 in emergency shelters and 1,575 in transitional housing. About 85 percent of the available beds were utilized that night, according to the report, which means about 630 were vacant.

A third part of the annual tally aims at getting a better idea of who the homeless are. More than 300 volunteers surveyed 1,009 unsheltered homeless adults at 33 sites around the county - libraries, church feeding programs, parks - from Jan. 26 to Jan. 31. They asked dozens of questions about the cause and duration of homelessness, employment history, health conditions, and the types of assistance they most frequently access.

That demographic information sometimes plays a key role in shaping programs.

The "so what" question

When policy makers and service providers look at the annual tally, they sometimes ask the bureaucratic version of the "so what" question: "What in here is actionable?"

That's why, after the 2017 results showed that 16 percent of the unsheltered homeless would reconnect with family if they could, the Downtown San Diego Partnership ramped up a reunification program that provides free one-way bus tickets out of town.

Last year's report also registered a large spike in tents and hand-built structures, especially in downtown San Diego - up 104 percent. That, along with the deadly hepatitis A outbreak, led to sidewalk-clearing and police sweeps in the city, and a 52 percent drop in the number of downtown tents, according to the most recent count.

When this year's results were released Thursday, what jumped out at several observers, in addition to the increase in homeless veterans, was the apparent lack of progress with the region's chronically homeless, who make up about 25 percent of the countywide homeless total. Their numbers went from 2,176 in 2017 to 2,171.

"This is a clear call to action for our community," said Greg Anglea, chief executive officer of Interfaith Community Services and a board member of the regional task force.

The chronically homeless are defined as those who have been on the streets for a year or longer, or have experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years. They have a diagnosed disability that prevents them from holding on to a job or housing.

Because they have a mortality rate that is up to nine times higher than that of the general population, and because they often use a disproportionate share of public resources - emergency rooms, fire and ambulance rescues, jails - a lot of time and money is spent trying to help them.

The three dormitory-style "bridge" shelter tents opened last winter in San Diego give priority to the chronically homeless, and hundreds more of them wound up there, according to the new report. The number who were sheltered went up almost 100 percent, from 389 to 771.

But moving them from shelters into what's known as permanent supportive housing - a residence with access to counseling and other services - has proven difficult.

The most recent figures from the San Diego Housing Commission, which is funding the tents, show that 10 percent of the people exiting so far have gone into permanent housing (94 out of 946). That's significantly below the goal - 65 percent into permanent housing - when the shelters opened.

Cost of housing is the main obstacle, according to Ruth Bruland, chief program officer for Father Joe's Villages, which operates one of the tents. A recent report listed the average monthly rent in the county in March at $1,887, a record high.

"It's a really tough environment for ending homelessness," Bruland said.
john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com

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What the homeless numbers say - and what they don't

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Imagine if someone took a look at your bank account on the last Friday in January every year. What would it reveal about your financial health? It wouldn't include checks you've written that haven't been cashed. It wouldn't include money you've earned but not deposited.

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News  Data WatchWhere are San Diego County's homeless? Explore five years of data on interactive map

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News  Data WatchWhere are San Diego County's homeless? Explore five years of data on interactive map

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Data collected from the past five years on the homeless population. There's some good numbers in this and has a map we can use has a resource. Plus maybe we can find some patterns in the different areas.

Eliana Bentley

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The homeless population across San Diego County is on the decline, according to numbers released Thursday by the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless, although it's up 20 percent in the downtown zone that contains the highest concentration.

Volunteers working with the task force counted 8,576 homeless individuals in January, a 6 percent decrease from the more than 9,100 counted in 2017. It's the first time since 2014 that San Diego's homeless population decreased from the previous year, indicating that the four-year upward trend might be over.

If the map is not displaying on your device, turn off ad blockers or click here "

Data from previous counts show the most concentrated areas in the county are typically found in downtown San Diego. That holds true this year, with the largest population, some 435 people, residing in a census tract south of Market Street and north of San Diego Bay between Petco Park and Interstate 5. It's a 20 percent increase from last year, when the total was 361.

Another area - south of Ash Street and north of Park Boulevard - saw its homeless population increase by 38 percent to 124 people from 90 in 2017.

Some areas of downtown contained fewer homeless people this year.

The population in an area directly north of Market Street, between 9th Avenue and State Street, decreased by 30 percent from 279 to 195 this year. It's still the second largest total in the county.

Between I-5 and 9th Avenue, there were 158 homeless people, a 37 percent drop from the previous year when the population was more than 250.

Data show those four areas contain more than 10 percent of the county's total homeless population.

The tallies come from what is locally known as WeAllCount. On one night every year, officials, volunteers and healthcare professionals count and survey the people living outside or in shelters throughout the county. The information is used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help determine funding for local communities with homeless programs.

The count provides a one-day snapshot of unduplicated numbers of homeless families and individuals. While some have questioned its accuracy, it is the most comprehensive source of local and national data on homeless populations.

While the county's total has gone down, data show some areas saw signigicant increases in homeless populations from previous years.

Two census tracts in Oceanside have a combined total of nearly 200 people. One of them had 88 homeless individuals. That same area had a homeless population of four in 2015.

The population in an area of Hillcrest, between Park Boulevard and state Route 163, jumped to more than 50 people this year from five in 2017.

All data come from the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless, which organizes the count. Vehicles and hand built structures or tents are multiplied by an occupancy factor so some census tracts have a homeless count that is not a whole number. The WeAllCount covers more than 4,000 square miles, representing nearly 600 census tracts. Some census tracts are not included in the count, as they are considered predominantly rural.
Contact Lauryn Schroeder via Twitter or Email.

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Where are San Diego County's homeless? Explore five years of data on interactive map

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The homeless population across San Diego County is on the decline, according to numbers released Thursday by the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless, although it's up 20 percent in the downtown zone that contains the highest concentration.

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raising the city’s hotel tax to as high as 15.75 percent for hotels closest to the downtown convention center

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raising the city’s hotel tax to as high as 15.75 percent for hotels closest to the downtown convention center

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Andrea Baez

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Longstanding plans to expand San Diego's convention center advanced Monday after the City Council agreed to submit to the voters an initiative that would finance the project with a hotel tax increase.

Still unknown is whether the initiative, which would also help fund services and housing for the homeless and finance road repairs, will go before voters as early as next year. The next regularly scheduled citywide election is not until 2020.

The citizens' initiative, backed by a coalition of business leaders, organized labor and homeless advocates, qualified for the ballot after a full verification of more than 100,000 signatures was completed last month by the county Registrar of Voters. The measure had failed an earlier random count, putting it past the deadline for making it onto this November's ballot.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who has made the convention center expansion a top priority ever since he took office, has previously said he would consider pushing for a special election next year if need be.

The measure calls for raising the city's hotel tax to as high as 15.75 percent for hotels closest to the downtown convention center.

Under the initiative, the greatest share of revenues generated by the tax hike - nearly $3.5 billion over 42 years - would go for the convention center project, including continued upkeep and marketing. More than $1.8 billion is to be set aside for addressing homelessness, and $551 million is targeted for road repairs.

Still to be worked out in advance of an election is an updated deal that would allow the city to regain control of the convention center expansion site.

Longtime port tenants Ray Carpenter and Art Engel currently control the 5-acre piece of land via their Fifth Avenue Landing leasehold with the Port of San Diego. They have been processing plans for some time to develop a $300 million hotel complex there.

Anticipating a vote on the initiative this November, the port, the city and Fifth Avenue Landing had earlier agreed to a more than $33 million payout to Carpenter and Engel should the measure pass. That deal now needs to be revised because of what will be a later election date.

The port and city, however, are still expected to pay Fifth Avenue Landing an up-front deposit of $5 million later this month after port commissioners take a vote acknowledging that the citizens' initiative has qualified for a public vote. The question remains whether Fifth Avenue Landing will be asking for more than the $33 million now that it is being asked to wait longer for the outcome of a vote on the initiative.

Should the measure fail, Carpenter and Engel would still be able to keep the $5 million deposit.

Councilman David Alvarez on Monday did not speak to the substance of the initiative but said he would like to have a closed council session in order to get an update on the $5 million payment.

"We haven't received any information on this," he said, "and there's been a lot of media talk on this."
lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-2251 Twitter: @loriweisberg

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Initiative to increase San Diego's hotel tax headed to the ballot - but no firm date

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Longstanding plans to expand San Diego's convention center advanced Monday after the City Council agreed to submit to the voters an initiative that would finance the project with a hotel tax increase. Still unknown is whether the initiative, which would also help fund services and housing for the homeless and finance road repairs, will go before voters as early as next year.

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Despite outreach, downtown homeless population growing

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Despite outreach, downtown homeless population growing

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Maliyah Prince
Talks about the current outreach to help them is not doing enough.

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Downtown San Diego may appear to have fewer homeless people during the day, but the number of people sleeping on sidewalks, in tents and vehicles at night has continued to grow over the past few months.

According to the count by Downtown San Diego Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for a variety of business groups, 964 unsheltered people were counted downtown in August, including 582 in East Village alone.

That's 38 more people than were counted in July and 205 more than were counted in June. The population is higher than it was shortly before the city open large tented shelters that took hundreds of people off the street about nine months ago.

The latest number is far from the peak of downtown's homeless population, which reached a record high of 1,415 in December 2016. Since then, the population has gone up and down over time, dripping to 882 in January 2017 and reaching 1,335 in August of that year.

The downtown homeless population dropped after the tents opened last December and January, but fluctuated over the next few months.

Homeless people in the tents are not included in the Downtown Partnership's monthly count. If the 475 people inside the two downtown tents were counted, the homeless population in the area would be a record high of 1,439.

The Alpha Project and Father Joe's Villages operate the two downtown tents while a third is operated by Veterans Village of San Diego on Sports Arena Boulevard.

The tents are known as bridge shelters because they are intended to provide temporary bridge between life on the street and a permanent home.

San Diego City Council members approved funding for the tents last November and set a goal of having 65 percent of the tents' inhabitants leaving for permanent housing. The hope was that people who left the shelters for housing would be replaced by people living on the street, and the downtown population would begin to drop.

A report on the tents' progress in June, however, found only 12 percent of people leaving the tent have found permanent housing. It's unclear where the others went, but homeless advocate Michael McConnell, who opposed the tents, said they most likely just returned to the streets.

The uptick comes at a time when the San Diego Police Department has increased its outreach efforts to homeless people, sometimes working on the street with representatives from nonprofits in an attempt to get people into shelters or connect them with services.

The city also has upped its effort to help the homeless in recent months by opening a second storage center for homeless people to store their possessions. The new center coincided with a new law that prohibits people from leaving items in public places for more than three hours.

Shopping carts, baby carriages and other items often associated with the homeless disappeared from many downtown sidewalks following the new law. The latest data, however, indicates that the homeless people themselves have not.

Angela Wells, director of communications for Downtown San Diego Partnership, said the nonprofit doesn't speculate on what the numbers mean, but only provides the information to help the community understand the level of homelessness in the neighborhoods.

The counts are taken in the early hours of the last Thursday of each month.

San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless CEO Gordon Walker said he had not analyzed the data so had no comment about the increase.

Father Joe's Villages President and CEO Deacon Jim Vargas she could not speculate about why the population has increased. While the downtown tented shelters haven't caused the homeless population on the street to decrease, Vargas said they still have provided a necessary function.

"If it weren't for these bridge shelters, there would be more people on the street," he said. "It's proving effective in that regard."

Vargas said it's not possible to tell why the downtown homeless population has increased, but he rejects the idea that services such as Father Joe's are a draw for them.

"I remind people that the services are there because that's where the homeless are," he said.

McConnell said he had no clue why the population had increased, but that he knew the tented shelters would not reduce homelessness.

"It appears to me that the city is more focused on reducing the visibility of homelessness rather than reducing homelessness itself," he said.

The good news is that this year's monthly average of 874 homeless people downtown is 184 less than the monthly average in 2017 and 199 less than the monthly average in 2016, according to the data provided by the Downtown San Diego Partnership.

The population count from August, however, shows the impact of the city's tented shelters may have been negated by more homeless people coming downtown.

The Alpha Project opened downtown on Newton Avenue on Dec. 1, with 325 beds, and the Father Joe's Villages tent opened a 150-bed tent for families and single woman downtown at 14th and Commercial streets in January.

The third tent has 200 beds and was opened Dec. 23 by Veterans Village of San Diego on Sports Arena Boulevard.

Although they were slow to fill, the opening of the tents did appear to have a quick impact on the homeless population. The downtown homeless population was 1,012 in December 2017, and the number dropped by 208 in January.

The annual countywide point-in-time count conducted by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless also found a decrease in many downtown neighborhoods when its count was taken in January.

By February, however, the Downtown Partnership's count found the population had crept up from 804 to 863. In March, it jumped to 980, the highest monthly count downtown so far this year.

The upward trend isn't constant, however. The population dripped to 791 in April, rose to 904 in May, then dipped again to 759 in June.

Since then, the downtown population has continued to rise and surpassed some of the monthly counts of 2017, when the population was considered at a crisis level.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer's Press Secretary Greg Block said this week that he did not know why the population increased downtown, but the city had no plans to respond by opening a fourth tented shelter.

"Right now we need to focus at doing better at what we're doing, getting more people through these," he said about the goal of finding permanent housing for people in the tents. "And we need to build more housing before we invest more in another bridge shelter."

McConnell has been critical of the city's approach and argues it should be pursuing more permanent housing opportunities.

"Shelters in and of themselves don't reduce homelessness," he said. "It may take some people off the street temporarily, but as more people become homeless, you have tents full and now you have the streets full, and you haven't accomplished anything. I've said this over and over, and now the numbers are bearing that out."

Monthly counts conducted by the Downtown Partnership do not include interviews with people, so there is no way to know what brought them downtown, how long they had been homeless or whether they are local or from another city or state.

San Diego Padres General Partner Peter Seidler, who pushed for the tented shelters and helped fund their opening, said he also would like to know why the population has increased.

To help get answers, he said he and business owner Dan Shea, who joined him in advocating for the tents, have provided the Regional Task Force on the Homeless with several hundred thousand dollars to improve its Homeless Management Information System, which will help collect data on homeless people in the area.

"I think it's critical that we have accurate analysis and accurate facts with which to make decisions and conclusions," he said about the system improvements he expects to be in places in a few months.

Like Vargas, Seidler also defended the three tent shelters because together they help house almost 700 people and link them to services that can lead them out of homelessness.

Besides providing an overall count of homeless people, data from the Downtown Partnership also shows the population rises and drops in different neighborhoods over the months.

The southeast corner of East Village had the largest homeless population in this and in past years. Its highest count was 688 in August 2017 while this year's peak was 385 in July. The lowest population for the southeast corner this year was 294 in April.

In the Gaslamp Quarter, the population reached a high of 93 in March and dropped to a low of 39 in June.

The Downtown Partnership's methodology for counting changed in May to match the method used in the annual countywide count by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. In the change, the number of people assumed to be inside a handmade structure or vehicle shifted by a fraction.

Numbers dipped in most areas following the change, but it's unclear if that was caused by the new methodology, and the differences were insignificant.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Despite outreach, downtown homeless population growing

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Downtown San Diego may appear to have fewer homeless people during the day, but the number of people sleeping on sidewalks, in tents and vehicles at night has continued to grow over the past few months.

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Las Vegas seeking to raise taxes for homelessness

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Las Vegas seeking to raise taxes for homelessness

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Juniper
Something we should look into further and see how they use it.

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At an October Las Vegas City Council meeting, city officials agreed more needs to be done to address homelessness in Southern Nevada, and there isn't enough money to do it.

So the council is asking the state Legislature for permission to raise an estimated $20 million in new taxes and fees.

The council voted to request legislation that would allow the city to increase the real property transfer tax and a sewer service charge. The revenue would be used to fund transitional housing, affordable housing and the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center.

Permission to increase taxes would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature, and signed by the governor.

If passed in the 2019 Legislative Session, the city would be able to do two things.

First, it could increase the sewer surcharge, which is currently about an estimated $255 per household with a pool each year, by about 8.6 percent - about $22 - and generate an estimated $5 million. "This would bring a source of money directly to the City of Las Vegas," said Ted Olivas, the director of administrative services for the City of Las Vegas.

Second, local government would be permitted to increase the real property transfer tax in Clark County, which is currently $2.55 per $500 of property value, by 25 cents. "If the average sales price for real property is $220,000, it would bring in $111," Olivas added.

However, the real property transfer tax is regional and not just specific to the City of Las Vegas. It would generate an estimated $15 million in total, but the city was unable to provide an estimate of the portion it would directly receive. "The city would advocate that the funds be distributed via the already existing consolidated tax (C-Tax) formula as it is already defined by state statute," said Jace Radke, a spokesperson with the City of Las Vegas.

There isn't a contingency plan if the bill doesn't pass. "At this time, the city is focused on this," Radke said.

More than 6,500 people are experiencing homelessness in Southern Nevada on any given night. More than 75 percent of them "were living in Southern Nevada before they lost their housing," according to a presentation provided to the council. "They did not come here as a homeless person seeking services."

The homelessness crisis spans the entirety of Southern Nevada. " This is a local challenge and local problem for our constituents," Kathi Thomas Gibson, the city's director of community service, told the council at its October meeting.

For the current 2018-19 fiscal year, the City of Las Vegas has allocated nearly $20 million to fund homeless services, less than 2 percent of the city's budget.

"(Our regional system) is underfunded, and there are not any new dollars coming in to address the growing problem," Thomas Gibson said.

"People get nervous when a tax is mentioned," said Las Vegas City Councilman Bob Coffin. However, the city "would be spinning some sort of a cosmic tale if we said it wouldn't involve money" to confront homelessness, Coffin said.

Cities nationwide, including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, have raised taxes to address the nation's housing and homelessness crises.

San Francisco recently passed a proposal that raised taxes on gross annual receipts for the top 1 percent of large corporations in the city. It is estimated to raise about $300 million, and half the money would go toward the construction of affordable homes.

Miami created a Homeless Trust, which was financed by the Florida Legislature's approval of a 1 percent tax on restaurant food and beverage items to go toward homeless and domestic violence services - 85 percent goes toward homeless services and 15 percent funds domestic violence centers.

The Las Vegas council decided on the sewer surcharge and an increase to the real property transfer tax because the fee structures for those revenue sources already exist, Radke said.

The proposal to submit a bill draft request passed the city council 4-2.

Mayor Carolyn Goodman was joined by councilmembers Lois Tarkanian, Cedric Crear and Coffin in supporting the request.

Councilmen Stavros Anthony and Steven Seroka were opposed. Councilwoman Michele Fiore was absent from the meeting.

"When people write a check to the City of Las Vegas for sewer services, they do that with the understanding they are giving us money for sewer services, fixing the infrastructure, increasing the number of sewers we need," Anthony said at the October meeting. "I don't want to say it's sneaky, but putting a homeless charge on the sewer charge isn't right." He had similar thoughts for increasing the real property transfer tax.

Clark County spokesperson Dan Kulin said he was unaware if county officials had begun to consider the city proposal, or whether it would receive the county's support.

Nevada has a long history of failing to fund homelessness services and transitional housing.
Historically not a public priority
In 2002, Question 11 asked Clark County residents if the County Commission should urge the 2003 Nevada Legislature to impose an annual property tax of .01 cents per $100 of assessed property value.

The revenue, an estimated $4 million annually, would have gone to a Homeless Service and Affordable Housing Trust Fund, to mostly pay for rental assistance and construction of transitional and permanent housing. The request never made it to the Legislature - it got crushed at the polls, with 64 percent of voters opposed.

The 2007 Legislature also discussed allocating money toward homeless services, specifically for transitional housing. Assembly Bill 126 asked for $20 million. It never made it out of committee. In 2008, the Interim Finance Committee did go on to allocate $1 million for transitional housing and homeless services.

During the October meeting, Seroka suggested there should be private sector buy-in to help address homelessness. "I know we've done a lot of research around the country and one of the solutions has been a significant private investment," he said. "While we are taking this burden on our shoulders, we are showing private investors we are taking the lead on this. But we need private investment to make it work."

The Mayor's Fund for Las Vegas LIFE , which was created in the fourth quarter of 2017, is one avenue that allows corporations, businesses and nonprofits to donate to various city projects. Since launching, the fund has received $468,000 - $125,000 has gone toward the courtyard.

Additionally, the non-profit Built for Zero Housing Campaign Fund has raised $14 million to provide permanent housing for the chronically homeless, which increased 17 percent in the last year. Efforts are led by HELP of Southern Nevada, Lutheran Social Services of Nevada and U.S. VETS.

There are an estimated 661 people who are chronically homeless, which means they have a disabling condition, have experienced homelessness for at least one year or have had more than four episodes of homelessness in three years.

"This is our most vulnerable population," says Shalimar Cabrera, the executive director of U.S. VETS in Las Vegas. "They have been on the streets the longest, have the highest potential of dying on our streets and are the hardest population to serve."

Cabrera adds it costs about $21,000 to put a person in permanent housing with case management and supportive services, compared to an estimated $73,000 a year it costs - hospitalization, incarceration, policing, other services and costs - to have a person unsheltered.

In the last year, Built for Zero has only received one corporate donation - $213,000 from the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

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Las Vegas asks to raise taxes, fees to take on homelessness crisis | Nevada Current

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At an October Las Vegas City Council meeting, city officials agreed more needs to be done to address homelessness in Southern Nevada, and there isn't enough money to do it. So the council is asking the state Legislature for permission to raise an estimated $20 million in new taxes and fees.

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Ballot Measure on City Council Committee

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Ballot Measure on City Council Committee

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Blake
the city issued permits for just 3,818 homes reserved for people with low and moderate incomes, out of a projected demand of 54,143.

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Another ballot measure aimed at attacking San Diego's homelessness and housing crisis has cleared an initial hurdle.

A City Council committee on Wednesday voted to have city attorneys begin drafting a potential $900 million bond measure for the November ballot that supporters say could bankroll an estimated 7,500 homes for homeless and low-income San Diegans.

There are many details to be ironed out, including how the measure might complement or even compete with two other possible homelessness-focused ballot measures. The bond measure would increase property taxes on city residents by an estimated $19 per $100,000 of assessed home value, allowing the cityto take out nearly $1 billion in bonds that it would pay off using the new revenue. The City Council committee will hear the measure again before the full Council decides whether to send it to voters.

The San Diego Housing Federation, an affordable housing advocacy group, is pushing the bond measure.

Supporters believe the measure could house about 2,500 of the city's most vulnerable homeless residents plus provide another 5,000 units for low-income families, veterans, disabled people and seniors on the brink of homelessness.

Affordable-housing advocates acknowledge these numbers could change upon further analysis thanks to recent federal corporate tax reforms. They also acknowledge the measure won't solve San Diego's massive housing crisis but say it could dramatically reduce chronic homelessness and help the city begin to bat back growing housing woes.

Exhibit A of the enormity of that housing problem: A draft regional planning agency report released last fall estimated that the city issued permits for just 7 percent of the homes that it's anticipated to need for low- and moderate-income residents. Between 2010 and 2016 - seven years out of an 11-year, state-mandated cycle - the city issued permits for just 3,818 homes reserved for people with low and moderate incomes, out of a projected demand of 54,143.

The magnitude of the region's housing and homeless problem has some bond supporters already making the case that other November ballot measures in the works, particularly a hotel-tax hike, could bolster their plans.

Signature gatherers this week hit the streets in hopes of placing a citizens' initiative on the ballot that would increase hotel taxes to fund a Convention Center expansion and street repairs, and invest $2 billion in yet-to-be-detailed homelessness initiatives over 40 years.

The business and labor coalition behind the measure hasn't come out in support of the bond measure, though some union leaders have suggested they could pair well together.

City staffers are also working behind the scenes on another November ballot proposal from City Councilman David Alvarez that would devote a portion of existing hotel-tax collections to homelessness needs. Alvarez's measure will also need the approval of the City Council to be placed on the ballot.

Stephen Russell, executive director of the San Diego Housing Federation, the champion behind the housing bond, has said the swifter influx of resources along from the hotel-tax increase or Alvarez's measure could be paired with bond money that will take longer to deploy. He estimated it would likely take three to four years to see initial new projects funded by the bond measure he's proposed, due to the time necessary to pursue bonds, line up other financing and build.

Revenue from the hotel-tax hike could provide immediate help and be paired with bond money for brick-and-mortar projects to provide necessary services for homeless people, Russell said. "The need is great and we see these as both complementary and potentially synergistic measures that are up to the scale of the problem," he said.

Sue Reynolds, CEO of nonprofit developer Community HousingWorks, was more direct about the need for help from multiple sources.

"We need both," said Reynolds, who emphasized the need for money for services through a second tax measure. "We are not gonna make a dent in homelessness without both."

Reynolds was among a chorus of homeless advocates on Wednesday who noted that San Diego needs more cash to effectively compete for state and federal resources to combat homelessness, including two state measures that could bring tens of millions of dollars in help.

Other California communities passed revenue measures in 2016, putting them in a better position to vie for those matching funds.

Yet City Councilman Mark Kersey, a Republican eyeing a state Senate seat, expressed skepticism on Wednesday. He raised a series of questions about spending plans, the burden on city taxpayers to try to address a regional problem and how the measure compared with the hotel-tax increase. He was ultimately the sole member of the City Council's Rules Committee, to vote against forwarding the measure to the city attorney.

Both of San Diego's likely tax-increase measures face long odds - even on their own. Both are aiming for a two-thirds vote.

Russell on Wednesday pointed to a Housing Federation-funded poll showing more than 70 percent of likely city voters would support the bond measure, leaving it a thin margin for passage, especially if any opposition materializes.

The coalition behind the hotel-tax measure has not released polling.

Other homeless advocates, including businessman Michael McConnell, appear likely to support only one of the two measures.

McConnell, who spoke in support of the bond on Wednesday, has criticized the hotel-tax measure for its lack of specificity on homelessness solutions. Supporters wrote the measure to allow for flexibility and future decision-making by the mayor and City Council, an approach they say allows experts to responsibly deploy resources as needed over four decades.

The bond measure, on the other hand, pledges to solely invest in homes for low-income San Diegans, including those now living on the streets, over the next several years.

"This is targeted, it's focused," McConnell said. "It will accomplish something."

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The Other Homelessness Measure That Could Hit the November Ballot - Voice of San Diego

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Another ballot measure aimed at attacking San Diego's homelessness and housing crisis has cleared an initial hurdle. A City Council committee on Wednesday voted to have city attorneys begin drafting a potential $900 million bond measure for the November ballot that supporters say could bankroll an estimated 7,500 homes for homeless and low-income San Diegans.

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They raise taxes to pay for more policemen and firemen. - Tucker

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Chula Vista residents gave themselves the county's highest sales tax Tuesday.

Measure A, which raises the sales tax from 8.25 percent to 8.75 percent, is poised to pass with 52 percent of the vote from all precincts.

The new tax rate will go into effect January 2019. The measure also requires the City Council to create a citizen oversight committee to make sure Measure A revenues are spent on hiring police officers and firefighters.

Mayor Mary Casillas Salas was pleased to see Measure A pass, but said she expected a wider victory margin.

"I felt that it went well," she said. "I thought that we were going to get Measure A by a lot more votes, but we had such a low voter turnout. It was dismal."

Although Measure A is a general tax - meaning money from the tax will go into the general fund - the mayor and City Council members promised to spend the money to hire public safety staffing because the police and fire departments have the lowest staffing levels per capita in the county.

Salas said the public shouldn't be worried about Measure A money going to anything other than public safety.

"Public safety is our number one priority," she said. "Once you start hiring staff, you are committed; you can't divert the money and not pay someone, so we would have that obligation."

Once the election's results are final, city staff will begin writing the regulations, including the process of selecting members for the citizens oversight committee.

The plans to fill the oversight committee before January. Once staff determine the size and possible qualifications for members, applicants will be able to apply through the City Clerk.

Chula Vista also plans to issue public notices to fill committee vacancies.

The Measure is anticipated to generate more than $16 million a year; enough to hire 29 sworn police officers, 36 firefighters, and more than a dozen other public safety positions.

Opponents of Measure A knew they fought an uphill battle going into Tuesday's primary. Every member of the City Council and the mayor hosted forums about the measure with police and fire union members supporting the tax increase.

Campaigning against public safety is always a challenge, said Russ Hall, chairman of "No on A."

"At the end of the day, it's very difficult to vote against police and fire," he said.

Hall found a silver lining in the fact that Measure A only got 52 percent of the votes.

"I don't think it's a mandate for or a mandate against," he said.

A contentious statewide ballot measure, the Tax Fairness, Transparency and Accountability Act of 2018, has the potential to retroactively overturn Measure A. The Tax Fairness Act would raise the general tax vote requirement from a simple majority to a two-thirds vote and retroactively repeal general tax measures from Tuesday's primary that did not get more than 66 percent of the votes.

Chula Vista joined the California League of Cities in opposing the measure in a formal resolution last month. During the vote, Chula Vista's city manager said that if the measure were to pass, there would likely be legal challenges against the retroactive repeal of general taxes approved in June.

In the mayoral race in Tuesday's primary, two of the four candidates moved onto the November runoff.

Mayor Salas had 61 percent of the vote when all of the precincts were counted early Wednesday morning. Second place went to Hector Gastelum, who received 17 percent of the votes.

Gastelum, an elected board member of the Otay Water District, acknowledges he has a lot of ground to make up but remained upbeat Wednesday.

"I'm just elated that I made it to the next round," he said. "It's like when you go to the Super Bowl; they don't count the points you scored in the playoffs."

Gastelum raised less than $2,000 for the primary and didn't campaign. He plans to be more active before November.

The District 2 City Council race, to represent the northwest part of Chula Vista, was a closer contest.

Retired firefighter Steve Stenberg, who has never run for public office, was the top vote-getter early Wednesday morning with 27 percent. Businesswoman Jill Galvez, who has run for office twice in Chula Vista, received 26 percent of the votes.

Stenberg and Galvez watched the results come in Tuesday night in two different bars on Third Avenue. Once the results came in, the two exchanged pleasantries.

"I'm happy it was a good race," Stenberg said. "I congratulated her, told her I was up by one percent and we smirked together."

They will face off again in November.
Contact Gustavo Solis via Email or Twitter

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Chula Vista residents gave themselves the county's highest sales tax Tuesday. Measure A, which raises the sales tax from 8.25 percent to 8.75 percent, is poised to pass with 52 percent of the vote from all precincts. The new tax rate will go into effect January 2019.

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Pablo

People were not surprised because homelessness in San Diego is a hard problem to solve and the task force cant even do it.

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It was a surprise resignation that did not take many people by surprise.

Gordon Walker has resigned as CEO of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, where he had worked since July 2017. The task force board of directors appointed chief operations officer Tamera Kohler as CEO immediately after accepting his resignation at their Thursday meeting.

Just a month earlier, the board had granted Walker a six-month leave to perform missionary work in Rome, where he will help open a Mormon temple under construction.

Even then, however, some board members expressed doubts about whether he would, or should, return. Board member Greg Anglea, CEO of Interfaith Community Services in Escondido, said he was uncomfortable with granting the leave, and others questioned how the organization would function under uncertain leadership.

Walker had come to San Diego with what many saw as a proven track record for helping the homeless in Utah, where the population of chronically homeless people greatly decreased over his decade-long tenure there.

Several people who have closely followed the homelessness issue in San Diego County, however, had mixed reactions about Walker's tenure in San Diego, where the population of people in shelters and on the street has not significantly changed.

"I wasn't surprised," former task force Chairman Thomas Theisen said about Walker's resignation. "I thought when they made the announcement that it was a graceful and face-saving exit for both the task force and Gordon. A lot of people were not finding the task force taking the significant role that they should have been."

Theisen was optimistic about the board's future under Kohler, a sentiment shared by several people, including San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

"Tamera is a proven leader who is respected nationally for her work on reducing homelessness, and we're fortunate to have her here in San Diego," he said in an e-mail. "Her experience as COO of the task force will help ensure she moves seamlessly into the role of CEO. I look forward to working with her, as well as with Councilmember Ward in his new position as board chairman, as we build an effective regional approach to addressing San Diego's most pressing societal issue."

Kohler joined the task force as COO in October 2017 with 18 years of experience with homelessness issues. She had worked with Walker in Utah, where she received a state Housing Coalition Project of the Year honor in 2016. She came to San Diego from Seattle, where she was division director of homeless strategy and investment for the city.

Peter Seidler, San Diego Padres general partner and a philanthropist who supports homeless causes, called her appointment as CEO magnificent news for San Diego.

"She is a uniquely skilled and accomplished operations executive and, additionally, a proven strategic thinker and analytical executive," he said. "She has earned the trust and respect of all the significant San Diego folks who are driving our city to 'best in class' on homelessness."

Dennis Stein, who produced the film "Tony" about a homeless man in San Diego and regularly attends task force meetings, had some praise for Walker but also said he was disappointed that the organization had not yet adopted a comprehensive plan.

"I think he really built a good team," Stein said. "He came in when the Regional Task Force was just doing the point-in-time count and some other things. They had, like, five people, and now there's 25 people."

Walter Philips, CEO of San Diego Youth Services and a task force board member, also credited Walker with helping transform the organization at a pivotal time. Walker had arrived shortly after the task force had merged with the Regional Continuum of Care.

"His role was helping to get the ball rolling, and now handing it to Tamera," Philips said, adding that he had been impressed with Kohler after working with her on youth homelessness and other issues.

Deacon Jim Vargas, a task force board member and president and CEO of Father Joe's Villages, also credited Walker with leading the organization during a time of transition.

"Gordon came into a newly formed organization," he said. "It was different from what it had been in the past. He did a great job of restructuring in order to deliver on the mission that the board had set for the organization."

Vargas said Walker increased the staff and brought a fundraising element to the organization, quickly getting known in the community and garnering financial support.

Walker had often said that he had seen the regional political will to help the homeless grow over the past year, but Theisen faulted him for not capitalizing on it.

"Gordon was supposed to be the great unifier, bringing us together," said Theisen, who was head of the task force board of directors for four years before leaving in January 2017. "He didn't capitalize on creating a unifying plan for the San Diego region."

Theisen said the region still is not working together to help the homeless, and he cited separate landlord-incentive programs in the city of San Diego and the county as an example.

Homeless advocate Michael McConnell, often critical of the region's efforts to help the homeless, speculated that the task force board welcomed the news that Walker was taking a leave as an opportunity to replace him.

"But I don't think anything matters at this point," he said. "It's a non-event. I'm not going to miss him because I can't figure out what he did. Let's hope they can get their act together from here."

McConnell said he would be supportive of the new leadership, but also would hold them accountable.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Reaction mixed to departure of homeless task force CEO

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It was a surprise resignation that did not take many people by surprise. Gordon Walker has resigned as CEO of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, where he had worked since July 2017. The task force board of directors appointed chief operations officer Tamera Kohler as CEO immediately after accepting his resignation at their Thursday meeting.

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Funding Released for affordable housing falls short 

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Funding Released for affordable housing falls short 

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A plan that the San Diego housing committee set out to get passed. There's a lot of saticitics and is all about housing first initiatives.
Eliana Bentley

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The city's recent announcement that $50 million has become available to help fund affordable rentals was good news for low-income families, but also revealed how far San Diego has to go to meet a pressing need.

San Diego Housing Commission President Rick Gentry said the money is expected to help create about 560 units, which may be built over the next few years.

The city's Regional Housing Need Estimates from 2010 projected that San Diego has to build 38,680 affordable rental housing units before 2020 to meet the area's need.

The most recent available data shows that as of 2017, only 4,410 units had been completed, or about 11 percent of the goal.

It's a big gap to fill, but there has been some progress. Besides the units that will created with the new pool of money, the Housing Commission has several other projects in the pipeline that will add to the city's low-income needs. Previously released Housing Commission loans were taken out by developers to create 862 affordable units, including some that have already opened.

There also is a possibility that voters will support an initiative that could appear on the 2020 ballot to raise $900 million for affordable housing projects.

That initiative had been led by the San Diego Housing Federation, a regional nonprofit coalition of developers, advocates, and other organizations that promote affordable housing.

Stephen Russell, executive director of the federation, said the initiative would release $150 million annually for six years and leverage state funds to help create 7,500 units for low-income and homeless San Diegans.

"If we had $150 million a year for six years, it would build enough housing for everyone who is chronically homeless in San Diego," Russell said. "But it would take six years to build. Housing doesn't just appear."

The 7,500 units also would include 2,500 for veterans and 2,500 for low-wage working families, he said.

For every local dollar that would become available for low-income housing projects, developers could receive $3 from other sources, including tax credits. Acquiring that funding takes time, which is why building affordable housing can take a couple of years longer than building market-value houses, Russell said.

And even with the best-case scenarios that would see projects developed quickly and a ballot initiative that would bring in more housing funds, the city still faces a formidable uphill challenge in meeting the city's basic housing needs.

A Housing Commission report released last September found the city must produce 17,000 units a year just to keep up with growth and 24,000 a year to catch up with the existing shortfall.

The most the city has ever produced in a year is 6,400 units.

"What San Diego needs is more growth and, I think, greater density," Gentry said.

Despite the grim projections, both Russell and Gentry see cause for optimism in what has been accomplished and with news of funding for more than 500 additional affordable units.

"We need it, and the 500 families who will be impacted, it means the world," Russell said.

Gentry also takes some pride in the projects that are in the pipeline.

"There's 407 units, plus 455 units," he said of projects that developers are working on with Housing Commission funding. "And we've got two properities finished. That's 862 units, or 862 people off the street. And that's not too shabby. We've also set aside 4,000 vouchers for homelessness. We are addressing the issues. It's just that the issues are not going away."

In the commission's original Housing First - San Diego initiative in 2014, $30 million was made available for developers of eight projects. The 62-unit Cypress Apartments opened in July 2017, followed by the 59-unit Talmadge Gateway project that same month.

Projects expected to open later this year are the 38-unit Vista del Puente, the 8-unit Nook East Village and the 84-unit Zephyr Grantville Veterans Apartments.

Finishing out the $30 million awards, the 79-unit Bluewater veterans housing project and the 52-unit Lofts at Normal Heights are expected to open next summer, and the 25-unit Post 310 Apartments is expected to open in winter 2019.

Another $30 million in awards was presented to four projects in 2016. The 79-unit Stella family housing project is expected to open in summer 2019, the 65-unit Encanto Village is expected in spring 2019, the 79 New Palace Hotel is scheduled for fall 2018 and the 137-unit Paseo la Paz in San Ysidro is expected to be completed in fall 2019. Approval of a 95-unit project is pending.

The funding announced last week included $20 million for permanent support housing under the commission's Housing First - San Diego initiative. Gentry said projects with support services take longer to develop, so applications for the money will be open until Sept. 4, 2020.

Another $20 million is available for affordable rental housing development, and $10 million is available for rehabilitation projects and will be funded through the city's Community Development Block Grants. Applications for both are open until Dec. 4.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Funding released for affordable housing falls far short of need

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The city's recent announcement that $50 million has become available to help fund affordable rentals was good news for low-income families, but also revealed how far San Diego has to go to meet a pressing need. San Diego Housing Commission President Rick Gentry said the money is expected to help create about 560 units, which may be built over the next few years.

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Juniper
Has LOTS of good information about Cost of Living in SD, as well as comparisons to other cities.

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Life in a sunny city by the Pacific Ocean doesn't sound bad, does it? If you're considering moving to San Diego a) we don't blame you and b) you're probably wondering whether you can afford to live in what's officially nicknamed America's Finest City. SmartAsset has you covered with our guide to the true cost of living in San Diego, also known as the Plymouth of the West.

San Diego Incomes

Does the idea of living in the avocado capital of the US sound too good to be true? Well, you can live that dream if you move to San Diego. San Diego County, of which San Diego is the county seat, is the country's biggest producer of avocados. San Diego itself has more farms than any other city in the country. Are residents of the San Diego city earning enough to cover all those farmers market trips? Take a look at the chart below to see how monthly income in San Diego compares to other major US cities.

San Diego Home Prices

Home prices in San Diego don't approach the crazy-expensive levels of San Francisco and San Jose. According to trulia.com, a one-bedroom home in San Diego will cost you around $255,000. Need two bedrooms? Expect to pay around $399,000. Things get pretty steep if you upgrade to three bedrooms ($528,500) or four bedrooms ($681,000). The average home price for all properties is $490,000.

If you want some help with sorting out your finances before you buy a home, these are San Diego's top 10 financial advisor firms.

San Diego Rent

Not ready for the commitment of a mortgage or don't yet have the savings for a down payment? According to myapartmentmap.com, the average rent for a San Diego studio is $1,465. Rents on a one-bedroom in the city average $1,547. Average rent rises to $2,060 for a two-bedroom and $2,631 for a three-bedroom.

Depending on where you're from, those rents may sound outrageous. In fact, though, the San Diego price-to-rent ratio is high, meaning that renting could be a better deal than buying. Of course, your rent-or-buy decision will depend on your specific financial situation but conventional wisdom is that a price-to-rent ratio over 15 indicates a renter-friendly market. Take a look at the chart to see how San Diego's price-to-rent ratio compares to other big American cities.

Utilities

Housing is one of the major drivers of the cost of living in San Diego but it's not the only factor to consider. According to numbeo.com a basic package of utilities for a 915-square foot apartment in San Diego costs an average of $117.04 per month. That includes electricity, water, heating and garbage. If you want to add internet (and we're guessing you do) you can expect to pay a further $57.27 per month.

Transportation

Once you have your housing and utilities taken care of you need to think about how you'll get around. A monthly pass on San Diego's public transit system costs $72. Let's be honest, though. San Diego is a driving city. According to gasbuddy.com you can expect to pay $3.70 for a gallon of gas. That's 4.5% above the California average of $3.54 and 40% above the national average of $2.64.

Food

We're guessing San Diego residents don't live off avocados alone, tempting as that sounds. Let's take a look at how food prices in San Diego stack up. A three-course meal for two in a mid-range restaurant will cost you $60, according to numbeo.com. The same source puts the cost of a meal in an inexpensive restaurant at $12. Prefer to save money by cooking at home? Numbeo's recommended minimum amount of money for food for one person for a month in San Diego is $316.48.

Healthcare

All the farm-fresh food and vitamin D available in San Diego should help you keep your health game strong. If you do visit the doctor, expect to pay around $145 for a preventive primary care visit in San Diego, according to castlighthealth.com. That $145 is in the middle of the pack for California cities. It's more expensive than Fresno ($117) and Los Angeles ($121) but cheaper than Sacramento ($219) and San Francisco ($251).

Taxes

California is known for its high taxes. In fact, it's the highest-tax state in the nation. If you want to see what your tax burden will be like in California check out our free tax calculator. As far as San Diego-specific taxes go, the situation could be worse. The San Diego sales tax rate is 8%. The average effective property tax rate is $1.179%.

Extras

You don't want your hypothetical San Diego life to be all work and no play, do you? Let's talk about the non-essential side of the cost of living in San Diego.

If you're over 12 years of age, a ticket to the famed San Diego Zoo will cost you $48. A ticket for a child aged 3 to 11 is $38. That's the bad news. The good news is that the San Diego Padres have the cheapest tickets in all of Major League Baseball. According to Team Marketing Report, the average price of a Padres ticket is just $16.37. For reference, the highest-price tickets in baseball are Red Sox tickets, at $52.34. The league-wide average is $28.94.

Prefer something a little more high-brow? An adult ticket to the San Diego Museum of Art will cost you $12. It's $10 for the Museum of Contemporary Art and $14 for the San Diego Botanical Garden. There's something for everyone in America's Finest City.

Next Steps

So you've decided you're moving to San Diego. You probably want to see how your budget will be affected. SmartAsset's California paycheck calculator can help you determine how living in the Golden State will impact your take-home pay.

If you want help with how it will impact your finances or are looking for someone to help you meet your financial goals in general, a financial advisor might be useful. A matching tool like SmartAsset's can help you find a person to work with to meet your needs. First you answer a series of questions about your situation and your goals. Then the program narrows down thousands of advisors to three fiduciaries who meet your needs. You can then read their profiles to learn more about them, interview them on the phone or in person and choose who to work with in the future. This allows you to find a good fit while doing much of the hard work for you.

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/Ron Thomas

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The Cost of Living in San Diego - SmartAsset

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Life in a sunny city by the Pacific Ocean doesn't sound bad, does it? If you're considering moving to San Diego a) we don't blame you and b) you're probably wondering whether you can afford to live in what's officially nicknamed America's Finest City.

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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Sonya Moran
This article shows multiple valuable facts regarding different locations in San Diego the homeless population is most apperant.

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows.

One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

At the same time, the number of unsheltered people dropped significantly in downtown areas that traditionally have had large populations of homeless who sleep in tents, makeshift shelters and cars.

The area near Father Joe's Village and surrounding blocks, however, saw an increase in unsheltered people, with the population reaching more than 400.

The population shift could give credence to the argument that the city's efforts to clear away downtown homeless camps last yearresulted in homeless people moving elsewhere.

It also could be a fluke. The annual count is taken in pre-dawn hours, with volunteers walking sidewalks or driving on dark streets with clipboards to look for homeless people huddled in doorways, sleeping in cars or tucked inside tents.

Weather, lighting and other conditions also can affect the number of people counted, possibly shifting the totals in areas from one year to another.

The Regional Task Force on the Homeless organized the Jan. 26 annual count, and on May 17 it released a report that found 8,576 homeless people throughout the county, a 6 percent drop from the previous year.

The report gave the number of homeless people in cities and unincorporated areas, but not individual neighborhoods.

Finding those numbers takes more digging.

To do the count, the task force broke down the city of San Diego into more than 300 census tracts, and totals of each can be found online, separate from its annual report.

The National Homeless Information Project, described by coordinator Michael Ullman as a grassroots collaboration to share information about homeless services, took a deeper dive into the data and compiled a chart comparing this year's count with one taken in January 2017, arranging them according to the greatest changes..

Even Ullman's report, however, only identifies neighborhoods by census tract numbers. The actual locations can be found by finding the tract numbers on the San Diego Association of Governments' 2010 census map, which was used by the task force in the point-in-time counts.

One of the largest changes was in the heart of Hillcrest, between University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard, west of Park Boulevard and east of state Highway 163. The unsheltered population in that area increased by 960 percent, growing from five to 53 people since 2017.

That neighborhood had the second largest percent increase in the county, followed only by a 1,400 percent increase around UC San Diego, where the population grew from one to 15

Another increase in Hillcrest was seen near the UC San Diego Medical Center, which was up 59 percent with an increase from 17 to 27 people.

Downtown, things changed in the other direction, especially north of Market Street and south of Ash Street or Russ Boulevard.

In that stretch in Golden Hill between 24th Street and Interstate 15, the number of homeless people on the street dropped from 155 to 26 since last year, an 83 percent decrease.

The 129-person drop was the largest decrease of any census tract.

The second biggest dip came just to the west in the eight blocks from Ash to Market Street between 9th and 11th streets.

In that neighborhood, which includes many tall office buildings and restaurants, the population dropped from 251 to 158, a 37 percent decrease.

West of that, the neighborhood between Ninth and State streets that includes City Hall and Civic Center Plaza saw a drop from 279 to 195 unsheltered people, a 30 percent decrease.

Sherman Heights also saw decreases. One neighborhood east of I-5 and between Market and Commercial streets saw the number of people on the street drop from 112 to 30, a 73 percent increase.

South of Commercial Street in Sherman Heights, another neighborhood saw the homeless population drop from 81 to 20, a 75 percent decrease.

Together, the homeless population in those five areas dropped by 459 people.

There's no way to know where they all went, but it's likely that the three bridge shelter tents that the city opened between the two counts may have had a role in the decline.

Together, the three have 674 beds, and two of the tents are in downtown San Diego.

It's also possible that the homeless people in areas with the biggest drops just moved slightly south, west, east or north, and some numbers suggest that may have happened.

Just to the west of neighborhoods that saw a decline, the homeless population grew 38 percent, from 90 to 124, in the Marina area that includes the Embarcadero and San Diego Convention Center.

To the east of neighborhoods that saw a drop, the area around City College saw a 117 percent increase, with the homeless population growing from 18 to 39 people.

To the south, the area with the largest and most visible homeless population got even more unsheltered people.

The neighborhood south of Market Street between I-5 and Ninth Street includes Father Joe's Village and the Neil Good Day Center, and this year's count saw the homeless population there grow from 361 to 435, a 20 percent increase.

Other areas with notable changes include North Park between University Avenue and Upas Street, where the population dropped 92 percent, from 52 to just four, and a Bankers Hill neighborhood north of Laurel Street, which had a 100 percent drop from 47 people to zero.

The homeless population in Balboa Park dropped 36 percent, from 108 to 69 people, and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood south of Balboa Avenue and west of Clairemont Drive increased 900 percent by growing from two to 20.
gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939

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Data shows homeless on the move in San Diego

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The homeless population in San Diego has surged in some neighborhoods and dramatically dropped in others, a close look at numbers from this year's count of homeless people shows. One area of Hillcrest saw a 960 percent increase in the number of unsheltered homeless people and a Kearny Mesa neighborhood saw its unsheltered population jump by 900 percent.

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Talks housing shortage and some plans in SD to make more housing. - Tucker

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Assemblyman Todd Gloria addressed the future of the "missing middle" in San Diego County at the final committee hearing on housing affordability for the middle and working class in downtown San Diego Thursday.

The committee listened to panelists including policy analysts and San Diego Housing Federation officials on middle-income housing needs in the state and changes Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom's administration could consider to spur more development.

Stephen Russell, executive director of the San Diego Housing Federation, emphasized that on top of the state's housing shortage, there's also a data shortage outlining the scope of the problem.

"There is a good grasp of demand, but not supply," he said. "We believe there is a lack of supply for the middle income."

Russell said officials need to better recognize the impact that housing costs have at different income levels, and to confront the issue of supply. About 5 percent of San Diego homes, for example, are off limits as housing.

Russell and Jim Waring, co-founder of CleanTech San Diego, both drove home a need for more data collection requirements and better data sets that include various layers of income to show "there's a big hole in the middle."

The San Diego Housing Commission is currently collecting data with the California Department of Housing and Community Development and will have information to the state soon, Russell said.

Stakeholders at the hearing brought up micro-housing - studios that are smaller and cheaper than standard units - as a possible housing solution.

Doug Holmes and Michael Dodd of Makana Properties LLC said the company has plans to build 21 studios in Logan Heights next year. They also outlined plans for a future 42-unit project in El Cerrito.

"We've come up with a concept using modular construction," Holmes said. "We want to make this an affordable housing project."

Gloria said he when he gets asked about the three biggest problems facing the state, his answer is "housing, housing and housing."

"I don't want this to be the end of the conversation," he said. "There is not one issue constituents talk to me about that are not directly related to this issue."

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California's Three Biggest Problems? 'Housing, Housing and Housing' - Voice of San Diego

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Assemblyman Todd Gloria addressed the future of the "missing middle" in San Diego County at the final committee hearing on housing affordability for the middle and working class in downtown San Diego Thursday. The committee listened to panelists including policy analysts and San Diego Housing Federation officials on middle-income housing needs in the state and changes Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom's administration could consider to spur more development.

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Seattle vs Amazon you won't believe who won

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Seattle vs Amazon you won't believe who won

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Pablo

Amazon and other businesses helped repeal a tax raising in Seattle. Counter for our goal.

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June 12
The Seattle City Council on Tuesday voted to repeal a tax hike on large employers that it instituted less than a month ago, backing down from a plan fiercely opposed by Amazon.com and much of the city's business community.

With Amazon and Starbucks funding a ballot challenge to repeal the tax, the city's Democratic council struck down the tax levy they approved about four weeks ago. Seattle Mayor Jenny A. Durkan (D) is expected to approve the repeal.

The new tax would have raised $48 million annually to combat Seattle's homelessness and affordable housing crises. The Seattle area has the third-largest homeless population in the country, according to federal statistics.

"It's immensely disappointing," said Seattle City Council member Mike O'Brien (D), who voted for the tax before voting for its repeal. "[But] it has become more and more clear that the people of Seattle seem to agree with Amazon - and at least part of the narrative they and the Chamber of Commerce have been putting out."

The abrupt reversal enraged some supporters of the "head" tax, who argued that wealthy corporations in the city can afford to pay more to address homelessness. The measure, passed unanimously by the city council last month, levied a $275-per-employee tax on companies with at least $20 million in gross annual revenue.

Seattle's council voted 7 to 2 to repeal the tax. The vote capped more contentious debate at Seattle City Hall, in which several speakers accused the local government of bending to the whims of Amazon.

"The people who are being disruptive are being disruptive because they are angry," said Tae Phoenix, one of the activists. "The system is not working for them, and disrupting it is the only thing they can do. They are desperate, and they are angry, and they have a right to be."

Tax experts say the reversal underscores the limited leverage that cities across the country have over corporations such as Amazon, which helped wage an intense public relations campaign to turn the public against the tax. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

"There's a bargaining power problem here, and cities are on the wrong side of it," said Matthew Gardner, a tax policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank. "When Amazon decides to be bullies and make this kind of threat, it's really hard for officials to know how seriously to take it. Nobody on Seattle's city council wants to be the one who chased Amazon out of town."
A spokesman for Amazon declined to comment.

The tax was scheduled to go into effect in 2019 and hit almost 600 businesses, said Louise Chernin of the Greater Seattle Business Association, a business group that helped fight the tax along with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Critics accused Seattle officials of bending to pressure from Amazon, but Chernin stressed broad opposition to the proposal from across the city's business community.

Republicans in the Washington legislature also said they were preparing legislation to strike down Seattle's head tax. Washington's state government is narrowly controlled by Democrats, but at least one moderate Democrat in the legislature also opposed the head tax, calling it bad for the party's brand.

About two-thirds of the new revenue from the tax would be directed toward housing in the city. Most of the rest would help fund homeless services, including emergency shelters.

The city council approved the tax despite months of public feuding between local officials and businesses. Seattle officials initially pitched a $500-per-employee tax on large businesses. In a show of opposition, Amazon stopped construction on a new tower in the city.

The online retail giant also criticized the final tax package when it was passed, saying in a statement that the company was "very apprehensive about the future created by the council's hostile approach and rhetoric."

Seattle's business community launched a campaign to repeal the tax by putting it to the voters through a ballot referendum. Starbucks and Amazon each kicked in $25,000 for the effort, and supermarket groups put in $80,000, according to the Seattle Times.

"Repeal makes sense," John Kelly, a spokesman for Starbucks, said in an email. "Together we must work to bring families inside, once and for all."

In a statement, Mayor Durkan and seven council members vowed to continue searching for a solution for the homelessness problem. But to the mayor's progressive critics, Durkan gave up the fight too soon.

"I have a news flash for council members who capitulated to this in lightning speed: This was never going to be easy in the face of mass corporate misinformation," Kshama Sawant, a council member and a member of Socialist Alternative, a socialist political party, said in an interview. "It's a complete betrayal of working people."

Seattle tried raising money last year by passing an income tax on its wealthiest residents. But that measure was struck down by the courts as illegal under state law, according to Richard Auxier, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "There's nothing but political, tough decisions for cities trying to raise money," Auxier said. "A lot of localities are in a tough spot because states have limited their options."

The number of homeless people in the county surrounding Seattle has jumped by 4 percent, to 12,112, according to a Seattle Times report from May, while housing prices in the city have continued to soar. The city declared a state of emergency over its homeless population in 2015.

O'Brien, the council member, said that he did not have an immediate plan for how to address the city housing shortage but that the risks of losing the ballot fight were too great. He noted that opponents of the head tax had "unlimited resources" to spend on advertising and voter mobilization, and he feared moderate Democrats in the state legislature would join Republicans to outlaw the tax hike even if it survived a ballot challenge.

"I was thinking there's a decent likelihood we spend millions of dollars beating each other up, and months from now have no new revenue and a homeless problem we haven't even begun to work on," O'Brien said in an interview Monday night. "It's a very uncomfortable position to be in. But when I sit down and close my eyes, I think we're better off stepping back."

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Seattle council votes to repeal tax to help homeless amid opposition from Amazon, other businesses

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June 12 The Seattle City Council on Tuesday voted to repeal a tax hike on large employers that it instituted less than a month ago, backing down from a plan fiercely opposed by Amazon.com and much of the city's business community.

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30 percent of moderate-income households can't afford rent in San Diego, and 70 percent can't afford to own a home

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30 percent of moderate-income households can't afford rent in San Diego, and 70 percent can't afford to own a home

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Andrea Baez

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San Diego Takes Steps To Alleviate Housing Crisis, Report Reveals
GUEST
Jade Hindmon, reporter, KPBS News
Transcript
The city of San Diego has taken steps to address the housing shortage, though "it may take some time to start seeing results,'' according to a city report released on Tuesday.

Roughly 30 percent of moderate-income households can't afford rent in San Diego, and 70 percent can't afford to own a home, said the city's first Housing Inventory Annual Report.

Rental rates increased 34 percent between 2013 and 2017, with studio unit prices rising most rapidly at 51 percent.

The median regional home price has grown to $605,000, up 8 percent from January 2017. Median condominium and town home prices, meanwhile, rose from $370,000 to $400,000 over the same span.

The housing shortage has increased prices, reduced options and made the city less appealing to businesses, the report said.

It noted several recent ordinance changes that incentivized development, including affordable housing density bonuses, reduced parking requirements and waived fees for accessory dwelling units, also called granny flats.

However, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer called for additional reforms and permit streamlining to alleviate the housing crisis.

"The need to build more housing that people can actually afford has never been more critical as the dream of home ownership is becoming out of reach for more and more San Diegans,'' Faulconer said. "The numbers in this report are a sobering reminder of the crisis we face to build housing and the importance of tracking the progress of the reforms we've implemented to spur new housing construction in the coming years.''

The city's population has grown an average of 1.2 percent each year, though the housing stock has only grown .5 percent annually.

Local vacancy rates have declined since 2013, according to the report.

In 2016, there was only 1.3-percent vacancy among the ownership- housing supply, compared to a healthy vacancy rate of 5 percent. The rental vacancy rate hovered around 3 percent in 2017, compared to a healthy rate of 5 percent.

San Diego is also falling well-short of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation, a state-mandated count that determines how many new units are needed to accommodate population growth. San Diego was to build 88,096 new units between 2010 and 2020. Only 33,159 units, 38 percent of the goal, have been added.

Additionally, 86.6 percent of new units were for above-moderate income residents, while only 13.3 percent were for low-income residents.

The report pinpointed a few positives, including increases in the amount of discretionary building permits issued each year between 2014 and 2017, when the total grew from 2,115 to 5,865 permits. Overall, 19,974 permits were issued between 2013 and 2017.

Permits can be issued several years before workers break ground on a project, so they are indicators - not guarantees - of future housing stock.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

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San Diego Takes Steps To Alleviate Housing Crisis, Report Reveals

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San Diego Takes Steps To Alleviate Housing Crisis, Report Reveals GUEST Jade Hindmon, reporter, KPBS News Transcript The city of San Diego has taken steps to address the housing shortage, though "it may take some time to start seeing results,'' according to a city report released on Tuesday.

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Local employers worry about lack of affordable housing, study finds

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Local employers worry about lack of affordable housing, study finds

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Maliyah Prince
How the lack of affordable housing affects employers

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SAN DIEGO - A San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce study released Tuesday found that employer satisfaction with the local housing supply has never been lower.

The regional housing crisis has decreased affordability, created longer commutes and frustrated employees and employers alike, the study found. It projects a continued shortage in North County specifically, among a "substantial imbalance of housing and jobs."

Limited housing has strong economic implications, said Sean Karafin, vice president of policy and economic research with the chamber.

"Employers, in greater and greater numbers, are losing talented employees to places like Seattle, Austin and Denver, where housing is more affordable and there are more options for employees and their families," he said. "This means that employers will look to grow in our competitor regions instead of right here in San Diego."

San Diego-based London Moeder Advisors authored the new study as an update to a 2016 document.

Without significant action, the study forecasts a worsening shortage well into the future and ever-increasing housing costs whether a home is for sale or rent.

The consequences of not significantly bolstering the supply could become "irreversible," according to the study, which said the "inability to reconcile housing supply and demand is likely to fuel an unprecedented economic challenge for the region, as employers are weighed down by the plight of their employees unable to find or afford their preferred housing type."

The study found that anticipated demand for single-family homes, in particular, will be considerably higher than the potential for such structures in local housing plans, which often focus on urban apartments and condominiums.

"Younger millennials, and millennials who have yet to start families, may be continuing to prefer urban apartments and condominium living. But we shouldn't assume the same is true for those starting families," said senior principal Gary London, who wrote the study. "We need to focus on providing housing options for this growing population looking for that single-family feel by producing cluster-detached, rowhomes and townhomes, among other options."

A San Diego Association of Governments housing need determination called for an additional 42,852 units to be built between 2012 and 2016. There were only 20,103 new units built during that frame, or 46.9 percent of expected growth.

Additionally, a large number of units are being developed away from job centers, the study said.

"Ultimately, we have concluded that there will be an economic price to pay, as housing growth is not aligned with job growth. The situation tugs at the heart of our region's economic sustenance," it said.

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Local employers worry about lack of affordable housing, study finds

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SAN DIEGO - A San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce study released Tuesday found that employer satisfaction with the local housing supply has never been lower. The regional housing crisis has decreased affordability, created longer commutes and frustrated employees and employers alike, the study found.

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Homelessness Is Exploding Downtown: What We Know (and Don't) About Why

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Homelessness Is Exploding Downtown: What We Know (and Don't) About Why

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Josue Sanchez
It talks about the numbers of homeless people in downtown. There's been a 68% spike in street homelessness downtown.

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Theories abound about the reasons for booming homelessness downtown but no one can explain exactly why it's booming.

Since January alone, a business group's monthly census has shown a 68 percent spike in street homelessness downtown. The count peaked at nearly 1,400 in August and has since hovered around 1,130. More tents line city blocks and more homeless people cluster near freeway on-ramps, businesses and homeless services.

Some local leaders have said Proposition 47, a state ballot initiative that downgraded some felonies to misdemeanors in an effort to reduce the state prison population, is a significant culprit. Others have speculated about the impact of high rents, an influx of homeless people from other areas and even the way the homeless population is counted.

Homeless service providers and data gurus aren't so sure what's driving the massive uptick.

"We need a really comprehensive, in-depth look at what's going on," said Amy Gonyeau, chief operating officer of nonprofit Alpha Project.

Here's what we know and don't know about street homelessness downtown.

The Numbers

Two groups track homelessness downtown.

The best-known annual census is conducted by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, which sends volunteers out countywide to count those living on the street and in shelters between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. one morning in late January.

This year's point-in-time count revealed an 8 percent drop in overall homelessness citywide but a 21 percent increase in street homelessness in downtown census tracts. The group counted more than 1,000 people on downtown streets.

A monthly survey organized by the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a business group, has gotten more attention this year as the homeless population booms.

Homeless outreach workers with the Downtown Partnership fan out across 275 city blocks between midnight and 5 a.m. the last Thursday of the month.

Here are the totals they've recorded since they started taking counts in 2012.

Clearly, something's changed this year.

The Tent Factor

As street homelessness increases, so too has the number of homeless San Diegans with tents - and that affects the numbers.

Since 2012, the Downtown Partnership has assumed two people are sleeping in each tent outreach workers come across. But the group doesn't report the number of tents they see, making it difficult to conclude how much tents could be increasing the monthly count.

Alonso Vivas, who supervises the Downtown Partnership's homelessness efforts, admits the approach isn't foolproof. He said one could argue it may also undercount the population.

The Downtown Partnership's opted to stick with that method because it allows them to better compare data over time, Vivas said. "We want to stay consistent."

This January, the Regional Task Force counted more than 200 tents downtown, a 52 percent increase from last year. Then they assumed 1.72 people were sleeping in each one which translates into about a third of the more than 1,000 homeless counted on downtown streets this January.

San Diego's Homeless Hub

Downtown San Diego has long been the regional headquarters for homeless services. It's a place where homeless folks can get a meal, a shower or a shelter bed - resources that aren't as plentiful elsewhere.

Many have told me they came downtown or have stayed there for that reason, even if they aren't looking for shelter.

"All the resources are here," said Thomas Easthope, 51, who I met last week near Fault Line Park in East Village.

Easthope and others stress that life downtown isn't easy. They're frustrated with police enforcement, weekly sidewalk clean-ups and an increasing population in a time of much construction and development that's forcing homeless people into smaller areas.

"They're jamming us in one place," Easthope said.

Still, the draw endures - for now.

Dolores Diaz, who leads the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said the data her group's collected seems to show homeless San Diegans are migrating within the region, especially to downtown census tracts.

That might explain one seemingly contradictory takeaway from this year's countywide count. Street homelessness actually fell nearly 1 percent citywide from 2015 to 2016 but rose downtown.

The Prop. 47 Effect

In Nov. 2014, California voters approved Prop. 47, reducing certain felonies to misdemeanors. It gave authorities less power to crack down on repeat drug and property crime offenders and to persuade them to enroll in treatment programs. It also led to the release of tens of thousands statewide from prisons and probation terms.

In the two years since, the downtown homeless population has more than doubled - and some local officials have been quick to note the circumstances.

City Councilwoman Lorie Zapf and a chief deputy city attorney wearied over the challenges the initiative has wrought at a recent town hall meeting.

"It is clear to everyone, even though the statistics are lagging, that since the implementation of Prop. 47, it correlates with the increase in these aggressive transients, with these thefts, with the crazy amount of drug use that we're seeing out on the streets, like right out in the open, right now," said Zapf, who is most focused on homelessness in the beach communities she represents.

Before Prop. 47, Zapf said, drug offenders facing greater punishment had an incentive to enter rehabilitation programs that might help them move past addiction. Now, she argued, they're increasingly ending up on the street without the help they need.

Meanwhile, homeless outreach workers and other downtown groups have noted increased drug and gang activity among the homeless population, especially in East Village. The Downtown San Diego Partnership has said workers who clean and watch over downtown streets as part of the group's Clean and Safe Program are increasingly being assaulted on the job.

Data recently released by SANDAG, the regional planning agency, underlines the vulnerability of drug offenders and their risk of homelessness - and how that might be changing post-Prop. 47.

In 2013, 56 percent of drug arrestees interviewed by the agency as part of a years-long analysis reported they'd ever been homeless. Of those, 28 percent said they were homeless when they were arrested.

Two years later, with Prop. 47 in effect, 62 percent of arrestees reported they'd ever been homeless and 40 percent of those said they were currently homeless.

Yet many nonprofit leaders and other officials are hesitant to publicly claim cause and effect. They aren't specifically tracking who's moving onto downtown streets or monitoring folks who might otherwise be jailed or on probation.

What they do know is that 14 percent of unsheltered homeless folks surveyed by the task force reported they were on probation or parole and 62 percent countywide reported they'd served time in jail, prison or juvenile hall. Of those, 85 percent said they'd been released within the last five years.

Division Chief Gonzalo Mendez of the San Diego County Probation Department is familiar with those numbers and anecdotes about Prop. 47. He regularly attends monthly meetings focused on coordinating homeless-serving efforts countywide and is concerned drug offenders once easier to help push into treatment aren't getting that treatment.

But he thinks more research is needed to draw a direct correlation between Prop. 47 and rising street homelessness.

"I don't know what the answer is," Mendez said. "I know we have 2,700 less offenders (on probation) but we can't say all those people are homeless or don't have a place to live."

Diaz of the Regional Task Force also argued the data the homeless-serving community has now isn't enough to conclude that Prop. 47 is driving increases in street homelessness downtown.

"I don't think we should say that Prop. 47 has anything to do with it," Diaz said.

Who's Coming In

San Diego's mild climate and stories about homeless folks being bused in feed a common notion that much of the region's homeless population could be coming from elsewhere. That theory's also been circulated as street homelessness grows downtown.

But the most reliable data indicates more than two-thirds of homeless San Diegans ended up on the streets while living in San Diego rather than move here after they became homeless.

Downtown San Diego Partnership CEO Kris Michell has often said many homeless folks who settle downtown aren't from San Diego and that this may make it different than other parts of the county.

At a town hall last month, Michell said about 70 percent of homeless people her workers had surveyed reported they came from outside California.

But that statistic is based on reports from participants in the organization's family reunification program, which helps homeless people reconnect with family members.

"We don't extrapolate that to apply to the entire population of homeless people downtown," spokeswoman Angela Wells said.

This detail matters. Someone who is seeking help to reunite with family members is more likely to have family outside California or at least San Diego County.

Other data, though imperfect, tells a different story.

This year, about 70 percent of unsheltered homeless folks countywide interviewed by the Regional Task Force said they'd become homeless in San Diego. About a quarter reported becoming homeless elsewhere.

A downtown-focused effort in 2014 drew similar conclusions. Two-thirds of the more than 2,200 homeless folks surveyed downtown reported they lived in San Diego County before they became homeless and nearly 70 percent said they hailed from Southern California. And again, just under a quarter reported living elsewhere before they ended up on the street.

Raul Palomino, executive director of homeless-serving Presbyterian Urban Ministries in Sherman Heights, said he believes the trend has shifted recently.

Palomino, whose organization that helps homeless folks secure IDs and birth certificates necessary for long-term aid, said he's noticed an uptick in clients from outside San Diego. He acknowledged many of those clients come via a more recent partnership with a private prisons operator that uses his service to prepare clients to move out of halfway houses.

"Lately, it's been more people who are brand new to San Diego," he said.

Affordable Housing Shortage

San Diego's rising rents and low vacancy rates are especially daunting for would-be tenants with past evictions, low credit scores and limited cash.

And there are now fewer than half as many units in downtown residential hotels that once served as a last-ditch option folks who might otherwise be homeless. Many have shuttered or started charging more.

A Housing Commission survey last fall concluded the city was home to just 3,872 single-room occupancy units - fewer than half of the citywide stock reported in 2003.

Homeless advocates are adamant the loss of those units, many of which were downtown, is contributing to the downtown homelessness crisis.

"The SROs were the safety net," said Jim Lovell, who leads the downtown Third Avenue Charitable Organization.

Lovell, whose organization serves meals and connects homeless clients to other services, said the $750 to $800 monthly SRO rates he's seen recently are out of reach for many seniors and people with disabilities.

Many SROs that remain aren't inviting, either.

Lovell said one client who'd spent years on the street found work and nabbed an SRO for $650 a month only to be preyed upon by bed bugs. That lasted a couple months.

Now he's back on the street.

Lovell suspects there are many stories like that - and even more stories of homeless folks who might have avoided that scenario years ago.

"People who typically, in years gone by, would just be not outside, just barely not outside, are back outside," Lovell said.

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Homelessness Is Exploding Downtown: What We Know (and Don't) About Why - Voice of San Diego

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Theories abound about the reasons for booming homelessness downtown but no one can explain exactly why it's booming. Since January alone, a business group's monthly census has shown a 68 percent spike in street homelessness downtown. The count peaked at nearly 1,400 in August and has since hovered around 1,130.

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Progress is hard to come by in San Diego's fight against homelessnes

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Progress is hard to come by in San Diego's fight against homelessnes

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This talks about different stats with the problems of homelessness and the problems with how SD is trying to solve it. - Tucker

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San Diego had a glimmer of hope last month that maybe the tide was turning on the region's seemingly intractable homeless problem.

The annual point-in-time count tallied 6 percent fewer homeless people than the year before. The cautious civic optimism lasted all of one week until it was revealed that hundreds of people were not included this time because the count was conducted differently than it was in 2017. There might have been an actual increase.

That glitch is one of a handful of setbacks this year in the effort to get people off the street, despite coordinated efforts and millions of dollars spent that brought some order to the chaos of homelessness.

The transition of people staying in the emergency tent shelters to permanent housing fell far short of the goal.

A count of homeless students showed a dramatic increase, but questions about the methodology raised concern that the numbers might be overstated.

Uncertainty hovers over a proposed ballot measure that would raise hotel taxes and provide billions for homeless services, a convention center expansion and road repairs.

A local $900 million housing bond initiative targeted for November may get delayed at the behest of officials concerned about it being on the same ballot with the hotel tax.

This is unfortunate on several fronts. It underscores, again, how hard it is to get our arms around homelessness because the methods used to gauge it and find solutions are flawed. Also, this concerning string of events counteracts the positive momentum building after the hepatitis A crisis that hit the homeless hard.

Government officials were harshly criticized last year for allowing homelessness and the resulting sanitation problems to fester, which exacerbated the spread of the disease. As the outbreak that killed 20 people and infected 588 others subsided, local leaders took action. They created a temporary homeless camp, erected the tents and cleared out sidewalk encampments.

The tent operation did more than just give people shelter. Hard-working agencies provided coordinated services to homeless residents, conducted needs assessments and collected information to help keep people off the streets. That seemed like clear progress.

But the goal of moving 65 percent of people exiting the tents into permanent housing turned out to be wildly unrealistic. A report showed only 12 percent made that transition, according to John Wilkens of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The lack of housing was an obvious problem. But also the agencies were supposed to provide people who were ready for the transition, meaning they had gone through needs assessments and were a top priority. But many on that list had already been housed, moved away or couldn't be found because of outdated contact information.

Much of the discussion regarding homelessness revolves around the point-in-time count, which is a frustrating measurement but is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development every other year as one component to determine funding.

San Diego conducts one annually. Before dawn one morning each January, more than 1,000 volunteers fan out across the county and count the homeless, hence the point-in-time label. One problem this year was that people living in recreational vehicles weren't included in the tally, even though they were last year. Also, people participating in programs for the homeless at the San Diego Rescue Mission weren't counted.

The Rescue Mission miss apparently resulted from a bureaucratic foul-up. The RV situation is convoluted in part because the guidelines on whether or how to count people in them are unclear. The difficulty is determining whether those people are actually homeless. Various jurisdictions count people in RV's differently.

What makes a person homeless would seem simple, but it's not. The definitions aren't always consistent. For example, the point-in-time count determined there were 8,576 homeless people countywide. Meanwhile, data collected by the San Diego County Office of Education show that more than 23,800 students were homeless in the county last year, according to KPBS.

That was an increase of nearly 5 percent over the previous year. But education officials said the results depend on who's doing the counting, how they define homeless and how they interpret federal law. It's inconsistent.

Homeless students are those who "at some point in the year were living unsheltered, in transitional housing or shelters, in motels or hotels, or most frequently, doubled up in a home with another family," according to KPBS.

Counting the last group is the real problem. Students whose families double up because of economic hardship are supposed to be counted as homeless, not those in families who do so by choice. That's not easy to determine.

For example, KPBS said the South Bay Union School District reported 1,611 students living as homeless in the 2016-17 school year - 93.5 percent, or 1,506 of them, were doubled up. But in 2017-18, KPBS said, the district said 315 students were homeless and 232 were classified as doubled up.

The biggest homeless initiative ahead is the proposed hotel-tax increase that would raise $6.4 billion over four decades for expanding the convention center, improving roads and paying for homeless services. Despite strong union and business backing, the signature-gathering has gone slowly and deadlines are approaching - raising the once unthinkable notion that it might not make the November ballot.

There's also the well-discussed uncertainty about whether voter approval of the initiative, if it qualifies for the ballot, requires a two-thirds or simple majority, with the latter leading to certain legal action. No wonder some supporters of the hotel tax are concerned about competition from the $900 million housing bond. However, the bond proposal is being kept alive as a possible fallback.

Then there's the recent city report that confirms the relative scarcity and insane cost of housing in San Diego and how it's unaffordable for way too many people.

But let's not discuss that now. This column has enough bummers for one day.

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Progress is hard to come by in San Diego's fight against homelessness

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San Diego had a glimmer of hope last month that maybe the tide was turning on the region's seemingly intractable homeless problem. The annual point-in-time count tallied 6 percent fewer homeless people than the year before.

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Five Reasons California’s Housing Costs Are So High

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Five Reasons California’s Housing Costs Are So High

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Josue Sanchez
It gives five reasons why housing in Cali is expensive. For example: Not enough housing and the process to get new housing approved is difficult and time consuming.

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Photo by Adriene Hill / CalDream

Five Reasons California's Housing Costs Are So High, With Charts and Graphs
GUEST:
Matt Levin, data reporter, CALMatters
Transcript
Why are California housing costs so high? At its most basic level, it's a story of supply and demand - lots of people want to live here, and there aren't enough homes to go around.

But there are lots of uniquely California factors - from the shape of our coastline to Prop 13 - that have attached a painfully expensive price tag to the California dream. The median price of a home is now well over half a million dollars - that number is about $240,000 nationally. More than 20% of Californians pay more than half their income for housing.

Here are five reasons the state's housing market got so out of whack.
REASON #1: WE HAVEN'T BUILT ENOUGH HOUSING
Experts who study California's housing crisis argue about lots of things. Is rent control good or bad? Will that new shiny high-rise going up in your neighborhood help or hurt housing costs? How much should we blame "not in my backyard" NIMBYs for our problems?

But there is one principle the vast majority of housing experts agree on: Over the past few decades, California hasn't built enough housing to keep up with the number of people who live here.

The state housing department estimates that we need to build 180,000 new housing units a year to keep prices stable. Over the past ten years, we've averaged less than half of that.

Even when new construction was booming in the early and mid-2000's, new homes and apartment buildings weren't being built in coastal cities where the vast majority of Californians work. While places like the Inland Empire and Central Valley saw a building craze, places like San Francisco and Los Angeles basically flatlined.

We're also not keeping up with other states.

Places like New York and Massachusetts have built a lot more housing per capita than we have in recent years. That hasn't made those places cheap, but it has helped to alleviate some cost pressures.
REASON #2: DEMAND TO LIVE AND WORK AND OWN IN URBAN CALIFORNIA HAS REACHED A BREAKING POINT, AND PART OF THAT DEMAND IS GLOBAL
Over the last decade, Californians have increasingly tried to cram themselves into major urban centers that are already jammed with residents.

The Bay Area is the poster child here. Between 2000 and 2007, Bay Area cities accounted for only four percent of the state's total population growth. Between 2010 and 2017, nearly 20 percent of all new Californians were either being born in or moving to the Bay.

While the tech industry certainly bears much of the responsibility for that trend, the increased demand to live in California's urban cores extends beyond Silicon Valley. The urban parts of L.A. and San Diego have all seen a major increase in people wanting to live and work there, which means increased competition for rental housing.

And we're not just talking about apartment rentals. Here's a pretty amazing graph.

The number of single-family homes occupied by renters grew by more than 400,000 over the last ten years, while the number of owner-occupied units dropped during the Great Recession and has yet to recover.

So who owns these houses? The vast majority are "mom and pop" investors and wealthy individuals buying one or two additional properties. Foreign buyers, primarily from China, have also become increasingly enamored with California real estate. Last year, nearly one in four California single-family homes were sold in all-cash transactions, an indication of investor appetite for California real estate.

Overall, investors are a relatively small part of the housing market, especially when viewed from a statewide lens. But in certain local markets, investors compete directly with California families for homes.
REASON #3: PROP 13 DILUTES A CITY'S INCENTIVE TO BUILD NEW HOUSING
Why hasn't California built enough housing to keep up with its population?

Most housing researchers agree that part of the reason is Proposition 13, the landmark 1978 ballot initiative that capped how much local governments could collect from property taxes. While intended to protect California homeowners from unmanageable property tax bills, Prop 13 has produced a host of unintended consequences.

Imagine you're a city, sitting on a huge plot of vacant land. You could zone that land for housing or for commercial use, like a hotel or a Target. Your city obviously needs more housing - prices are sky high.

Easy decision, right?

Nope.

Prop 13 has made development decisions much more complicated. Because property taxes are capped, local governments have become increasingly reliant on other revenue sources. That vacant land is much more valuable to the city's coffers if a big box retailer gets built on it, as opposed to a multifamily apartment building. Housing nerds call this the "fiscalization of land use."

There's debate about just how much Prop 13 is to blame for the state's housing shortage. But talk to local elected officials and you'll see the issue isn't just a hypothetical dilemma.
REASON #4: IN MOST PARTS OF CALIFORNIA, THE PROCESS TO GET NEW HOUSING APPROVED IS DIFFICULT, TIME-CONSUMING AND EXPENSIVE
It can be hard to be sympathetic to developers. From time immemorial, it feels like they've complained about rules and regulations they say make it harder to build their projects. The builder who designed Stonehenge probably thought there was too much bureaucracy involved.

While it may be tough to trust developers, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong. The process by which a piece of land is approved for new construction can be incredibly cumbersome, time-consuming and risky. While good data on exactly how much this adds to housing costs is hard to come by, typical approval time for projects in San Francisco is over a year, while in L.A. it's eight months. That doesn't include when land needs to be "rezoned" for residential development, which can take even longer.

Why the lag? Here's the laundry list.

- Multiple Layers of Government Review: A housing project often must go through multiple government agencies, including the planning department, health department, fire department, building department and perhaps most importantly, a city council.

- Lots of Avenues for "Not In My Backyard" Voices: The review process for new developments gives ample opportunity for local residents to express their opposition. Locals may fear that new housing projects will change the character of their neighborhoods, increase traffic and hurt their property values. If a city councilmember votes for new housing, he or she may have to face dissatisfied voters.

- An Often Misused Environmental Law: The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, requires that local agencies consider the environmental impact of a new housing development before approving it. That sounds like a worthy goal, but the law has often been abused to prevent new developments - even environmentally friendly ones with high-density housing and bike lanes. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, CEQA appeals delay a project by an average of two and a half years.

- Local Growth Controls: Two-thirds of California coastal cities and counties have adopted policies that explicitly limit the number of new homes that can be built within their borders or policies that limit the density of new developments. Subtler growth controls include not zoning enough land for new development or requiring supermajorities to approve new housing.
REASON #5: LAND, LABOR AND RAW MATERIAL COSTS ARE HIGHER IN CALIFORNIA THAN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. AND THOSE COSTS ARE RISING
Unfortunately, California's coastline topography makes it more expensive to build here than most other places. Also, there's the ocean. You can't expand into the ocean.

Limited land plus tons of demand means high land prices. In many markets in California, the bulk of a single family home or apartment building's value is in the land it is built on.

But while the land itself is what typically eats up most of a developer's budget in California's hottest markets, it's not the only cost-driver. Construction labor and the cost of the raw materials have been rising over the last five years, and are higher in California than other parts of the country. According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, construction labor is about 20 percent more expensive in major California cities than in the rest of the country.

On the labor side, a shortage of skilled construction workers bears much of the blame. When the housing market crashed in the late 2000's, construction workers left the industry in droves. And those same workers haven't come back.

Construction today just doesn't seem to have the same appeal to younger workers. Firms are struggling to recruit younger workers to supplement and eventually replace a graying workforce.

Building codes and environmentally-friendly design requirements in many California cities require different types of raw building materials to be used, some of which can be pricier than elsewhere in the country. And nationwide, the cost of vital resources like lumber and concrete are on the upswing.

There are plenty of reasons beyond the five we've mentioned here that help explain why California housings costs have gotten so out of control. The task of making California affordable again - or at least relatively affordable again - defies a simple silver-bullet solution.

CALmatters' Ben Christopher contributed to this report.

The California Dream Project is a statewide collaboration focused on issues of economic opportunity, quality-of-life, and the future of the California Dream. Partner organizations include CALmatters, Capital Public Radio, KPBS, KPCC, and KQED.

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Five Reasons California's Housing Costs Are So High, With Charts and Graphs

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Photo by Adriene Hill / CalDream Five Reasons California's Housing Costs Are So High, With Charts and Graphs GUEST: Matt Levin, data reporter, CALMatters Transcript Why are California housing costs so high? At its most basic level, it's a story of supply and demand - lots of people want to live here, and there aren't enough homes to go around.

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Juniper
I think we can use this as an example for why we need to get our homeless of the street, it has a lot of good info. (Pathos, Logos)

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On a sunny mid-September morning, men and women in white lab coats and dark business suits gathered before a phalanx of television cameras near San Diego Bay to address the nation's largest hepatitis A outbreak in decades.

Though the public health crisis had been identified more than six months earlier, it was the first time that medical and elected leaders stood together in public, symbolically taking joint responsibility for a viral scourge that took root among the region's homeless residents.

The results were nearly instantaneous.

A week prior to that day, Sept. 19, 2017, the county had vaccinated 27,307 people against hepatitis A since the outbreak had been identified in March. A week after, the vaccination total shot past 52,000.

It took half a year to inoculate 27,000, but only two weeks to nearly double that total.

Given that just a single dose of the hepatitis A vaccine is 90 percent effective at preventing infection, this sudden vaccination acceleration was a key result of the complex public health campaign against a virus that killed 20 people and infected 578 throughout San Diego County.

Today, more than 120,000 vaccinations have been administered, and no new case of outbreak-related hepatitis A has been detected since Jan. 3.

There's no denying that vaccination uptake increased significantly after local leadership started speaking in a unified and direct manner to the public about the severity of the problem.

However, those who were most directly involved say getting control of hepatitis A took much, much more than the words of leaders standing in front of the country administration building.

In addition to public health officer Dr. Wilma Wooten's declaration of a public health emergency on Sept. 1, there were a broad range of specific actions taken. They included installing hand-washing stations and portable toilets in locations where the homeless congregate and regularly washing city sidewalks with a bleach solution to help make conditions more sanitary for those living on the streets.

While it's difficult to say which of these interventions helped the most, many point to the work of hundreds of nurses, homeless outreach workers and law enforcement officers who took vaccination efforts into the canyons, back alleys, riverbeds and other out-of-the way locations far from the more-traditional soup kitchens and assistance centers where vaccination campaigns began.

Sanitation efforts were surely important, said Fran Butler-Cohen, chief executive of Family Health Centers of San Diego, the region's largest community clinic network and a major provider of the health workers who participated on mobile foot teams.

But boots on the ground were necessary to truly turn the tide, she said. Persistence and existing knowledge of the homeless population counted for a lot.

"We encountered homeless who truly thought this was a county conspiracy to kill them off or to get them to move and go away," Butler-Cohen said. "In many cases, we didn't start out with a lot of trust, and that's something that just had to be built over time,"

Family Health Centers employees often accompanied other workers out into the field and even used gift cards, at one point, to persuade people to get vaccinated. Changing tactics as the outbreak continued, she said, was essential to making progress as summer turned to fall.

"This is not a simple population to bring any medical service to," Butler-Cohen said. "If nothing else, what we experienced with hep A is the message that you've got to try to tackle these kinds of problems in many different ways, you've got to move quickly and you've got to be able to sustain your efforts for a long time."

In a short emailed statement, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said he thought vaccination was the "single most effective thing we did to turn the tide during the hepatitis A crisis."

"We pulled out all the stops to raise public awareness about the importance of vaccinations," he said. "We offered free vaccines at libraries, had officers accompany nurses into homeless encampments, won state approval so our firefighter paramedics could administer vaccines, and conducted a media blitz to get the word out every day. Some of those things were happening before, and it's clear that the extra push that began in September made all the difference."

It's important to note, added county supervisor Ron Roberts, that the all-hands-on-deck effort that coalesced in September would not have been possible without the months of behind-the-scenes meetings that occurred from March through August. Mapping outbreak cases and working on vaccination and sanitation campaigns in jails and emergency rooms developed the kind of intelligence necessary to scale up into a larger effort.

"At the time that we had that press conference in September we had already done 400-plus field events," Roberts said. "By then, we had a much better understanding of what we were dealing with in every respect."

As the outbreak continued to grow, some criticized local leadership for not moving with enough urgency though it's clear, looking at a timeline of events, that much work started immediately in March.

What's also clear is that most of that work was not very visible to the public. A series of regular press statements and regular weekly updates of death and case totals did not really catch fire until numbers grew eye-poppingly large.

Would it have been better to come out to the public and call the outbreak an emergency earlier on?

That's a tricky question.

Dr. Eric McDonald, chief of the country's Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch, said there was a significant concern right from the beginning that making a call for vaccination too broadly could quickly burn through available vaccine supplies, which were already strained by several hepatitis A outbreaks in other cities.

The fact is, McDonald said, most people not in or directly serving the homeless and drug users who were most often getting sick, really didn't need to be vaccinated because hepatitis A is spread through fecal contamination. For most people, ingesting the feces of an infected person, even a very small amount, was just not likely unless they were in regular and close contact with the homeless and/or drug-using population.

Making too broad-based a vaccination push, McDonald said, could have backfired by funneling vaccine doses to low-risk residents at the expense of those who needed it most.

"There is a balance between making sure the right people get the vaccine and that there is enough public awareness that people understand what's going on and take action," McDonald said.

Roberts added that when it was decided to be more public with the vaccination effort, it became clear that some people who really didn't need to get the shot would do so out of fear. For this reason, Roberts said, he didn't roll up his own sleeve.

"I knew that I personally was not really in one of the high-risk groups, and I thought the vaccine needed to be focused on the people who needed it the most," Roberts said. "I know a lot of people who shared with me that they got vaccinated and sometimes, privately, I thought 'well, that was probably a waste.'"

As the outbreak grew in size, and as the strains of the hepatitis A virus that caused San Diego's outbreak began to pop up in other places, from Santa Cruz County and Los Angeles to Utah and Kentucky, the public health world began to take notice.

Dr. Jesse Jacob, an infectious diseases specialist and hospital epidemiologist at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta, said the amount of time it took for San Diego to get its outbreak under control was within normal expectations. Local efforts, especially the use of foot teams that drew in law enforcement as well as outreach workers and nurses, she said, were particularly noteworthy.

"I don't think that particular approach has been done before," he said.

Though she declined to grant an interview on the subject, Dr. Monique Foster, a medical director with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email that San Diego "deployed novel strategies and tactics for vaccination of a hard-to-reach population."

"Some of these strategies and tactics could be replicated by other state health departments dealing with a hepatitis A outbreak among populations similar to the outbreak in San Diego," Foster added.

She particularly cited partnerships with community groups who work day in and day out with the homeless, saying they "can go a long way in increasing the uptake of vaccinations."

McDonald said that going forward the county plans to continue focused vaccination work in county jails, behavioral health facilities and other places where people who are at greatest risk reside or receive services.

He noted that there is still a lot of fundamental work to be done getting people vaccinated for hepatitis A who would have been recommended to receive the shot because of their other medical conditions, such as chronic liver disease, even if the outbreak had never happened.

For example, he said, 308 of the 578 outbreak cases had conditions that meant they should have been vaccinated long before the outbreak happened.
Correction: A previous version of this story referred to Family Health Centers of San Diego as Family Health Services of San Diego. We apologize.

In its strongest public outreach to date, city and county leaders urged the public to do everything they can to help end the region's historic hepatitis A outbreak.

In its strongest public outreach to date, city and county leaders urged the public to do everything they can to help end the region's historic hepatitis A outbreak.

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1850 Twitter: @paulsisson

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How did San Diego get its hepatitis outbreak under control?

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On a sunny mid-September morning, men and women in white lab coats and dark business suits gathered before a phalanx of television cameras near San Diego Bay to address the nation's largest hepatitis A outbreak in decades.

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Pablo

Good for opposition views for op ed

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SAN DIEGO -- Clairemont residents packed a community planning meeting Tuesday night to fight a proposal to build hundreds of units of affordable housing in their neighborhood.

The Clairemont Community Planning Group voted not to support the county's plans to turn a property on Mount Etna Drive into a 184 to 448 unit complex. A vacant, abandoned crime lab now sits on the lot. The planning group came out against the project, saying there are too many concerns that have not been addressed.

"If we have no idea what we're amending, you're just saying, 'Trust us,' and frankly I don't think that's a good idea for Clairemont," one board member said to county officials.

County official said they want to use the land to build affordable housing for people in need, including seniors and people with disabilities.

"It's very well documented -- the affordable housing crisis is within not just San Diego but this entire state," said David Estrella, director of the Housing and Community Development Services and Health and Human Services Agency.

Erika Clark, who grew up in Clairemont, said there is a list of concerns with the plans for the four acres of land.

"Every single angle of it to me doesn't work," Clark said.

Residents said they are concerned building a high-rise complex would create parking, traffic and safety issues and put a strain on other community resources.

"Grocery stores -- we're already cramped," Clark said.

County officials told the crowd that the project is in the very early planning stages, and they, along with the developer, are listening to everyone's concerns. But some of residents said they feel like their words are going in one ear and out the other. They vowed to continue voicing their concerns about the project.

"We're going to fight it. We're going to be at every meeting," Clark said.

The county said it will present to proposed development to the San Diego Planning Commission on Dec. 6 at 9 a.m..

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Clairemont planning group opposes large affordable housing project

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SAN DIEGO -- Clairemont residents packed a community planning meeting Tuesday night to fight a proposal to build hundreds of units of affordable housing in their neighborhood. The Clairemont Community Planning Group voted not to support the county's plans to turn a property on Mount Etna Drive into a 184 to 448 unit complex.

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Push for increasing tax on hotels for homelessness services

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Push for increasing tax on hotels for homelessness services

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Jazmin Garcia
This will raise the current 10.5 percent tax on hotels to 11.5

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San Diego business and labor leaders are celebrating the New Year with a revamped pitch to raise hotel taxes to bankroll a Convention Center expansion, homeless services and street repairs.

Backers of the new citizens' initiative took cues from Mayor Kevin Faulconer's failed 2017 measure but made significant changes.

The biggest one: A promise to invest more of the increased hotel-tax hauls to homelessness services, housing and other initiatives. The initiative would raise the tax more than the previous plan sought and would put off the investment in street repairs.

Faulconer's measure would have thrown just 18 percent of new cash at homelessness causes and nearly two-thirds at Convention Center and tourism-related wants. Democrats and labor leaders came out against Faulconer's measure arguing that it should have done more to address San Diego's homeless crisis.

We're still waiting on detailed projections but initiative language released by the campaign promises far more money will go to homelessness, especially in the first five years of the measure. They're estimating about a $140 million haul during this period.

"We decided to frontload homelessness dollars since it's such a crisis right now," said Carol Kim, a Building Trades Council official who helped hash out a deal with tourism leaders. "We wanted to deploy those dollars as quickly as we can."

After that, homelessness will continue to get just under a third of new cash coming in. Proponents say they envision pulling in $2 billion for homelessness over 42 years, more than double the amount the mayor's measure pledged.

The new measure accomplishes this in two ways.

First, it holds off on dollars flowing to road repair projects during the tax hike's first five years and promises about a third less over the next 37 years than Faulconer's measure earmarked for those projects.

It also relies on a steeper tax increase.

Last year, hoteliers maintained that Faulconer's proposed 1-to-3 percent tax hike, depending on the proximity of hotels to the downtown Convention Center, was as much as they could muster without hurting local tourism.

This year, they agreed to tack another .25 percent increase onto hotel bills.

"Ultimately, the industry realized that an incremental increase of the amount we were talking about - a ¼ percent increase across these districts and a change in the percentages - would provide a really meaningful and significant addition to the homelessness funding and that that was of great importance to the industry," said Robert Gleason of Evans Hotels, one of the key negotiators on the tourism side.

Hoteliers fit in another big edit too.

Tourism leaders have long been fixated on a contiguous Convention Center expansion. Now they're offering themselves some breathing room.

Faulconer's measure strictly linked funding to the waterfront, contiguous expansion approved by the Coastal Commission years ago.

The initiative includes new language indicating the Convention Center expansion must simply be "physically connected to the existing Convention Center" - and removes language suggesting the project approved by Port and state Coastal officials is the only option.

Some observers are reading this as though it opens up the door for an expansion across the street from the Convention Center with a walkway connecting the two facilities.

That would be convenient given the fact that the city and the Convention Center Corp. no longer controls the land need for the long-sought waterfront expansion. The partners who do are moving forward with a hotel that would permanently block the long-envisioned bayfront Convention Center expansion.

Laura Fink, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said this change wasn't an accident.

"That was done so that there would be some flexibility with respect to location," she said. "That was done deliberately."

Fink, Gleason and Mike McDowell, president and CEO of the San Diego Lodging Industry Association, both emphasized Monday that the focus continues to be on the long-envisioned waterfront expansion for now.

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How the New Push to Increase Hotel Taxes Differs from the Old One

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The new hotel-tax initiative pushed by business and labor leaders promises to invest more money in homelessness and opens up the possibilities for a Convention Center expansion that isn't on the waterfront. (It would also raise the hotel tax higher than has been proposed in the past.)

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Margaret Egler
This has good facts about homelessness in SD

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San Francisco's Business Tax Proposition that passed in Nov

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San Francisco's Business Tax Proposition that passed in Nov

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Margaret Egler
We could use this as a model

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By supporting a modest tax increase, companies in San Francisco can help end the city's homelessness crisis.

By

Mr. Benioff is the chairman and a co-C.E.O. of Salesforce.

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A homeless man in San Francisco scraped trash into a smaller pile and said that cleaning up helps keep the police away. Credit Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Back when I was in business school in the 1980s, I was taught - as were generations of aspiring entrepreneurs and executives - that the business of business is business. "There is one and only one social responsibility of business," the economist Milton Friedman famously wrote in "Capitalism and Freedom": "to increase its profits." In an essay for this newspaper in 1970, Dr. Friedman went further, arguing that executives who claim that companies have "responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords" of the day are guilty of "undermining the basis of a free society."

Unfortunately, some C.E.O.s still embrace this myopic view and believe that they have a duty to shareholders alone, with little or no responsibility to the communities in which they operate. I contend that business must have a purpose beyond profits, and that such purpose can, over time, benefit both stockholders and stakeholders.

I've seen this in my hometown, San Francisco, and the surrounding Bay Area, which has the third-highest number of billionaires on the planet. Some high-net-worth individuals, including some who work in the tech sector, have been extraordinarily generous in supporting our public schools, hospitals and communities. Others, however, have given little or nothing, and they seem content to let local government bear the burden of enormous local challenges alone.

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The city of San Francisco, where one-bedroom apartments rent for an average of $3,300 and the median home price is a record $1.6 million, is experiencing a full-blown homelessness crisis. I'm a fourth-generation San Franciscan, and while there has always been homelessness, I have never seen it this bad. Families with children are living in cars and are packed into homeless shelters. There are tent encampments in city parks. The sidewalks are strewn with heroin needles and covered in human feces. A visiting official from the United Nations said she was "completely shocked." An infectious-disease expert from the University of California, Berkeley, found that parts of the city are more unsanitary than the slums of some developing countries.

To their credit, city officials, businesses and community groups have stepped up. Innovative public-private partnerships have helped to bring some families off the streets. Mayor London Breed calls ending homelessness one of her "top priorities" and has proposed additional funding, beds and services. Yet given the scale of this crisis, current efforts are simply not enough. According to the most recent count, a shocking 7,500 individuals in San Francisco are homeless. There are 1,200 families - including about one in 30 children in public schools - who are homeless in San Francisco. Every night, more than 1,000 people are on wait lists for emergency shelter.

This tragedy is not unique to San Francisco. The nation's homeless population is growing, as the high cost of housing pushes more people onto the streets. In New York City, about one in every 10 students in public schools are now homeless, a record high.

This is a humanitarian emergency and it demands an emergency response. San Francisco's epidemic of homelessness is solvable, but only if we devote the resources that are necessary.

That's why I - and the company I founded, Salesforce - are part of a broad coalition of San Francisco citizens, business leaders, elected officials, teachers and community activists who are supporting Proposition C on the November ballot. Proposition C would impose a small tax - half of 1 percent - on San Francisco's wealthiest businesses (on annual gross receipts over $50 million generated in the city). In other words, if a business brings in $55 million in San Francisco, only $5 million would be subjected to the tax. Large retailers would pay an even smaller tax: just 0.175 percent of gross receipts over $50 million.

This would raise up to $300 million a year to address homelessness, roughly double what San Francisco spends now. Yes, we are a business that supports a tax on our business - because we are a part of our community and our community is in crisis.

Under a comprehensive plan developed by experts in the field, this new funding would address this crisis from every angle. It would provide more bathrooms, so that people wouldn't have to relieve themselves on city streets. More than 1,000 new shelter beds. Up to $75 million to treat the severely mentally ill. Up to $150 million for 4,000 additional units of housing, including for youth and families with children. And assistance or subsidies to help thousands of residents stay in their homes - to help prevent San Franciscans from becoming homeless in the first place.

Opponents of Proposition C - including some business leaders - have raised objections that do not stand up to closer scrutiny. They claim that this tax will drive away business and jobs, but of the tens of thousands of businesses in San Francisco, fewer than 400 will meet the $50 million threshold - small and medium-size businesses are effectively exempt. The city's own Office of Economic Analysis has concluded that any impact on the local economy would be "small" - a mere 0.1 percent over 20 years.

As our residents are forced onto the streets, many large companies - some of which have benefited from tax breaks given to them by the city - are also reaping a windfall from recent cuts to corporate taxes. It's absurd to believe that these businesses can't afford one half of 1 percent of gross receipts to help address the most important problem facing our community. Salesforce, for instance, is the city's largest private employer. Proposition C could increase our annual tax by about $10 million; we expect revenues this year of $13 billion. Even with Proposition C, we'll be just fine.

In fact, the real threat to business comes from the homeless crisis itself. A major medical association recently pulled its convention out of the city, saying that its members no longer feel safe on our streets. Hotels and restaurant owners are increasingly worried that tourists will stay away. If employees can't walk safely to work, companies might think twice about locating in the city.

It's also time to put to rest the claim that more generous support for the homeless will only attract more homeless people to our community. The city's own analysis found "no research" that expanding homeless services increases homelessness. An overwhelming majority of homeless people in San Francisco are from San Francisco. They are our neighbors and they desperately need our help.

Finally, although critics are correct that money alone cannot solve homelessness, it's also true that all effective solutions require money. Over more than a decade, the city's Homeward Bound program has reunited some 10,000 homeless individuals in San Francisco with their families across the country, with a 90 percent retention rate. The Heading Home campaign, an innovative public-private partnership between the city, businesses and nonprofits, has raised $37 million to help find homes for 800 families - with more than 350 families already in their own home or in the process of finding one.

This crisis reminds us that business does not exist in a bubble. Companies can truly thrive only when our communities succeed as well: when our public schools prepare our children for a digital economy; when people are treated equally, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity; when we protect our environment from pollution and climate change; when our residents are no longer forced out of their homes and onto the streets.

In this sense, Proposition C is a referendum on the role of business in our communities and, by extension, our country. The business of business is no longer merely business. Our obligation is not just to increase profits for shareholders. We must also hold ourselves accountable to a broader set of stakeholders: to our customers, our employees, the environment and the communities in which we work and live. It's time for the wealthiest businesses and business owners to step up and give back to the most vulnerable among us.

Marc Benioff is the chairman and a co-C.E.O. of Salesforce.
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A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Homelessness Is Everyone's Business. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | The Social Responsibility of Business

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By supporting a modest tax increase, companies in San Francisco can help end the city's homelessness crisis. By Mr. Benioff is the chairman and a co-C.E.O. of Salesforce. Back when I was in business school in the 1980s, I was taught - as were generations of aspiring entrepreneurs and executives - that the business of business is business.