Declare a Homeless Emergency : With winter approaching, San Diego must clear the way to expand facilities

Despite continuing political gridlock on the problems of the homeless, San Diego officials recently had no trouble quickly finding temporary shelter for homeless activist Larry Milligan. The jail-cell roof that the city put over his head speaks volumes about the City Council’s lack of vision on this vital issue.

Make no mistake about it. The short-lived tent city that Milligan and his supporters erected in Balboa Park was illegal. It sprawled across a parking lot leased by the city to a businessman and raised valid health and safety concerns. The city had every legal right to close it down and arrest Milligan as a trespasser when he refused to leave.

But be equally clear on another fact: The encampment was born of legitimate frustration by a vulnerable population that is no longer willing to suffer in San Diego’s civic shadows. Its needs are real and can no longer be largely ignored.

Sweeping Milligan and the others who briefly inhabited the two dozen tents off a little-used parking lot and back into nearby canyons and doorways was the easy part. The real challenge is to find a humane way to address their needs.

Certainly, much more can be done than to jail their leader for a few hours--especially in a city that currently has less than 200 overnight emergency beds to serve a homeless population estimated at as high as 6,000.

The council must declare a citywide homeless shelter emergency. That action would clear the way to open or expand shelter facilities on city-controlled property throughout San Diego without strict adherence to various building and health codes.

Already, a number of possible sites are being eyed by the City Homeless Action Team, a recently established citizens panel co-chaired by council members John Hartley and Valerie Stallings. Working with the city staff, the group has identified 11 possible actions that could quadruple the number of emergency beds available on a given night.

The options include converting warehouses downtown into shelters, opening a municipally run campground for the homeless on city land in Rose Canyon and providing city seed money to help the Salvation Army expand its downtown facility.

Other possibilities include issuing vouchers the homeless can use for shelter in motels or allowing the Neil Good Day Center for the Homeless to remain open through the night.

Yes, these are tight fiscal times for city government. But no one is feeling the bite of the recession more than the homeless. That’s why all of these ideas deserve immediate, serious attention as winter approaches.

None of them will succeed any time soon unless the City Council formally acknowledges that the problems of the homeless have reached emergency status and waives various code standards. Larry Milligan was willing to go to jail to make his point. The City Council should muster the courage to accept his challenge.