Homelessness, encampments, and the issues they raise are the most vexing and seemingly intractable problem City government has to deal with today, said San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.

“What do you do?” he asked. “The answer is housing. But it takes time and involves a lot of other issues – financing, zoning, community support, etc. It’s an extremely complex problem.

“I’ve been in public service a long time and there is no problem like this one. People want a simple answer. But there isn’t a simple answer. How do you devote the time, attention, and resources to addressing these issues?”

Regarding cleaning up homeless encampments like the one in Midway last week, Gloria said: “We’re going to continue our outreach and law enforcement work. We did, and will continue to, take noticed action to clean out what’s dangerous and unhealthy.”

Gloria added the City is also taking pains to safeguard the personal possessions of encampments that have been cleaned up.

“We’re going one step further in making sure people’s valuable and sentimental items found at the time of cleanups are properly stored and held onto in two City-run storage facilities where they can be reclaimed later,” the mayor said. “We’re going to great lengths to perform these services.”

Gloria talked about the latest treatment model, neighborhood-oriented shelters, now being employed by the City to aid the neediest homeless out on the street. Such neighborhood shelters can presently be found in Golden Hall downtown, and in the former Pier 1 Imports building that opened recently at 3220 Sports Arena Blvd. in the Midway District.

“The intent is to serve homeless people who are the neediest by providing them with more wrap-around services,” said Gloria. “We can provide a high level of services to those individuals with more acute problems, keeping them sheltered longer, rather than just churning them through the shelter system, and never really solving the underlying issues for why they’re there.”

The next step in getting the unsheltered sheltered is for the City and County to work cooperatively in that effort. “We need to provide safe havens for the unsheltered while providing still more individuals with wrap-around services,” said Gloria. “And the next step after that is providing more supportive housing.”

COVID is making the difficult task of successfully addressing homelessness harder still, according to Gloria.

“It’s two steps forward and one step back because of the pandemic,” he said. “All of our lives have been impacted by the pandemic, including homeless people.”

Gloria pointed out it’s relatively easy for people in the general population to socially distance themselves six feet to prevent virus contamination. “But it’s a different experience with the homeless in shelters where beds sometimes go unused because you have to have spacing between people,” noted Gloria.

Nonetheless, Gloria said incremental progress is being made by the City in dealing with homeless issues.

“We need to focus on getting more homeless people supportive housing, and we’ve increased our shelter capacity by 21 percent bringing our shelter capacity to about 1,300 beds, which is still not enough,” Gloria said. “Last year we were able to provide 132 more units of permanent supportive housing, and there are 1,000 more units in the pipeline. We have an equal amount of shelter beds unoccupied because of social distancing. We’re making progress. But the pandemic is doing us no favors.”

The City operates four emergency shelters and three bridge shelters that provide 1,297 beds on a nightly basis contributing to the 2,040 emergency shelters available citywide.