{"id":253963,"date":"2018-11-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/guest-editorial-why-the-city-must-stay-committed-to-solving-our-homelessness-crisis-2\/"},"modified":"2018-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T08:00:00","slug":"guest-editorial-why-the-city-must-stay-committed-to-solving-our-homelessness-crisis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/guest-editorial-why-the-city-must-stay-committed-to-solving-our-homelessness-crisis-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial invitado: Por qu\u00e9 la ciudad debe permanecer comprometida con la soluci\u00f3n de nuestra crisis de personas sin hogar"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chris Ward | Guest Editorial<\/p>\n

When\u00a0I took office two years ago, San Diego\u2019s urban core neighborhoods were\u00a0in the midst of a homelessness crisis with no clear strategy to tackle the\u00a0issue. My top priority has been\u00a0improving our response to this devastating crisis, but one council member can\u2019t do\u00a0it alone. Building on successful approaches\u00a0in other cities and national best practices, I outlined\u00a0ideas and policies for a holistic response. My colleagues and\u00a0I have made\u00a0important progress to\u00a0increase funding, expand life-saving supportive services and house our homeless.<\/p>\n

In early 2017, the City Council created a Select Committee on Homelessness dedicated to reviewing and\u00a0improving city approaches for reducing homelessness. The committee held\u00a0its final meeting Thursday, Nov. 15, and our ongoing work now continues through standing committees. It\u2019s\u00a0important to review our accomplishments, and\u00a0identify what challenges and opportunities remain ahead to ensure all San Diegans have a safe, stable home.<\/p>\n

Last year, the hepatitis A emergency demanded quick action. With the leadership of the council and Mayor Kevin Faulconer, we successfully\u00a0implemented temporary safe camping and parking programs, additional public restrooms, hand-washing stations, targeted street sanitation, storage facilities, and bridge shelters providing safety and services for 700\u00a0homeless San Diegans.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as chair of the Select Committee, I started with the basics. We updated the council\u2019s Policy on Homelessness for the first time since 1995, with a commitment to proven Housing First strategies. Collaborating with our state legislators, we streamlined housing development opportunities. The city also officially declared a Shelter Crisis, unlocking millions of dollars\u00a0in new state funding for housing and services.<\/p>\n

With the county, we\u2019ve doubled the Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams providing emergency assessment and referrals to help people with mental\u00a0illness. At the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, we\u2019re\u00a0improving the region\u2019s underlying data systems and coordination, while paving the way to receive millions more\u00a0in state homeless dollars and private\u00a0investment to scale up successful programs countywide.<\/p>\n

As we\u00a0identified gaps\u00a0in our system, the Select Committee acted on new approaches to house our homeless. That has\u00a0included a targeted rapid housing effort, emphasizing diversion programs, and tapping state funding to lay the groundwork for a new flexible housing spending pool to support\u00a0innovative rental assistance strategies. We\u2019re currently moving forward a pilot program coupling\u00a0intensive employment services with our rapid rehousing programs, and\u00a0implementation of the Housing Commission\u2019s Housing 3.0\u00a0plan\u00a0is providing $79\u00a0million to boost affordable housing.<\/p>\n

As success stories from other regions have demonstrated, real change takes years of sustained effort. We have a strong foundation\u00a0\u2014 and Downtown\u2019s on-street homeless population\u00a0is decreasing\u00a0\u2014 but there\u2019s much more work ahead.<\/p>\n

Last month, the council unanimously adopted my resolution setting a goal of building 140\u00a0permanent supportive housing units\u00a0in each council district\u00a0\u2014 enough to house every chronically homeless San Diego household. And city staff have now begun assessing city-owned properties to\u00a0identify possible housing sites and ways to expedite projects.<\/p>\n

Our committee also moved forward on creating a citywide outreach protocol, improving our proactive work meeting homeless San Diegans where they are\u00a0in order to resolve encampment\u00a0issues as well as connect them with the specific services and housing they need. And now the Housing Commission\u00a0is underway on my request to develop a comprehensive plan to help ensure our limited homelessness dollars go to our most acute needs.<\/p>\n

In 2019, we need a regional solution to provide recuperative care beds allowing people to fully recover from acute health\u00a0issues after leaving area hospitals, and revival of the Resource Access Program (RAP) to relieve pressure on our 911\u00a0emergency services. Additionally, we need a workable strategy to convert dilapidated motels\u00a0into supportive housing, which brings new units online faster and cheaper.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve made critical progress to develop services and outreach programs aligned with clearly-defined needs, and soon we\u2019ll have the analysis for a comprehensive homelessness strategy to guide future city\u00a0investments.<\/p>\n

\"Guest
Concejal Chris Ward<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ultimately, we will be judged by the most\u00a0important metric of all: making housing attainable for all San Diegans. I am confident we\u2019re finally on the right track, and we have\u00a0identified opportunities that will bring us closer to resolving our homelessness crisis. I remain committed to prioritizing this work throughout San Diego until every homeless\u00a0individual\u00a0is housed.<\/p>\n

\u2014Councilmember Chris Ward serves the 13\u00a0communities\u00a0in District 3, which\u00a0include the Uptown neighborhoods of Old Town, Mission Hills, Hillcrest, University Heights, North Park, South Park, Normal Heights, Bankers Hill and others. He\u00a0is also the chair of the City Select Committee on Homelessness and\u00a0vice-chair of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chris Ward | Guest Editorial When\u00a0I took office two years ago, San Diego\u2019s urban core neighborhoods were\u00a0in the midst of a homelessness crisis with no clear strategy to tackle the\u00a0issue. My top priority has been\u00a0improving our response to this devastating crisis, but one council member can\u2019t do\u00a0it alone. Building on successful approaches\u00a0in other cities […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":924,"featured_media":230689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Guest Editorial: Why the city must stay committed to solving our homelessness crisis","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11552,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-opinion","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/924"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}