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Vargas President and CEO of Father Joe’s Village. He lives in La Jolla.
Access to affordable housing is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve for a growing number of San Diego residents. As a community, we can and must do better.
As we enter the new year, I hope our communities will come together to support policies and solutions for homelessness. It may seem difficult, but if we work together, it’s an achievable goal.
California has 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population, more than double the state’s share of the U.S. population, according to federal data released in December. For every 100,000 people in our state, 44 experience homelessness. The Downtown San Diego Partnership also reported that the number of people experiencing homelessness in the last four months of 2022 has reached a record high.
These are not just numbers on a graph. they are our neighbors. They are people with stories and aspirations. And there are solutions that can help them stay away from homelessness once and for all.
Emergency shelters, bridging shelters and temporary shelters play an important role in helping people get out of homelessness. Having a temporary but safe place to rest your head is an important step towards securing employment and permanent housing.
However, not everyone has benefited from the shelters currently available. In the new year, the introduction of other types of shelters can strengthen community responses to homelessness and help those experiencing homelessness transition to permanent housing.
An open shelter with a low barrier to entry is one such type. These shelters have numerous beds where people experiencing homelessness can sleep any night for any period of time, allowing neighbors in need to find safety and shelter on their own terms.
Long-term solutions could include safe villages and communities that provide small homes. Compared to communal shelters, tiny villages of tiny houses can provide additional privacy, safety, and security to those in need while allowing new communities to form.
Collective shelters are not the first choice for everyone experiencing homelessness. The introduction of new types of shelters should coincide with additional street outreach and day services.
Whether due to post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, or other behavioral health problems, many people may not be able to thrive in low-demand apartments. Others experiencing , may distrust the system.
Initiatives such as the city’s Mobile Crisis Response Team and the Father Joe’s Villages Street Health and Outreach Team can help reach out to those unable to accommodate shelter programs.
We also need to create new types of shelters specifically for those in need. This includes shelters with enhanced privacy for families, shelters that lead a sober life, and shelters that focus on Harm’s principles of reduction.
A shelter is not a home, and outreach services are limited in what they can do. In other words, these are not permanent solutions to the wider problem of homelessness in San Diego.
We must allocate more funds to build affordable housing in our communities. The San Diego City Council declared that housing is a human right in 2022, and we agree. Everyone has the right to a safe place to call home and the ability to pay for it through fair employment.
However, securing affordable housing is easier than it is in San Diego. From September 2022 to his October, according to rental website Zumper, the average price for his one-bedroom apartment in San Diego was $2,500 a month. You have to act.
San Diego’s housing crisis is driven by a number of factors, including high demand, low vacancy, and limited supply. However, we can address these factors by encouraging and supporting initiatives that reduce barriers to the rapid construction of affordable housing.
This includes both supporting tenant protections to keep people from becoming homeless and issuing building permits for low-income housing. In 2021, the number of permits issued for ultra-low to low-income housing reached its lowest level in years.
More outreach, services and shelters can help alleviate suffering on the streets, but building more housing is the only way to fully address this problem. If we want to end homelessness in San Diego, we all need to do our part to support and advocate for policies that make affordable housing more accessible.
If you ask me what I want San Diego to do in 2023, it will be communities coming together to implement solutions that will help end homelessness for good.
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