San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and City Councilman Steve Whitburn recently announced that the city is opening two “safe sleeping sites”—meaning land where the homeless can set up tents and receive services—near Balboa Park.
The cost to do so is $5 million and is part of the mayor’s 2023–24 fiscal year budget.
The locations will have restrooms, 24-hour security, free meals, and social service agencies, according to Gloria.
“The ultimate goal is to help people get back onto their feet and moved into long-term housing,” he said during a May 8 press conference.
The first site—which will open in July—will be located at 20th Street and Avenue B, a few miles outside Balboa Park. It can accommodate 150 tents, according to city officials.
The second is larger, with space for 500 tents, and will be available in the fall in a parking lot known as “Lot O,” located just south of the Naval Medical Center, which is in Balboa Park.
The sites were approved by the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership—a nonprofit collaborative of institutions inside Balboa Park.
The locations were offered by Whitburn as a solution to his proposed ordinance banning the homeless from public property near parks, schools, and outside homeless shelters if a bed is available.
He has been pushing for safe sleeping sites since he visited Denver and saw how successful their sites were, according to his spokesperson, Bridget Naso.
“Safe sleeping sites are a win-win for people who are homeless and living in our neighborhoods,” Whitburn said during the press conference. “The homeless will have a safer, healthier alternative to living in encampments.”
He said that with the sites, he believes that the public will see fewer homeless living on the streets, since the sites are a more desirable alternative for some compared to homeless shelters.
“I have spoken to a number of people who are tired of living in squalor on the sidewalk and who want to be in a better place but don’t want to go into an enclosed shelter,” Whitburn said. “They have told me they will happily move to a safe sleeping site.”
Gloria praised the sites, saying they would create safer neighborhoods and clear sidewalks for the city.
“People cannot have tent encampments when we have a place for them to go,” Gloria said during the press conference. “‘No’ will not be an acceptable answer when the taxpayers of the city are paying tens of millions of dollars on homelessness services.”
To help clean homeless encampments—often riddled with needles, human waste, and rotting food—the city has added $1.4 million to its 2024 budget.
The additional funding will be used to remove waste left after encampments have been removed, according to Naso.
According to Gloria, the city removed more than 500 tons of trash and debris from public property impacted by homeless encampments since last fall.
Currently, there are about 4,800 homeless people in San Diego, with about 52 percent unsheltered.
According to city spokesperson Naso, management details of each site—including the process to be approved to live in one—have yet to be determined.
The sites won’t allow drug or alcohol use.
