How Liberal Mayors Lie About Unhoused People

So Mandy, would you like to go first. I'm Mandy. I am I'm a homeless advocate and mostly do on the groundwork mutually aid UM, and then I advocate for them as much as I can almost city municipalities, UM, and just organize that way great, And Colleen, you can go next to us. Okay, Yeah, my name is Colin Cusack.

I'm a criminal defense attorney and I uh represent uh proximately fifty homeless person's pro bono right now who are sighted with the crimes of survival such as encroachment and overnight camping, so I can challenge and have them to quote unconstitutional Michael McConnell, I'm an advocate for people who are living unsheltered or homeless, and I've been working on this for about thirteen years. First part working within this system as a philanthropist, advocate, volunteer, former vice chair of

the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. I'm a founding was a founding member of a local philanthropy group called Funders Togethered and Homelessness San Diego. I have participated on quite a few initiatives such as a blitzweek where we housed about a hundred people in three days, Cities Initiative where we worked on any veteran and chronic homelessness created the regions first by nameless for veterans. Worked on a lot of unmandated CEOC Continuum of care initiatives such as

how we score projects to get homelessness funding. UH long communicated with are endless elected official Todd Gloria, who's now mayor, who's made so many promises over the years and so many claims on homelessness. People just doubt almost everything he

says about homelessness at this point, rightfully so. And UH probably most most known for my on the ground advocacy now where I do a lot of in Camas support work with of course unsheltered people, film the police around in camera sweeps and enforcement of of laws that target homeless people and continue that till this day. Nice Yeah, containing a lot of work on the street. It's great to see and the Levi's at least indeed, Hi you guys, I'm LEVI gapone with homeful Solutions, UM. I have lived

experience and being homeless. UM. I also work with a group of kids called Lived Experience Advisors here in San Diego. UM. We try to hold them accountable and keep them honest. UM and uh we're also able to advocate for uh a lot of what these people need in the recovery process, just beyond like, UM, housing, which is the main thing. We know that the homeless problem is a real estate crisis. UM.

And then I also work as a housing navigator downtown. UM. So I work with a case load of about two clients, UM,

about sixty or seventy of them. I would say, have UM S, M I S and I'm down UM really in like uh kind of one of the main areas of town that UM, you know, we have a lot of these people living outdoors, so uh, UM I'm at kind of the front lines of it every day when it comes to people needed to get a shelter bed, I'm the one that they cry to, um, you know when when they think that it's a you know, when they don't understand that it's the system that's broken. You know,

I'm the one that they get yelled at. But that gets yelled at, but you know, they think I'm I'm not doing enough, you know. And um so it's really interesting to be able to see all sides of it and see the promises that get made. And I literally have clients come in and say, oh, hey, look everything's gonna be fine because the mayor just said this week he's opening a new shelter. And I'm like, all right,

let's do the math. That's a forty bed shelter, right and there's eight thousand homes people in the county, so you know, and so um yeah, I have to kind of break down that. It's a good responsibility, I guess, to to break down the system to my clients so that they can understand how broken it is, as well as uh, you know, me being able to teach some

patients to get them through the process too. So um yeah, that's me yeah, that's good, thank you, And so yeah, I want to get into how broken the system is because it consistently I think, like every time, like I like to ride my bike around a lot, I'm always

riding around town. Often are running to people who are in distress, right, especially when we ride past the hospital, which is something we can get into, and they'll be like, oh, just just call up what you sort them out with a shelter bed and like, and then they'll have this horrible moment of realization where they're like, oh shit, like there's nowhere for this person to go. So let's talk a little bit about Todd Gloria. Right, Todd Gloria's are there.

He's a democrat. He ran on a very progressive platform generally, and what he's done has been extremely reactionary. And I wanted to start just by reading some Todd tweets. Todds of poster um. Perhaps not not as much of a poster as Rachel Richel laying his I guess communications manager. I think she has the soul of a poster and will attack people working like Michael to help people, which is distressing to see. But I wanted to Uh, I wanted to talk a little bit about Todd, So I've

got a few quotes here June. Yes, I will be the first to enforce the law against those sheltered around sheltered who break any law. But I will not use our code to harass and criminalize sick and poor people. That's the number one Augusten. What if we chose to take the resources we used to criminalize the homeless and redirect them to building housing instead? What if Todd um

January in his tag Michael in this one. Maybe right, but the sad fact is that this doesn't just happen before the p I t C. That's the point in time count of unhoused people. It happens all the time. It's unfair to the unsheltered and too STPD. My goal is to end chronic homelessness. The only way to do this is with permanent supportive housing, not criminalization. Uh. You're right,

but that's not what you do it. Uh, Californians of all political views, No, a homelessness crisis is a serious problem. More housing and services, not criminalization. It's past time to tackle this problem. I could keep going with these things, but I won't go. I think folks get the pictures so Tod talked a lot about how we don't need to criminalize poverty, how we don't need to criminalize living

on the street. UH, and then has proceeded to criminalize living on the street, right, and so maybe we can just start with these sweeps sort of happened pretty much consistently, I think since took office and UH people might be familiar with a little bit, Like they may have seen some of the bikes being thrown away that that was like Michael had a video of that which which had how many views? Now, oh gosh, I don't know a million or more. Yeah, it's a lot of people have

seen that. But perhaps one if you would like to describe like exactly like how a sweep goes down right, Like like there's there's a process of posting sometimes the process of personal notices, but you don't have two personal notices because people are encroaching. Like what's this sort of justification for it? And then what does that look like for people on the ground. February fourteenth of this year

is when Todd Gloria's started his UH sweep enforcement. Um it was unspoken, but during COVID UH they were just killing people with COVID and instead of my police, although the police were doing your own thing. UM. So this is what the police do at the sweeps as they use a series of unconstitutional ordinances, city ordinances only existing in the city of San Diego. UM. And these unconstitutional ordinances taken together make it illegal for UM anybody to

exist in public space. So me, our mothers, our children, anybody in public space can be ticketed for these violations because they're so overbroad. For example, UM, standing on a sidewalk, just being there on a sidewalk, UM will be enough to get you a citation issued if you can't prove you have a house to live in. UM. These laws, like I said, they're written over broad. They apply to everyone, but the police use their discretion to only use them

against poor persons. The Vehicle Habitation Ordinance UM lists a series of items that if they're found in your car, police could use those to arrest you. And those items include things like food, water, trash. So everybody with food, water, or trash. It doesn't have to be all three, just one of them. UM could be the objected to being arrested, have their conford, have their taken to shelter, having their children taken to CPS and all because um, the city

wants to come after poor people with with ordinances. UM, so here's the fund. The dis ordinances can be charged either as misdemeanors or infractions. Mayor Glory announced a progressive ordinance scheme, which means on day one, say Monday of the week, the individual is issued a warning. On day two, the individual is issued a infraction citation. That infraction citation gives them a day to appear months down the road UM to contest the case. But the very next day

they can be issued a misdemeanor citation. That misdemeanors titation also has a date months down the road the resolution and then UM gave four they can be arrested and taken into custody UM, all without ever having a day in court. UM. The citations, if there are issued to people in Midway or downtown San Diego, direct them to appear in Claremont Mesa. It's about twelve miles away. These are individuals that have mobility issues. They can't get to

and from court. They can't They can't really get to and from the end of the street very well without police starting to take away their property. Court won't allow them to bring their property in with them. The buses won't allow them to bring their property on the buses. So they have to make a choice. Do they risk losing all the remaining property that they have in the world to go to court to defend against the charge that they're really don't have the h The police can

cite either as a misdemeanor infraction. But when they site as an infraction, that individual doesn't get UM an appointed attorney and UM nor jury trial and so UM the punishment, the issuance of the citation becomes the punishment process. We're just just trying to get to court and take care responsibilities becomes a chore, even if later it's dismissed. We found out two public records requests that of the misdemeanors

that are being cited, are them are being dismissed. So people aren't getting their attempt, their their opportunity to defend themselves in court. They're all being dismissed UM and so if the city was was serious about believing that these individuals were committing criminal offenses, then they wouldn't be dismissing them after of them after they were were issued so colleens talking about the the the laws or the codes that are used to used during enforcement sweeps of people

out here on the streets. So the police go out and use these codes and municipal codes two write people tickets and eventually take them to jail. That's just one kind of sweet that's the enforced and sweeps. There's also clean up sweeps or abatement sweeps. We call them homeless and canment sweeps or homeless community sweeps where per settlement with past lawsuits, the city has to post three hour

seventy two notices in areas. Then they come out with the police and environmental services and clean up cruise and they'll throw away all your belongings if you're not there. So that's another kind of sweep. So there's actually two

kinds of sweeps. There's these clean up sweeps where they throw away your belongings, and then there's the enforcement sweeps where they just go out with sometimes, oh gosh, Colleen, we've probably seen as many as fifteen maybe fifteen plus police go out to ticket people in a particular homeless community so and just put them through the ringer with all these citations that Colleen went through yeah, and then

press LEVI are you familiar with the system? Right? I think maybe the the idea here is that the police are supposed to offer them shelter, right, if they asked shelter, they're supposed to offer it to them. Can you just explain about how that shelter could be extremely difficult or impossible for people to access? Yeah? Absolutely, and then I'll tell you kind of some of the consequences that UM people face even or as a result of this. But um so, basically, like let me paint the picture for you.

So UM our location as a drop in center, we don't have any housing here on site. UM and uh so the clients will typically there's a line out the gate when we get here at eight o'clock in the morning. At eight o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock, all I do is shelter referrals. So that's everybody that's coming in the door that wants to get a shelter bed for that night that night. Right. We're doing this at eight o'clock in the morning, and oftentimes I will get

one or two. Some days I don't get anyone into shelter, um because by nine o'clock all of those beds are full. And that's what they report back to me as the service provider, right is is at nine o'clock in the morning, there's no more shelter beds. Um. And uh. On top of that, to the other thing to to mention too is like, you know, the police are supposed to offer them shelter, but um, we have like some kind of

like conglomerates as far as organizations go in the shelter space. UM. So if a client is for some reason not allowed to go back to that shelter, um, that's one pretty much forever. Um and be it could be something like behavior like they got anxiety and yelled at somebody right, or it could be uh, someone who can't complete their A d l S as they call it, um, or

like an incontinence issue. Um. So there's times where a doctor will say, yes, it is sanitary and medically necessary for you to use this little bottle or whatever, But then the shelter will then kick them out and not let them return for that kind of thing. So by

nine o'clock, the shelter beds are full. Um. In the beginning, when the Padres first started playing, they were doing their sweeps real early Um, now they're doing their sweeps, um, after the time that I'm being told as a service provider that the shelters are already full and um and on top of that our shelter system, you're you can't stay there during the day, right, So some of these people that they're taking their stuff and throwing it away

are actually in shelter. You know, they just had to take their belongings with them back to the streets where everyone can see them every day, and and you know all that. But recently I had a client who we had spent like a month and a half trying to get him in the shelter every single day and it wasn't going through. Finally we got him in the shelter, and um, a ticket for encroachment had come up that you know, was not paid and he didn't go to court.

So even though he was and shelter in the middle of the day, the police officers stopped him, they arrested him for his warrant. He was in there all weekend and he lost to shelter them. Yeah, so that's and perhaps you and Mandy could explain then, like some of the things, because yeah, under the guise of I guess a clean up or abatement or whatever you want to

call it. Like often they're actively stripping people of the things that they need to access shelter, to access housing, to transport themselves around, right, and just what if you want to take on like what this means, M, Well, they'll you know, they do it under the guys, we're gonna you know, we're cleaning up the area. UM. But they will drag entire tents full of people's belongings and put them in the compactor. They won't go through them.

They never look. Oftentimes there's medication in their ideas, paperwork, things that you know, people have to have to survive. UM. You know, people can't get housing if don't have identify vacation. It's really difficult for them to get identification UM living on the streets. You know, it's it's a process, and that process UM sets outreach workers back. So you know you've got an outreach worker who may have gotten a voucher, got them an i D, and you know they've taken

their UM. It's called the espadat when they're entered into the housing system and they're waiting a housing match, and then their I D and everything gets thrown away, So then the outreach worker has to take time to go back and help them get another I D when they could be helping you know, someone else get set up to maybe get into housing. UM. You know, they don't, they don't look through the things. This causes um so much trauma for these folks. I've seen UM so a

lot of times with sweeps. UM Sometimes I say, they'll allow people to gather their things and move them and then they'll sweep the area. I've seen times when they have had people gather their things, they moved their things, and then the police surround their things while people are standing there and they placed their things in front of them while they are begging for their things, and they will not let them have them, and they will put

them in the trash compactor in front of them. And it's I mean, the only way that you can view that is it's just punishment, Like you're not you know, you're out here, you're poor, we don't have many options for you, but we're going to do this to deter

you because we just don't want to see you here. Yeah, Like I remember I was talking to someone downtown a couple of weeks ago and stop to give some folks some water, and like, uh, this person was saying, like, this is the ship I chose to bring with me, Like I didn't, you know, It's not like I could take everything, and these are the things that I wanted to keep because they were special to me. And yet

now now they're being trashed. Indeed, I think a person was thrown in one of those bin lorries, right, yeah, like inside their tent and just fucking unbelievable. And so, yeah, we've established these sweeps are cruel. We've established that there's not really anywhere for people to go, right, and that they don't they don't provide a lasting solution to homelessness. They just they just move people around and make it

harder for them. And so one of the things that we do in San Diego is that we have this thing called a point in time count, right, and I think there have been some fairly credible suggestions that the sweeps were increased in certain areas around the point in time count. So is what if you want to explain what that count like is and does? Yeah, so the point in time count really only captures like one night

out of the year, people experiencing homelessness. UM, there was a couple of hostitles even in UM that process this year it was particularly really cold that night. UM there were some tech glitches that should have been worked doubt way more in advance. UM. But UM that really only pictures like takes capture of one night. UM. The data I like to often refer to because it just feels more realistic to me is um our TFH. UM states that in any given year, there's thirty thousand people seeking

assistance for homelessness. So UM, whereas our point in time count, you know, shows one night. UM, there is data being collected all year round. So at the point in time count, you have a lot of volunteers, UM go out very early in the morning. UM, they have them count the population. UM, try to do some interviews with them real quick. UM. The interviews are very personal. UM. You know, it's a it's it's not necessarily something somebody wants to wake up

an answer at five am. But we found some people that were, you know, willing to talk. UM. But that's that's the point in time account and a nutshell okay, And then like what's I know that Downtown? I think the Downtown Partnership collects our own data, right, because the data we have is very unreliable, what's our best guess at people like maybe in the city who are unsheltered

at this time. I believe it's over fifteen unsheltered homelessness, meaning that they're not in a shelter or you know, some kind of program, Okay, in just and that's just in downtown San Diego, not the whole county, okay, yeah, yeah, So downtown San Diego, for people not familiar, is a pretty small part of a very large county, right and with I think San Diego has the highest ratio of average income to property prices anywhere in the country now,

if I record correctly, it's incredibly unaffordable. And so this has led unfortunately but probably pretty predictably, to a number of deaths on our streets, right and four or four last week if I recall correctly, or four in a seven day period this August is it's hot. It's hot

for San Diego right now. And despite this, we've seen this just like incredibly callous response from the city, I guess where Like we've seen Todd, for instance, talk Gloria, who's on there giving a speech in front of a shelter where somebody's remains were taken away a few hours before, and not mentioning that someone had just passed away in

that place. I want to talk to people about the gap between rhetoric and reality, because if you were only learning about this from the city and its Twitter account, you'd think that it was fined right because he's posting about these new shelter pits. But perhaps you can explain how best that's to drop in the ocean and the worth. It's a distraction from the problems getting worse. I think that, um, you know, there's the reality that they want the public

to see, and then there's the reality that's happening. Um. And they think that they're failing so badly um at getting people into services because um, many of the services just don't fit people's needs. UM. So they want to paint this picture that all the unsheltered people that are out in their tents, living on the street, or living in their vehicles are service resistant. UM. And I hear that all the time. You know, we asked them, they

don't want services. It's not that people don't want services. Many of these people have tried some of the service centers in San Diego, and the barriers are extremely high. Um. You know, the check in time and check out time can be difficult for people that are working. Um, they'll

separate families so um. You know sometimes the they'll tell you, oh, you can go in together if your husband and wife or if your partners, and then you get to the shelters and they say, I'm sorry, you can't be together because we don't have family space. So you have to go to a men's shelter and you have to go to a women's shelter. Um. They'll also do that with uh. Say a mother has a sixteen year old son and she needs to go into a shelter, and there's not

a family shelter. Um, she cannot take her son into a women's shelter with her. He has to go into a men's shelter. UM. So you know. Then you know, people with their pets, they're only source of like love and acceptance. You know, a lot of places won't take pets. A lot of places take people if they're using substances.

So we've got all these boundaries that are keeping people on the streets and no one's talking about at and no one's talking about the fact that some of not all of them, but some of the service providers UM are profiting off of these poor people because they represent

state and federal dollars UM. So you've got shelters that are run horribly, and you know, the more people that come in, they just want to cycle them through because that gives them money, and that pays their CEO and all of their family members that are you know, working for the nonprofit UM. And and these people because they're unsheltered, they don't feel they have a voice, they don't feel they can speak up because of retaliation. So they're just

constantly abused. And then you've got the city who's saying, look at all these fantastic things we're doing UM, which is is couldn't be farther from the truth UM. And then they constantly use the narrative that folks are service resistant UM, when in reality, the services that are out there are too few and UM too difficult, and just they're not meaning people where they're at and they're just

setting people up to fail every time. Yeah, as well said another thing I want to get into with the shelter specifically is these congregate shelters, right, and what in the in the context of an ongoing pandemic that maybe is transitioning into another pandemic. Can you explain what what's a congregod shelter right, it's along way, but it's it's what does it mean? And how are those dangerous? Especially

for medically compromised older people living on the street. Or bulk of our shelter system here in San Diego, in the city of San Diego is congregate shelter h meaning people are just placed in one big room or in some cases big circus type tents. We have a few of those where people are sleeping in cots literally three ft apart. So you can imagine how horrible that is for the spread of disease. That's why we've had some very large outbreaks of COVID in our in our shelter system,

and and they're frequently closed. The new intakes. I think it's really important also to let folks know that, like you said, if you live, if you look at mayor glorious Twitter or social media feed, you think they're doing everything they can and there's all these resources, but on any given day, there may be a few dozen shelter beds available for literally thousands and thousands of people that are sleeping on our streets at night, and the only

reason there's a few dozen shelter beds is because they've kicked some people out that day for a break in some minor rules. Most people who leave shelter go back to the street, so shelter is not a very good pathway to anything. Roughly one in seven people who leaves a City of San Diego shelter go to a permanent housing solution. That's that's a very very In fact, under Mayor Gloria, I've seen some of the lowest success rates of our system than I've ever seen in my thirteen

years of working on this. Our our system has actually is actually working worse than it was before Todd Gloria took over. So he has done very very little, and most of what he's done has been mostly performative, adding some shelter beds here and there, uh very little on the housing front. In fact, he's left tens of millions of dollars on the table that he hasn't applied for.

He did not utilize a California funding stream called Project Room Key that would have allowed him to rent hotel rooms mostly on the government dime on our taxpayer dime to get people off the street. He actually refused to do that. He has refused to open safe camp areas where people could go and camp and get off of the sidewalks. Many of us and and others in the community have pushed for real solution and for him to

utilize these funding sources, and he's absolutely refused to do it. Meanwhile, like we stated earlier, he has deployed the police, garbage trucks, and everybody else to go out there and make people's lives miserable. So he's just been an absolute failure on this issue. And at the same time, he's been the one who's given the most lip service two solutions for this. It is absolutely incredible what a disaster he has been for, not only for the unsheltered community, but for San Diego.

I've begun, I've began saying that he is San Diego's worst enemy. And and I just can't believe as somebody who supported him, supported him in his election urge people to vote for him. You can imagine how who do winked I was. I just can't believe that this guy has been so horrible for our city, and and and every indication is that he's going to continue being He's gonna continue running the ide into the ground and letting

people die on our streets at record numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong, But but didn't when he came out of the gate, didn't Gloria estimate how many people he was gonna house under his term and did me low ball at me, lower the number than than in previous years. Oh yeah, that was some kind of was that a state or a federal government goal that he set? And he actually set a goal of housing people that was

less than we had done in the previous year. So his his big stretch was to actually house fewer people. I don't know if he's even I don't even know if he's even getting there. I mean, this guy, this guy is unbelievable. The kind of nonsense that he is pulling on the citizens of our city. It is unbelievable. But he has invested so much in pr and he's got these folks who who are just good at spinning

this this nonsense to make it sound good. And because he gets a lot of media attention, he has a big obviously a big pulpit to disput this nonsense from he's he's able to get a lot of people to believe it now on homelessness, anybody who has a decent set of eyes, it's basically calling bullshit. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know a whole lot of people anymore who

think we're we're doing very well on this issue. And so I think he's gonna have a harder and harder time convincing people that he's worthy of worthy of re election, are certainly worthy of a higher office at some point, which is all he seems to care about. Yeah, and more so so, he's personally to blame. He has personal involvement of getting rid of ten thousand s r o s single rental units that that if we had those today, minus our eight thousand almost people, we would not have homelessness.

So of units that he was required to replace and never replace them, that's his fault. I call him a monster. I I was, you know, Kevin Falconer criminalized, but he was a Republican. We expected it of him, and he didn't tell the promise lest he was gonna end criminalization to get our vote. Um. One of the reasons that are probably the only the main reason that that Gloria didn't didn't put funding into Project GROUPTI. Um was because the city is in this unique position of owning and

operating the nonprofit that runs the convention center. So when COVID hit, they were looking at non up at going belly up because they couldn't put any events in there and having to layoff all their staff. So instead of putting people in hotels where they'd be safe, they put them in a convention center where they'd be exposed to COVID and would die. But the city funded convin nonprofit

would be funded. So um, that's just heinous and a hundred and thirty two million dollars is what Todd Gloria got the city to to pay out on a settlement on Ash Street, his boom doggle He cost the stad. He convite city Council to invest all this money to slide donor money to his just slide city money to his donors. For the listeners who aren't familiar with our real estate griff scene, So, James, if you were going to go buy a house right now, uh, you would

think it is important that you get a property inspection? Correct? Yes? Yeah? Would you think it would be important to google or seek out documents that may inform you of as best as prior to your purchase. Yeah, I want to know that. Yeah. So UM, these are two of the opportunities that they missed when they entered this deal with UM. Uh with the one on one Ash Street. Um. So they basically had a middleman SISTERA come in and purchased the property and then at least to own it back to the city. UM.

At no time was an inspection done. Um. The asbestos was uh, people were aware of it, um, but there was no studies done on what the impact was going to be in all that. So now we've got ourselves sunk into this deal that m is estimated to cost taxpayers two hundred and two million dollars. Right, So I

punched some of the maths. Okay, And if you assume uh one year's rent as twenty four thousand dollars, right, twenty two hundred and two million divided by twenty four thousand dollars is more than eight thousand people that this taxpayer money, you know. And it's always it's just and it's in a cycle, and it's it's not only the cycle there, but it's also the cycle of we don't have enough police, so they're bringing in more police when

we don't have the housing. And then the police that we do have are working overtime to pick up shopping carts and throw away tens. You know. So, um so the astreet deal, there's plenty to google on it, but it is it is uh like historically going to go down in in San Diego. Screw ups for sure. Yeah, it's a giant monument to grift go ahead, but we don't have any police. Is also more gaslighting. We have plenty of police. When I started practising law thirty years ago,

two police officers would show up at the scene. Now at least six police officers show up every single time. We have an overblight of of police, and we could afford to lay off two thirds, agreed, Yeah yeah, but instead we just built childcarecenter for them. Yeahs back on

that quick about the police. Um, one thing that I think they also push the narrative that you know, there's this hot team, the homeless Outreach team that the police they never take water, they never really take anything, um And they search for unsheltered people and they have these pop up events and they rarely get any traffic to these things, and people often wonder why, Um, we cannot expect unsheltered people to trust and accept help from the

same people that criminalize them, terrorize them, harass them and throw their things away. Um. So you know, adding more police to deal with homelessness, Um, it's just also a waste of money. It caused more trauma to the unsheltered people, and it's completely unnecessary. So we're talking about this duality between like what said and what what what exists on the street, right, And it's it's very apparent people on the internet love to be wrong about George or well.

But I think like the one time recently where I felt that like, oh well would be a useful things to deploy. Is the idea of a care court, like which is the thing that has been very strong on to Gavin Nuisance. First, Right, courts, in my opinion, don't care about people. It's not their role. Can someone explain what a care court is and why it's relevant in

this setting. So the framework of this is you have a bunch of um liberals in Gloria and Gavin Newsom's ear saying we have to we have to end homelessness, and the politicians are saying, oh, well, we can't and homelessness because they're all mentally ill drug users. Okay, so that's the first premise that we're working with, and they're not. Ten are used drugs in a mental illness and debilitating

to an abilitating extent in the homeless population. Um, and the drug use uh is parallels the rate of drug use in the house community. We don't take houses away from drug users who are housed and make them get sober before we return their houses to them. So requiring that they be sober beef before we get a house is asked backwards. Um, we have to get them into housing first. Now, the care court is set up just to pass more money to their donors. That's all it's

set up to do. It's not gonna ease anything. It's gonna set up a situation where a person is considered gravely disabled, then they can be put into a conservatorship. And grave disabled is defined as unable to provide shelter for oneself. So essentially, everybody who is poor is now gravely disabled, and the rich who got them in this position can make all the decisions for them. I'm very

passionate about this. Because it's it's cruel, and it's it's it's it's essentially the return of all the institutionalization that was set set turned off. The whole reason that you know, Reagan got every get everybody released from the prisons because of the mental illness, but he never paid. There was never any payment into community mental health services. So um, now they want to return them to the institutionalization after never providing any street a sufficient street um services for them.

And that's that's just cruel. Yeah. And so with the whole care court plan, there's like a few very large holes in it. One is that it does not mention that there is any housing uh stipulation at all, So it does not say that the conservator must provide them shelter. Um. The checking guidelines are once every thirty days, which is about like the same time period that we have them checking with their case managers. Is at least once every

thirty days. Um. And they also try to try to tell it like, um, well, it's it could be temporary, right, like once they get better, then they'll be off the conservatorship. And what that says to me is it's like okay, you force them into treatment and then once they get kicked out of treatment, you say, okay, they're healed, and then you know they're back away from their services. And I've had clients who thought maybe a conservatorship is right

for me. I've had clients like begging where they're like, I just can't do stuff right, like you know. Um. And I had one client specifically asked me to be her conservator, and I care about her so much, UM And if I thought that her having a conservator would really benefit her, then absolutely. But as of right now, there's no difference in um, whether a conservator can get somebody shelter better than me as a service provider, or if they can get them into a treatment program better

than a service provider. Now, Colleen was talking about how only ten percent of our homeless population has a drug addiction, but in San Diego County as a whole, fifteen percent of Sandy agains have a substance use issue. Right my time, percent was debilitating a debilitating Uh yeah, okay, good to clarify, um. But so that being said, fifercent is way more than our homeless population. Those aren't the only ones with substance use.

But if you're on medical right, if your low income and low income in in San Diego as anyone making less than seventy six thousand dollars per year UM, which is a lot more people than they realize. If you are low income UM until bumping just because if you're low income. But I have some memes here. I want to point some facts on the Care Court care to address houselessness, but of its sixty five million dollar budget, zero will go to housing and zero will go to

mental health services. That's shocking. Zero to mental health services are housing care cord will weaponize its unchecked power and worse than historical violence against black and ground communities, and care Court claims to address mental health ability disabilities, but allows a judge to rub anyone they find unfit of autonomy over their health, home, and life. Yeah, and I did remember my thoughts. So um, like the people on medical um there as far as detox facility goes, like

we already know fentin als and everything. Now, even if somebody thinks they're gonna coke or or whatever they think it is, typically there is fvent al in it. So um, anyone who does wish to go through a detox um it's impossible to get them bets, Like I have clients who come in they're like, please, I know, I know, I gotta get worked this out of my life. And

I'm gonna try. Can you get me into detox and we will spend the whole day, you know, And and and there's one and like all these people are competing for maybe one bet at the detox facility. So if it was like we had the infrastructure set up and we had this awesome mental health care and we have these awesome like street medics and street therapy, and we had okay, and everyone in the Conservative ship is gonna

be housed at this place like then then maybe. But like this whole thing, it's just it's it's a load of crap. So believe if we had if we had all those things, if we had a good system that had good substance use treatment, good mental health care, and housing, we wouldn't have all these folks on the street. Amen. So it's kind of interesting that they're they're creating something to solve an issue that they don't have the infrastructure

to solve. But I think it's important to note that care Court is a conservatorship, but we already have conservatorship laws on the books conservatives laws, they're very strict. It's a very high threshold to get somebody conserved currently for good reason. You're taking away somebody's civil You're taking away somebody's right to make their own decisions, is what a conservatorship is. But for some folks that are gravely disabled and and impaired, it is the best thing to do.

It's for you know, for very few people. But but the the city attorneys and the people in the hospitals, uh, the workers, Uh, they don't want to go through it because it is very difficult and challenging, and oftentimes the judge, the judge will deny it because that's how how important it is for people to have these civil rights. So sometimes even have to do a multiple times with somebody

who probably you know, who may actually need it. And I speak from firsthand experience of helping people you know, go through this process and try to you know, and and trying to get a conservatorship on somebody who just really really needs it. Care court would lower that threshold so much, I I doubt it's legal. I'm sure it's gonna get challenged in court. It it is such a dangerous, dangerous leap against our civil liberties or civil rights. Uh that I I just am gonna find it incredible if

if judges allow this to move forward when it's challenged. Uh. But the main point is that people need help. They need care, not court and if we would provide the care, which are elected officials don't want to do. I think

this is just a cop out on their part. I think this is this is this is the elected official saying, uh, we have failed, so we'll just pun it to the courts and let them take ownership and control of this, which in effect, the courts are just kicking it to the counties because the county is are behavioral health provider who's gonna have to provide these services and be responsible for these folks. I think this is gonna be set

a train wreck. But the one thing it is illuminating is that our behavioral our behavioral health system is so broken, so dysfunctional, that they would even be trying to do this. I think it's basically a an indictment of our system and but care courts not going to fix anything. That's and I think it's setting people up for failure. I've talked to some families who are who are really. Now, these are house folks who have uh seriously mentally ill

loved ones, whether it's spouses or children, UM, siblings. They see this as a silver bullet two get care for these their loved ones. And maybe it works better for that segment of the population because they have somebody, they have a loved one as an advocate to make sure that the care is the care is the focus. But for for unsheltered folks, they're gonna be abused and used

by this system. Uh maybe warehoused. Who knows, they're gonna end up worse off in my opinion, And so I for one, am against it as it's written, and certainly fear that the implementation of it is going to be a travesty. Uh that I just can't imagine. I can't imagine that this so called liberal state uh would try

to trample the rights of people like this. And oh boy, I tell you it's there's so much dangerous about this that I mean, we could we could have a whole show talking about this and maybe and I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about this down the road. Yeah yeah, I think they will, all right. So what I want to do is focus a little bit to

finish up here on some solutions. So the things that a lot of you guys are doing right now to provide people with help, to provide people with the basic necessities of living a dignified existence, and like how the state could do better? Right? Like what what housing first solutions look like? What solutions are informed by evidence rather just informed by sort of cruelty and the desire to

brush the problem aside. What do those look like? Well, I think you have to you know, you can't expect people to get well living on the street, so you've you've got to get them inside UM and congregate shelters. We've already talked about why those are so problematic on so many levels. UM. There is a model in San Diego that's being used by a nonprofit UM where right now it's only for elderly UM individuals. It's called Housing for the Homeless, and they put UM unsheltered elderly folks

in hotel rooms and it's had tremendous success. For some reason, it cannot get funding city or UM county funding. UM. But getting these people off the street and out of survival mode is first and foremost, and then you've got them in a stable place so that services can find them when they need them. They can get the health care they need, they can get mental health services. UM. You know, we need to bolster our our rehab an addiction UM services. We also need more harm reduction UM.

You know, it can take you one to three weeks to get in just a detox at McAlister, which is the only UM detox center in San Diego south of Incionidas, and detox is separate from UM, so we living. So you made detox, and then it may be another one to three week way to UM get into Solver Living, which is just enough time to get turned back out on the streets and relax again. UM. And after that, even there's no housing at the end of the tunnel, so you know, really the biggest thing that we're missing

is housing UM, and then everything else trickles down from there. UM. You know. Just building these relationships with people so that they can can trust that you're on their side and you're not going to lie to them, give them emptie promises, or or use them in some way to uh, to monetize them for yourself is one of the biggest things that I've found of importance for me as an on the ground UM, you know, outreach worker and doing mutual aid. UM. You know, most of the time, these people just don't

have water. You know, they're they're thirsty, they're hungry, UM. And that's what poverty looks like. UM. So I think we've you know, we've got to get these people inside UM immediately, and then we start deploying the resources to them, UM to help them recover from the trauma you know, on the street or you know, whatever trauma led them to be in that situation. UM. I think people often forget that a lot of folks on the street. UM. You know, there's the foster to the streets pipeline, there's

the jail to the streets pipeline. UM. So you know, many people don't end up on the streets because they have family to help them. And a lot of these folks on the streets they don't have any family members. So UM. You know, as a community, we need to

step up and be their fan. So that that's great, and I think I think we we have to understand that the homeless service system, and I'm gonna talk about some of the good things that are happening because I think that's it's important for people to know there's a ton of stuff happening, both grassroots all the way up. But it's important to understand that the homeless service system

can only do so much. As as Manny was talking about these pipelines that feed homelessness, people are becoming homelessness. I've never seen so many new people out here on the street in my work. I'm on the street some part well a lot of the every day, and I'm seeing more new people than I've ever seen in my last thirteen years. And there's all these feeder systems. It's it's child welfare, it's foster care, it's it's criminal justice, it's the education system. You know, you can name it.

It's it's uh, the health care system. All these things are feeding homelessness. It's the it's the how we've commoditized housing, it's I mean, I can go on and on talking about what's feeding homelessness. It's the lack of safety nets, it's a lack of good mental health care and substance use care. So homeless services cannot control these things up above. These systems, these billion dollar systems that are feeds that are failing people and feeding homelessness what homeless services system is.

And I like to say they've got a lot of mission creep going on here, because ideally they really should be focused on getting people into housing and out of homelessness, but they've become this this big system that's uh is really getting very costly to feed, and it's very inefficient and effective. But we know what solves homelessness. Housing and services solve homelessness, period and it works. We see when these new quality projects like Zephyr or Trinity place these

these housing uh they're not projects, they're housing. They're housing with services, so we call them projects, but they're just like any other apartment building really, except they have supportive services for folks and they work extremely well. They have a N plus success rate of keeping folks housed, even folks who have some who are disabled and have some

significant issues. And it helps provide that self sufficiency by providing a deep rental subsidy and supportive services for folks who aren't ever going to be able to take care of their own rent totally themselves. There is no free housing. Everybody who gets these these units pays their income, whether it's disability income, social security retirement, whatever, they're paying some

money that's not free housing. People are helping themselves and that's really important to say, and they're participating in services. But once you're in housing, your participation in services rates go up because people want to continue to keep doing better and stay in the housing. These things are being built, they're being built as we speak, but at a snail's pace. And that's the things that I fault are elected leadership

for is they're nibbling around the edges. So Todd, has Todd Gloria done some some good things, a few, but they're so small and he blows them up to like he's solving something and he's not. Has the county done some good things? Yeah, they've actually done more good things that I've ever seen them do, but it's still not anywhere close to the pace that we need. They've opened up some mental health crisis centers that are actually walk

in centers. They put together some mental health crisis teams that respond to a small percentage of cases of when you call. But it is helping. All of these things help, but they need What really needs to be done is the things that we know work need to be taken to scale. But we have to also understand the challenges of that. We can't just fault the elected officials for some things they don't have control over. As we all know, there's it's hard time. It's a hard time hiring people.

So we need a lot more staff that work with that are providing mental health services and substance use services. But we won't get there. And this is where the elected officials have have a lot of fault is they've really not put a priority in on this issue. And this is where there's the biggest disconnect. On one hand, you have Todd Gloria constantly saying how this is his number one issue. On the other hand, his actions don't show that. I'm a big believer in in bicycle safety

and safe roads and things like that. But he seems to put more importance on a bike lane than he does solving homelessness. And they're both important. But we have five people dying on our streets because they're homeless. That's you know, he he needs to put He needs to back up his his talk with action. Just like you know, they're they're expanding some bike lanes and I think that's great. Uh, I think they need to do it a lot smarter. Because some of them don't seem to be that safe

to me. But that's a whole another show to involved in. But they don't seem to be very strategic to me, and they just don't seem to be very They don't seem to care. They seem to be more interested in hoodwinking the public so they can get their next job. We need people who care mostly that care about people, but also care about spending our money efficiently and effectively. But some of the grassroots stuff, like I say, getting people into hotel rooms and then getting into housing is

a good pathway. The county opened a small shelter I think it's forty four beds or so. It's the first small shelter that they opened that's really more tailored towards people with substance use and mental health needs. It has a great uptake rate and and and the feedback from people on the streets is good. So here we have something that the county did that was good. We need a lot more of them. But instead they're opening another jumbo tent. So these things are very frustrating to folks

like myself and Mandy Felleen. The different people that the people who are actually on the ground working that are trying to get people into the assistance. We know what we know the things that people will go into, including substance use help. But whenever you try to get somebody in it and you're told there's a three week waiting list, you lose that person. They want to go, They want to go now. You've got to be responsive to the

person's motivation in that moment to get the help. And it's heartbreaking for people like Mandy and me who are out there on the street and people are crying out for this help, and it's just bullshit when these folks, whether it's the police or the mayor, say that there's

the people who don't want help. It's really disgusting because when you're on the street like we are and people are pleading for this help and we can't help them because it's not available, we know firsthand and we call bullshit. We call bullshit on on the rhetoric that comes out of these people's mouths. We know the people, We see their faces, those tears are real, that pleading for help is real, and we can actually help them if we

do what's right. And so, uh, we could talk all day about some of the good things too, that the grassroots people like Mandy are out there, um, just on the ground doing We're not paid to do this. None of us here on this call except for Levi. Levi works within the system, and thank goodness for him. And the last thing I want to say, and I I'm always remiss if I don't remind remember to say this, but I always want to send a shout out. This is not the fault of the hard working people on

the street, whether you're paid or not. I just want to say thanks to all of the folks who take on this job, paid or not, to go out and help people firsthand and try to do the best with this shitty system that they're given. So there's a lot of people who take very little pay they do this because they care, or the volunteers who do it because

they care to help people. And there's a lot of folks out there really trying hard to help folks, and they are helping people one by one by one, and we need to support we need we have to have the support of the Todd Gloria's and the Nathan Fletchers of the world and the Gavin Newsom's to do the right thing and and to keep funding what works and to quit doing what doesn't. And so, UM, I think it's just important to round out by saying that, Yeah, I think it's pretty good. Alright. So both of you

are out helping people. I see it all the time on your on your social media. Where can people find you? Uh? And how can they support what you're doing if it's getting people, tend to getting people water that kind of thing. Uh, tree start with UM, let's just go down and this will start with Mandy. UM. I usually UM kind of bum off of Michael for funding. UM because most of everything I do, UM, I pay for myself. UM, so I you know, if he has he does a go fund me and then you know he'll be like, hey,

I gotta go fund me money. And you know I meet him and he like loads up my car and off I go. UM. You know people can can find me on Twitter. UM, I think I'm cute Cooper to UM, I'm very passionate. So UM, you know it's like and be careful what you look at on my feed. UM. You know, I just I love these people, and UM,

I want to see them because they're all people. I want to see them get the help and One thing that Michael taught me in the very beginning of this, because you know, I started this, um maybe about two or three years ago. One thing that Michael said to me that resonated with me, because you know, I was out doing these you know, like I call them parades now, which are like liberal marches, um, you know, yelling at buildings when I wants in, and you know, then going

home and feeling good about what I did. UM. And he said, you know, Mandy, he said, every single social justice issue that everyone fights for, Black lives Matter, immigration, UM, disability, UM. You know, all of these things come together, you know, UM, l G, B, t Q, I A plus all of those people are overrepresented in the homeless population, and so it shakes down to that. And so I thought, you know, my mind was like bloan and I was like, oh my god, you know, I'm not her marching for people

and the most marginalized of them are living on the street. UM. And there's very little help for those people because unfortunately, whether what whatever marginalized group of you come from, when you become homeless, that overtakes all of them. And there is a huge public hatred for unsheltered people, and it is my parson across the board. Um So we we all just need to realize that this is, you know, this is a societal failure and a social justice issue.

Um And I hope that you know, more people would will get up and and get go to the ground and start talking to your unsheltered neighbors. Try to build a relationship with them, reach out to their humanity. Um And and if you just do it with one person, if each of us just did it with one person, it would make such a difference. Even if you can't get them in housing or you don't have a lot of money, literally, just treating them like a human being

means so much to these folks. Yeah, that's that's very important. Kelly. What would you like to say? Where can people find you? How can they help? That was just like how to find us? Right, I know, I thought it was great. I welcome it all right, I thought it was really good. Everybody should have a Mandy. Um. I my name is Colleen Q. Sack c U s A C K. You can Google me and find me. I'm in searchable on

the attorney directory. My number six two three or six three zero and my email address is C another c U s a c K dot policy at gmail dot com. Um, and I'm on Twitter at symbol O b j K s h N, which stands for objection. Great. Thank you, all right, Michael. So, I, like Mandy, I've just funded my work myself also except for about oh gosh, I

don't know. A month or two ago, I was out on the street film in some sweeps, watching the police and the environmental service workers throw away people's tents and and I and I UM, and I said, well, I'm gonna go get those people some new tents. And the police officer told me, go ahead. We can throw them out faster than you can give them out. And I tweeted about that, and you know, I think it really,

you know, it struck a chord with people. So I've had people offered to help before, but I've just had this real outpouring of of offerings to help lately. So for the first time ever, I set up a go fund Me, and in the first day I just said, you know, this is just to help support encampments that are impacted by the sweeps or or whatever is needed, and to support other grassroots people like Mandy who are

out there. And I think I raised about three thousand dollars in the first day, and I was like, wow that it really was touching because you know, I didn't even hardly. I just put it out on Twitter, I think, and I haven't promoted it much since, but I think we're up to six or seven thousand dollars use that every day. I don't where are you the Uh I'm retired, so I get to do this uh all day long. People like Mandy, they have a job. They're doing this as a second job that's unpaid. So um so what

I do is is is is help. Uh is the buy stuff? I help other I funneled money to other organizations. I also UH promote that it uh go fund me of other people on my social media site. So I really would appreciate you following me. On Twitter, it's at Homelessness s D at Homelessness SD. On Facebook, it's Homelessness New San Diego. On on Instagram it's the same, and on YouTube it's I think it's Homelessness New San Diego

on YouTube. I just started a YouTube page. Well actually I started a long time ago, but I just started posting stuff on there. I have a lot of followers. It's a pretty active conversation. Especially on Twitter, I get the bear's people lashing out at me, attacking me because they don't like me calling them out. Um, I get you know, I get haters on there too. I let

them voice their opinion. Uh, I let the conversation flow. Um. But what I do is your what And I do warn you that, especially on Twitter, it's heart wrenching stuff. So I'm out here on the ground, I'm seeing people die, I'm seeing horrible stuff and I'm sharing it with you because I think people deserve to know the truth. So elected officials like Mayor Todd Gloria, they don't want you to know the truth. But I'm gonna bring it to you. I've worked every day to bring you the truth that's

going on out here on the street. And it's ugly, it's it's but it's also I also see some amazing stuff. I also see some amazing, heartwarming stuff, people helping people. So it's everything, but it's it's a roller coaster ride, folks, So you know, just be prepared and from there you can find my go fund me. Um. But most of all, you can get educated on the issue, make up your own mind. Uh, don't just listen to the bullshit that's spewed out of city hall. Uh, see it on the

ground for yourself. Take people out with me. Uh. I do a lot of work with the media, but but just just just joy in the conversation, join the conversation, learn, donate if you want to learn where you can donate your time to other people. Yeah, message me, you can cut me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're just real people out there doing, you know, doing stuff. And I worked within the system trying to I went to all these meetings.

I spent a whole ton of money within the within the mainstream system, which I'll never do again because it's a black hole. So I mostly promote grassroots stuff now and we're just out there doing it and and doing what we can uh in a very difficult situation. But join the conversation and see what's going on. And that's James.

I just I appreciate all your support over the years, um uh, both amplifying our messages, getting messages out on social media, and just for everything that you do on social justice issues and and and safety issue is um so I can hold them accountable on the bike stuff, yeah, absolutely, well do that's another episode. I will plug leavi on Levi's behalf because I leave, I had to jump off to sort out an emergency. But it's homeful Solutions, which on Twitter is at the Solution nine. You can find

them there and leave. I can help folks if they are in San Diego access services and so yeah, that's being us today. Please do follow these people. Please get out and try and be a good neighbor to the young housed community. Wherever you are, feel free to reach out to any of us if you need some help or advice on how to do that or want to come out here in San Diego. All right, thank you very much. Everyone appreciate you taking some of your afternoons.