Global Gals Gathering April 27, 2023
Attendees: Alexis, Andi, Angela, Emily, Heather, Janice, JoAnne, Julie, Kim V, Lisa, Megan, Suzanne, Sharon, Zoe and Aomi (Lisa and Andi’s daughters)
Inspirational Woman: Toni Atkins, California State Senator presented by Julie.
Guest Speaker: San Diego City Councilmember Raul Campillo of District 7
Linda Vista, Serra Mesa, Mission Trails and Tierrasanta Open Space, etc.
Thank you, Heather, for taking notes while Raul discussed San Diego’s housing shortage and Sports Arena re-development. Raul’s dialogue follow below.
It’s great that you have Global Gals to talk about the community around you and you have different viewpoints coming together. I would love to know what you are seeing and hearing and how you vote on things. Because you are having civil discussions.
Grew up in El Cajon, parents from Calexico, Grandfather born in LA, met grandma (white), ran away back to border, she made better tomales than anyone. Lived on border and got enough money to buy a liquor store and a gas station, his dad grew up making snacks for the truckers coming up with
Immigration Attorney, Dad, involved in many different types of immigration. In his heritage he tries hard to do the right thing, hires the right staff, Sana, was working in another campaign or they worked in city hall. They deliver in and out whatever needs to get done. Money for the libraries, etc. Sana went thru the budget and found the money. She does a great job getting the needs taken care of for the district. Almost everyone has their masters degree or is working on it.
Experience, knowledge, passion in order to support everyone.
Basics: It would shock you to know how much I love to go on Ride Alongs, I sleep in the bunk next to them on the rigs to get a sense of what our city workers are going through. Nighttime ride alongs.
Used to be deputy city attorney so I knew what they were going through, so when you put yourself in people’s shoes
When there’s stakeholders, etc, he talks to lifeguards, ride-alongs for the pothole filling. Stinky, hot, smelly, and loud. A very thankless job. Our City workers do a really high intensity work and a lot of science.
Like the wastewater treatment plant and the new Pure Water program where it will be treated and used again.
It’s hard business. Thank you for your patience as we don’t fix your city as quickly as you want.
Deputy Attorney for a while so seen it all with gun cases, drug cases, duis, misdemeanors, anything not a felony. Lots of homeless cases. What the situation with homeless and why they end up in court. What we are doing its not nearly enough. Almost always drug treatment program. Services for them and his ideas he can do it smarter, diligently, and effective because he’s done it all and experienced it all so he comes with a lot of experience and knowledge.
Childcare slots need to be provided by the city. There aren’t enough slots. Really took it on because he really knows that kids need that programming when they’re young. They have to be given that shot in life.
Always private and for-profit.
Chair of Economic Development. Very important to him. How do we make sure small businesses survive. Any improvement districts south of the 8, they need extra things like security. How do we help them because there are a lot of them and they need a lot of support. I understand that because of what my family before me experienced. It’s really hard to thrive as a small business. As much as there is a narrative, but you won’t find anyone who thinks of small businesses because that is what I care about because of where I came from.
How much more can I do for them. Building city jobs, almost all of them are unionized workers. Anyone who is not a manager is unionized. They need good health care and
City pension taken away in 2012. Struggled to hire. 9,000 out 11,000 jobs filled (20% vacancy). Gave a little raise and got more jobs filled, had our first job fair a few weeks ago 2,500 people showed up. Tables set out interviewing people to hire at that moment. Hired on as many workers to fill the gaps.
The economic development aspect is important to help families and communities thrive.
SB10: The bill that’s been imposed by the state and lets developers do what they want. The previous version of the bill was regarding transit districts. It would have impacted his region minimally. You can’t build housing far from transit. We lose a lot of opportunities for housing because we can only build 5 or 6 stories. But we should be taking advantage of height. If we aren’t building up, then we are building out. 7-story buildings in Del Cerro, La Jolla, and other places where it isn’t appropriate because there’s no transit. But then jamming stuff in other places where there’s more profit.
Developers say it’s a matter of moving from Wood framing to Steel and then we have to hire unionized iron workers. Build it as quick as possible without using unionized labor. There’s lots of reasons to not build things in really sensitive spots. But in Mission Valley the building should be going up higher. Incentivizing 7-stories of steel in stead of 4 stories of wood framing. Or High End luxury in areas close to the transit access.
There’s the city of self, doesn’t build housing. Councilmember says we should build it ourselves but it requires a lot of bond funding. Not set up to do that. Private sector needs to be incentivized to do it and include enough affordable housing. Gomez plan was to be sure that there was 15%. We’ve tried to scale of the percentage that has to be affordable in housing developments.
Affordable housing is defined by HUD. The area median income (AMI) 109,000 for a family of four. They look at the MEDIAN (last year). Then they say, Affordable is 60% of that number. $64,000/year to qualify for affordable units. This percentage goes to this family with $64,000 gets it but the family with $70,000 family does not qualify. The family pays 25%
If you spend more than 35% on housing then you are rent burdened or house poor.25% of 64,000. $17,000 – spend $1,600 per month on housing.
There are levels within HUD Affordable Housing. If you make 80-120,000 then you are workforce; 50-60k low income; 0-30k is extremely low income. Mandated to build within all of those brackets. Over on the high but way behind on everything but ahead of the curve on the extremely low income.
How do you describe the connection between unhoused and housed?
Before Petco Park. SROs. (2004) They built an economic district of hospitality, athletics, etc. Single Room Occupancy were displaced by it. The owner of all the SRO’s buildings were offered millions and replaced. Direct connection.
What are we doing now and how can we look forward:
Book: Paradise Plundered by UCSD Political Science Professor – explains a lot of the way San Diego has been affected by wealthy developers since the 1950s.
Primarily in the last 7 years: Increased productivity of the worker, mortgages and rent has gone up but salary has not. CA land is so desirable that it’s overpriced. Then our fed kept inflation really low for too long. Labor costs and material costs stayed low and now bouncing up, shortages of labor and transportation, inflation is catching up. Fundamentally people do not have enough money. We could build a lot more homes to have more supply to bring the cost down.
Housing stability to fund people to pay rent. Make it $500 – seniors are $300 away from paying rent each month.
Most people on street became addicted to drugs AFTER homelessness. They had meth in their pants. Once you’re on meth it’s very difficult to get off it. Pay people to stay in their homes so they don’t have the chance of exposure.
Affordable housing is for families to rent, not buy.
Talk about mental illness percentage in unhoused: The percentage, well, there’s different levels of it. Severe is not a high percentage. The standard anxiety, depression, etc is very high. Schizophrenia, dementia is a small percentage. It’s really the county that gets the money that is supposed to be spent on that. They never spent any money on it until 2018. They were sitting on a boatload of money without building mental health hospitals, not enough to spend on the workers that help them. The cities do land use and law enforcement, and permitting. The county is about health and human services. Some programs through the housing commissions. The County is supposed to be there dealing with it.
Joanne’s comment: Can’t get them a payee. They need to learn how to manage their money once they get into a place. Someone to pay their rent each month. Need case manager that is very intensively involved.
The county is an agency of the State: social work – health and human services. The city has it’s own authority to deal with it’s own issues Land use, police, etc. Many cities and counties battle over the issues of who is responsible for what.
When you take an agency like County HHS, their focus is disease, vector control, etc. But the Human Service has changed in another direction. Agency culture is an issue.
With the city I’m trying to do a lot more with Childcare. Land use improvements.
What the city can do – the city can fundamentally give people money to survive. That is one way to help the people that are teetering. They don’t always want to follow a program. They already interacted with a service provider, they got pushed out of others that are more extreme situation. Give them a spot with privacy, safety, services. They are free or paying what they can. Some people are ready, but it takes a lot of time, a lot of labor, but if we don’t have the rooms to give them we can’t help them.
Heather’s comment: Disagreement on whether there are beds available. I quoted this article to:https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/homelessness/story/2023-04-18/no-vacancy-homeless-people-turned-away-from-san-diego-shelters-every-day
4,500 beds. 23,000 people processed. We have 1/10of the beds we need. Put into place the fund to keep seniors from being evicted.
Joanne’s comment: Older seniors can’t get into shelters because bottom bunks not available.
Sharon’s comment: Sharon housed a woman in need. The woman found a bed after diligent effort and is paying $1,900 per month for 400 sq feet. She had a phone and a computer. Most unhoused can’t use computers and phones.
Where do you want the shelters?
If we have everything available in the city of San Diego, we need beds everywhere. Not just anywhere. Safe parking lots in Mission Valley. Another in Grantville. One on Morena.
A shelter bed on it’s own is not going to fundamentally solve the problem. We want them to have the housing and the jobs to become independent.
Drugs, violence, education, etc. Housed people suffer from the same things but unhoused dealing with but worse for unhoused not having a house.
The best wrap-around is having a good job, pay, and health insurance helps more than a shelter bed. Not enough beds for the different subsets of needs for beds. How do we get them into jobs and housing.
Chula Vista getting 60+ mini houses that give shelter, safety, and independence. There is a new housing manager just for unhoused.
Federal compensation is not keeping up. Many states dealing with the same issues. The issue effects everyone. A lot of the last chances is not being held up by state and federal safety nets.
Sports Arena!
The redevelopment that’s going on in Midway will bring more housing and jobs and green space. City’s last few big parcels of acreage.
Proposal? I voted no. Only one because I felt they were lying to us.
Midway Planning Area fundamental part is going to be leveled and brought back up. Update on it a month ago – asked if they can still deliver based upon interest rates, and inflation, tripling of interest rates? They said it won’t be a problem. Watching it like a hawk. We promised 2,000 affordable units, but will it really happen. Starting to do that with a lot of questioning a lot of these contracts – like Falck.
Illegal sidewalk living. Cava and Moreno did us all a favor by saying we need 90 more answers putting it 3-4 months down the road. If we do not have a punitive law if the beds are not available. If they’re not allowed to be anywhere but it’s got a long way to go.
Best way to reach out city council person for everyone? Each person is different. I’ll tell you this: 5 of us are running for re-election. I’m the youngest one, I’m a former teacher and enjoy a one-on-one conversation because they’re afraid of people disagreeing with them.
One on one coffee and it will see everything you need to know about how they like to communicate. Some are willing to show up, some are not.
Heather’s comment: If you come across someone who is unhoused, you can call the San Diego Access & Crisis Line for unhoused, mental health, etc. (888) 724-7240 (remember it that the phone number reflects that they are 7 days 24 hours). If there is a Fentanyl emergency, call (800) 911-2000.
