He is back. No, not like Arnold in a movie, MacArthur in the military. It is more like Freddie Krueger in the horror movies. The failed former Mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulconer is now pushing another policy that will fail.
“Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is not just playing pundit on KUSI these days. The Politics Report has learned Faulconer is also making calls to gauge support for a new citizens initiative he wants to get on the November 2024 ballot for the city of San Diego.
What it would do: It’s not clear what the measure will be or even if Faulconer knows the specifics but it will likely fall along the lines of the one Sacramento voters will consider in November. That initiative will make it illegal – a criminal misdemeanor – for unsheltered residents to camp on the street once the city has made enough shelter or safe camping space available.
Here is the Faulconer lie—repeated from the Democrat Mayor of Sacramento, Steinberg: At no time will government admit there are enough shelter spaces for the homeless. Why? Because that would kill the homeless industry. This is a feel good measure to make believe government is doing something. This is Faulconers style—make wild pie in the sky statements—then hid from the failure.
Politics Report: Faulconer Is Making Calls on a Ballot Initiative
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is not just playing pundit on KUSI these days. And what’s up with SANDAG’s driving fee?
by Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts, Voice of San Diego, 7/9/22
He is back. No, not like Arnold in a movie, MacArthur in the military. It is more like Freddie Krueger in the horror movies. The failed former Mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulconer is now pushing another policy that will fail.
“Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is not just playing pundit on KUSI these days. The Politics Report has learned Faulconer is also making calls to gauge support for a new citizens initiative he wants to get on the November 2024 ballot for the city of San Diego.
What it would do: It’s not clear what the measure will be or even if Faulconer knows the specifics but it will likely fall along the lines of the one Sacramento voters will consider in November. That initiative will make it illegal – a criminal misdemeanor – for unsheltered residents to camp on the street once the city has made enough shelter or safe camping space available.
Here is the Faulconer lie—repeated from the Democrat Mayor of Sacramento, Steinberg: At no time will government admit there are enough shelter spaces for the homeless. Why? Because that would kill the homeless industry. This is a feel good measure to make believe government is doing something. This is Faulconers style—make wild pie in the sky statements—then hid from the failure.
Politics Report: Faulconer Is Making Calls on a Ballot Initiative
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is not just playing pundit on KUSI these days. And what’s up with SANDAG’s driving fee?
by Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts, Voice of San Diego, 7/9/22
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is not just playing pundit on KUSI these days. The Politics Report has learned Faulconer is also making calls to gauge support for a new citizens initiative he wants to get on the November 2024 ballot for the city of San Diego.
What it would do: It’s not clear what the measure will be or even if Faulconer knows the specifics but it will likely fall along the lines of the one Sacramento voters will consider in November. That initiative will make it illegal – a criminal misdemeanor – for unsheltered residents to camp on the street once the city has made enough shelter or safe camping space available.
We reached out to Faulconer’s longtime aide, Aimee Faucett, who confirmed what we had heard and gave us this written statement:
“A broad coalition of San Diegans including former Mayor Faulconer and respected community leaders are collaborating on a citizens initiative that will require the City to provide adequate shelter for homeless individuals so we can make our streets healthier and safer. Up until a couple of years ago, San Diego had become one of the only major regions in California where homelessness was decreasing. In fact, the people of Sacramento were encouraged by San Diego’s progress, and have gained the support of their community and Democratic mayor to place a measure inspired by some of San Diego’s actions on their local ballot. It’s time to do the same in San Diego by taking solutions proven to reduce homelessness and making them into law. We look forward to sharing more updates in the future.”
Why it matters: Mayor Todd Gloria regularly hurls digs at Faulconer about how the city was managed before Gloria’s team took over “a couple years ago.” This may be Faulconer’s sharpest dig back.
However, that’s not what matters. What matters is the horrific situation with homelessness in San Diego.
A month after Mayor Todd Gloria touted an improvement in the dismal statistics about the unsheltered population downtown, the numbers spiked back up for June. The Downtown Partnership, as part of its monthly count, found 1,453 people living without shelter downtown. That’s up from 1,160 last year and 721 in 2020.
The Housing Commission, long a major part of the city’s approach to homelessness remains without a permanent CEO. The mayor has mobilized police but is also dealing with a shortage of police officers.
Gloria shrugs: Reached Friday, Gloria’s spokeswoman sent over a statement. They are already following Faulconer’s plan, she wrote.
“I had a chance to look at what they’re doing in Sac and it’s not clear it’s anything more than what Mayor Gloria is already doing. This administration has increased shelter capacity by 25 percent so far, and will continue to add beds and non-congregate options to help all populations of unsheltered folks off the streets. As Voice has covered frequently, the mayor has been absolutely clear that he doesn’t believe it’s acceptable to camp on our streets when alternatives exist, and he’s creating those alternatives at an aggressive pace. The only mandate Mayor Gloria needed from voters to do this was his election.”
How we got here: Faulconer is not a master solver of homelessness. After winning election in 2014, the former mayor and City Councilmember had always been reluctant to take a leading role on the issue and it was during his first several years of office that encampments in San Diego got so bad they generated a deadly outbreak of hepatitis A, which led to the deaths of 20 people and sickness among hundreds more. The shock of the disease, the mobilization of other community leaders and the sheer state of suffering in the streets led Faulconer, four years into his term, to mobilize the shelters-plus-enforcement approach we later labeled the Faulconer Doctrine.
In partnership with philanthropists and service providers, Faulconer’s team rapidly erected temporary shelters and ramped up enforcement and cleanup efforts on the streets. They took the slight decreases in the annual Point in Time count of homeless individuals as validation.
Faulconer built a campaign for governor largely around the claim: That he had found the right balance and he could help the entire state implement it.
And that promotion didn’t die with his lousy performance in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. In May, Faulconer appeared at a forum in Spokane, Wash. put on by business leaders there who were seeking solutions to the homelessness crisis that had developed there.
Here’s how it was characterized by Chris Patterson, the organizer of the group, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review:
“It will be the first symposium the ‘Hello for Good’ group has held, and brings a former mayor, housing director and nonprofit leader in San Diego to discuss approaches that brought about a 29% decline in unsheltered homeless people on the streets of that city from 2017 to 2019, Patterson said.”
We’re not sure where they got the 29 percent number. There were decreases in the reported number of homeless individuals in San Diego in the Point in Time Count administered by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless (6 percent, for example, from 2018 to 2019) but the group had changed its methodology significantly in that time period and its leaders cautioned people against making comparisons year to year over that period.
Nobody is going to ever say “Boy I miss, 2019. Conspicuous homelessness was not so bad then.” But it was a bit better. There are now as many tents and encampments as there were when hepatitis A forced Faulconer and the city to confront the crisis. And after struggling with the issue himself, in his first two years in office, Gloria has largely embraced his predecessor’s approach – a new temporary large tent shelter is going up in Midway to accommodate 150 people and enforcement efforts to uproot encampments have increased significantly.
What’s next: We’ll be looking to see if Faulconer’s initiative substantially changes the city’s municipal code or whether it would be some kind of mandate from the public – light on actual changes to the law but heavy on political significance. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who had collaborated with Faulconer before, ended up endorsing the initiative in that city. And now we have another race to watch in November: whether that initiative succeeds and how well if it does.
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is not just playing pundit on KUSI these days. The Politics Report has learned Faulconer is also making calls to gauge support for a new citizens initiative he wants to get on the November 2024 ballot for the city of San Diego.
What it would do: It’s not clear what the measure will be or even if Faulconer knows the specifics but it will likely fall along the lines of the one Sacramento voters will consider in November. That initiative will make it illegal – a criminal misdemeanor – for unsheltered residents to camp on the street once the city has made enough shelter or safe camping space available.
We reached out to Faulconer’s longtime aide, Aimee Faucett, who confirmed what we had heard and gave us this written statement:
“A broad coalition of San Diegans including former Mayor Faulconer and respected community leaders are collaborating on a citizens initiative that will require the City to provide adequate shelter for homeless individuals so we can make our streets healthier and safer. Up until a couple of years ago, San Diego had become one of the only major regions in California where homelessness was decreasing. In fact, the people of Sacramento were encouraged by San Diego’s progress, and have gained the support of their community and Democratic mayor to place a measure inspired by some of San Diego’s actions on their local ballot. It’s time to do the same in San Diego by taking solutions proven to reduce homelessness and making them into law. We look forward to sharing more updates in the future.”
Why it matters: Mayor Todd Gloria regularly hurls digs at Faulconer about how the city was managed before Gloria’s team took over “a couple years ago.” This may be Faulconer’s sharpest dig back.
However, that’s not what matters. What matters is the horrific situation with homelessness in San Diego.
A month after Mayor Todd Gloria touted an improvement in the dismal statistics about the unsheltered population downtown, the numbers spiked back up for June. The Downtown Partnership, as part of its monthly count, found 1,453 people living without shelter downtown. That’s up from 1,160 last year and 721 in 2020.
The Housing Commission, long a major part of the city’s approach to homelessness remains without a permanent CEO. The mayor has mobilized police but is also dealing with a shortage of police officers.
Gloria shrugs: Reached Friday, Gloria’s spokeswoman sent over a statement. They are already following Faulconer’s plan, she wrote.
“I had a chance to look at what they’re doing in Sac and it’s not clear it’s anything more than what Mayor Gloria is already doing. This administration has increased shelter capacity by 25 percent so far, and will continue to add beds and non-congregate options to help all populations of unsheltered folks off the streets. As Voice has covered frequently, the mayor has been absolutely clear that he doesn’t believe it’s acceptable to camp on our streets when alternatives exist, and he’s creating those alternatives at an aggressive pace. The only mandate Mayor Gloria needed from voters to do this was his election.”
How we got here: Faulconer is not a master solver of homelessness. After winning election in 2014, the former mayor and City Councilmember had always been reluctant to take a leading role on the issue and it was during his first several years of office that encampments in San Diego got so bad they generated a deadly outbreak of hepatitis A, which led to the deaths of 20 people and sickness among hundreds more. The shock of the disease, the mobilization of other community leaders and the sheer state of suffering in the streets led Faulconer, four years into his term, to mobilize the shelters-plus-enforcement approach we later labeled the Faulconer Doctrine.
In partnership with philanthropists and service providers, Faulconer’s team rapidly erected temporary shelters and ramped up enforcement and cleanup efforts on the streets. They took the slight decreases in the annual Point in Time count of homeless individuals as validation.
Faulconer built a campaign for governor largely around the claim: That he had found the right balance and he could help the entire state implement it.
And that promotion didn’t die with his lousy performance in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. In May, Faulconer appeared at a forum in Spokane, Wash. put on by business leaders there who were seeking solutions to the homelessness crisis that had developed there.
Here’s how it was characterized by Chris Patterson, the organizer of the group, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review:
“It will be the first symposium the ‘Hello for Good’ group has held, and brings a former mayor, housing director and nonprofit leader in San Diego to discuss approaches that brought about a 29% decline in unsheltered homeless people on the streets of that city from 2017 to 2019, Patterson said.”
We’re not sure where they got the 29 percent number. There were decreases in the reported number of homeless individuals in San Diego in the Point in Time Count administered by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless (6 percent, for example, from 2018 to 2019) but the group had changed its methodology significantly in that time period and its leaders cautioned people against making comparisons year to year over that period.
Nobody is going to ever say “Boy I miss, 2019. Conspicuous homelessness was not so bad then.” But it was a bit better. There are now as many tents and encampments as there were when hepatitis A forced Faulconer and the city to confront the crisis. And after struggling with the issue himself, in his first two years in office, Gloria has largely embraced his predecessor’s approach – a new temporary large tent shelter is going up in Midway to accommodate 150 people and enforcement efforts to uproot encampments have increased significantly.
What’s next: We’ll be looking to see if Faulconer’s initiative substantially changes the city’s municipal code or whether it would be some kind of mandate from the public – light on actual changes to the law but heavy on political significance. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who had collaborated with Faulconer before, ended up endorsing the initiative in that city. And now we have another race to watch in November: whether that initiative succeeds and how well if it does.
