City-led cleanup operation of homeless encampment in Midway begins

Speaker 1: (00:01)

City crews have started to clear a homeless encampment that has grown significantly in the city's midway district. San Diego mayor. Todd Gloria has called the situation wholly unacceptable and has indicated that decisive action is being taken to avoid a potential health crisis among its residents. He spoke with K PBS this morning with more on the state of affairs in midway. These

Speaker 2: (00:24)

Folks are vulnerable. I think that they're at risk out there and this notion that they're able to care for themselves, I think should be challenged. I think we have, uh, folks who are obviously deep in mental illness, deep in substance use, and that we need to offer them more than what we currently have

Speaker 1: (00:37)

Joining me now is KPBS health reporter, Matt Hoffman, who was on, on the scene at the cleanup this morning. Matt. Welcome back to the program. Hey Jade. Hey, so you were there this morning. What were things like

Speaker 3: (00:48)

On the scene? These sort of encampment cleanups. They're really tough to cover Jade. I mean, you have a lot of an emotional people out there who are having to make a lot of tough decisions about what to keep and what could go in the dumpster, sort of to paint the picture for you. You know, this cleanup happening down it's on sports arena Boulevard. It's right by Pacific highway, right there. It's right behind the big lots and the Goodwill. There's people living on both sides of the streets. Um, today city cruise, they clean up about a quarter of the area. And just so you know, too, you know, they're not necessarily just moving people out of there. They give people a notice. We're saying, Hey, we're gonna do a cleanup. You have time to move your stuff. And basically, you know, as long as you drag it a across the street, everything you leave on the other side is gonna go right into a city dumpster. There are a lot of police out there, city cleanup crews, some Navy police out there too at border us right along a Navy property, but definitely emotional day for a lot of people out there.

Speaker 1: (01:34)

Mayor Gloria has indicated that one of the main reasons for the cleanup is the potential for disease outbreak. What can you tell us about that? Yeah. That's

Speaker 3: (01:41)

Why mayor Gloria says is the whole reason for this, you know, to avoid a bigger health crisis. He says that we don't wanna see another deadly hepatitis, a outbreak, and he wants to take action now. And he also touched on, you know, that the city's been getting a lot of reports of crimes that have been happening there and a lot of drug use. And they said that this can't be ignored any longer. When something to note to Jade is that this can't meant is a little bit different from others. You know, you go downtown, you see, you see some of these encampments that have regular cleanups. Um, those are not close to homes. You know, this one is very much an industrial area out there, right by the sports arena right down the street.

Speaker 1: (02:13)

Is the city making any efforts to connect people with resources like temporary shelters or outreach services?

Speaker 3: (02:20)

Yeah. So this city says basically, you know, before that they went out there and announced the speaker clean up, that they're gonna do, you know, the first real big effort. They've had some smaller ones there, but they went out and they, you know, for the last month or so, they've been contacting people. They think, you know, maybe about 180 people live out there when they contacted about 150 of those. And they say that they provided about 450 instances of service. Now that can be anything from county personnel, helping people connect with Cal fresh and medical assistance, which they said did happen, or it could even be connecting them to shelter. We know that you know, of all these encounters that they had, they were offering shelter. They said that seven people have been placed into shelter. And the majority of those are in that new shelter. That's just right down the street, about half a mile from where this encampment

Speaker 1: (03:00)

Is. Do you have a sense of how many people are being moved from this encampment?

Speaker 3: (03:04)

We know that the city estimates that there's about 183 people, you know, on both sides of this block here on sports arena Boulevard on both sides of the street. We don't really know if there's a sense of how many people are leaving because you know, they were notified of this cleanup. And we saw a lot of people, there were almost advocates out there too that are helping people drag their tents across the street. It seems like people plan to stay there mean that this was an effort by the city to at least start to make that area more sanitary and more clean. To what extent

Speaker 1: (03:30)

Will city crews be clearing the area? You

Speaker 3: (03:33)

Know, the mayor says that he wants the conditions to be addressed. Now, what does that mean? Well, we know that the city's gone 10 by tent. They've been talking to these people, trying to give them extra time. The mayor says that this is gonna be a multi-day cleanup. Um, I touched on earlier, you know, today they probably clean up about a quarter of that whole area. So they still have a lot of work to do. And it sounds like they're gonna be doing that over the next few days. So we'll really have to see, um, if they sort of step up their efforts or if it's just more of a, Hey, move your stuff and let us clean the place. And you can go back to where you were. So what

Speaker 1: (04:01)

Will become of the people who are living at this camp?

Speaker 3: (04:04)

You know, we spoke to some people who were living there. Um, some people are there for quite a while and these people said that they plan to stay, you know, that they have nowhere else to go in San Diego. And so we saw people dragging their tens and then they're gonna be dragging 'em back something. I will note though, a couple of people that we spoke with, they were, uh, disabled and the city is actually taking that into account. You know, if somebody's disabled, like these gentlemen, we talked to earlier, they did not move their tents. Like literally, if you look at the block, they, they got rid of everything else, except these three tents. And these gentlemen were in wheelchairs. So they're trying to make accommodations for people, but yeah, keep in mind. They're not necessarily making them leave. You know, they're not saying, Hey, get outta here. If you come and here, we're gonna arrest you. Uh, they're just cleaning the area right now. And

Speaker 1: (04:44)

You mentioned that there were advocates out there this morning. What's been the community response to the news of this

Speaker 3: (04:49)

Cleanup, you know, definitely on the homeless advocate side, they say, this is just another example of sort of a, a, a, a bandaid approach. You know, something we've seen downtown where, you know, they make, uh, a lot of these unsheltered residents move across the street. They cleaned it up and they, they just move right back in. So they argue that it's not really addressing sort of the root issue here in terms of some of the community response. You know, we know what the mayor said that he's heard from businesses that they don't like this being out there and some of the crime that's associated with it. But in terms of residents, there's not a lot of, I don't think there's any homes that are super close to that area. So we haven't necess necessarily seem like, you know, maybe if it was downtown, you'd see something like downtown community groups coming together saying, Hey, we need to address this. I'm not entirely sure that we've seen a ton of that as it relates to this industrial area.

Speaker 1: (05:32)

Hmm. So to that point, are there concerns that another homeless encampment of similar size will just spring up after this one's cleared?

Speaker 3: (05:39)

I would have to say yes, but not only that, you know, keep in mind, these people didn't necessarily lose all their stuff. You know, they might have lost some of it that they had to leave behind. A lot of people that work with the homeless say that they can tend to be sort of hoarders, but that's why advocates are saying this is a bandaid approach, you know, cleaning up the area a bit, but it doesn't solve the root issue. And keep in mind too, in that midway area, you know, there is that big encampment there, but just go a couple blocks down, you know, toward the shelter toward the actual sports arena building. And there's more people that are living on the street down there too. So it's definitely becoming a bigger problem in recent months in that area. But it seems like, you know, while this encampment may be getting cleaned up a little bit, at least for right now, these residents probably aren't gonna be going anywhere.

Speaker 1: (06:15)

Matt Hoffman is our K PS health reporter. Matt, thank you very much for

Speaker 3: (06:19)

Joining us. Thanks.