Earlier this year, Mayor Todd Gloria chose one of his biggest platforms to unveil his administration’s latest initiative to solve homelessness.
"Tonight, I’m announcing a philanthropic campaign to help the city carry out our ambitious plans to end our homelessness crisis,” Gloria said at his State of the City address in January, as the name of the new initiative appeared on a giant screen behind him. "Called San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness, this campaign already has commitments for a quarter of a million dollars."
In the following weeks, the city laid out a bold plan involving everyone from regular residents to San Diego’s largest philanthropic organizations. City leaders vowed to turn that initial $250,000 into $370 million in donations by the end of 2024, setting the stage for more robust prevention efforts and the building of a 400-unit affordable housing high-rise downtown.
"This initiative aims not just to manage, but to resolve the homelessness crisis in San Diego,” the city stated on its website. The city’s top bureaucrat even floated the idea that the initiative — if successful — could help replace the city department focused on homelessness.
Nearly a year in, however, the city has tempered this lofty vision after falling woefully short of its initial goals. San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness has raised only $1.3 million — a tiny fraction of its target for 2024. The initiative’s lone expenditure so far did nothing to address the root causes of homelessness. It spent $2,400 on t-shirts for a volunteer cleanup event downtown in July.
Meanwhile, the city’s 10-member advisory board that’s supposed to help guide San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness remains only partially filled and has yet to hold a meeting.
The revelations come on the heels of a state audit earlier this year that found San Diego’s homeless services lack accountability.
Rachel Laing, a spokesperson for Gloria, declined or did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with the mayor.
"While we continue to raise funds, at the moment, the administration’s focus has been squarely on the urgent task of expanding shelter and programs," Laing said in an email.
Eric Dargan, San Diego’s chief operating officer, is overseeing the initiative for the city. He had high expectations at the outset.
"I’m looking for some billionaires who would like to leave their legacy in this city," Dargan told the San Diego Union-Tribune in March. "But if I can get 1.4 million people to give me $300 each, I’m good."
That rush of donations didn’t materialize. In an interview late last month, Dargan said the city still stands behind the initiative despite its lack of impact so far.
"I don't consider it falling short," he said. "There's no timeframe, there's no deadline. This is just us, as a community of people, working together."
But now he’s offering a more modest measure of success than the original goal of resolving homelessness.
"If we're able to assist one person, then this initiative is a success," Dargan said.
Experts and advocates who specialize homelessness response and prevention criticized the initiative as unrealistic, unfocused and a potential distraction from better-established efforts in the region.
"It just doesn't add up," said Jennifer Mosley, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies the intersection of nonprofits, philanthropy, government and homelessness.
An effort on this scale, she argued, needs a detailed plan, an organized structure and a convincing message to donors — all of which are lacking.
"Why should people give to an initiative where it's not clear who's going to be making the decisions on where the money is being spent (or) what it's going to be spent on?" she said. "It's just not surprising to me at all that people aren't really interested."
Bold promises, loose structure
The city partnered with the San Diego Foundation in January to launch San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness.
The two entities entered into an agreement that authorizes the foundation to receive and manage donations. The money is intended to "address homelessness in San Diego with emphasis on Prevention, Shelter, Exit and Housing," according to the agreement. There is no required timeline of when the money must be spent.
The agreement gives Dargan the authority to advise how the money should be used, with the foundation having final approval. But there’s been little additional infrastructure built up around the initiative.
In response to an interview request, the San Diego Foundation directed KPBS to the city. Meanwhile, Dargan at times distanced the city from the initiative, saying no city department or city employees are dedicated to it.
"The city is not focusing its energy" on the initiative, he said in an interview. "It's a collaborative initiative to bring together the entire community to address this homeless (issue), versus it being just the city of San Diego."
So far, the call to action has been met with a tepid response from would-be donors.
Of the $1.3 million raised so far, $1 million came from an internal transfer within the San Diego Foundation. Other top contributors include:
- Anonymous Donor — $75,000
- The Conrad Prebys Foundation — $50,000
- Cushman Foundation — $50,000
- Brutten Family Foundation — $50,000
- Sycuan Citizens for Good Government PAC — $25,000
- Ace Parking — $10,000
- R & V Management LP Holding — $10,000
A number of these donations were behested payments made at the request of the mayor. City spokesperson Nicole Darling did not disclose the names of small-dollar donors.
Dargan remains confident that the city can still convince San Diego residents to chip in.
"You'd be amazed how many people in the city are not doing anything" to help address homelessness, he said.
Rick Gentry, former CEO of the San Diego Housing Commission, said there’s a role for nonprofits, philanthropists and the private sector in the city’s homelessness response. But donors are often loathe to give money to an "amorphous" effort like San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness.
"It is a worthy aspiration, but not terribly practical and probably not achievable," Gentry said. "I think there's a great need for planning, coordination, focus and partnership … You don't just set out a goal and expect people to follow you."
Goals and commitments unrealized
It didn’t take long for the city to quietly back away from this year’s $370 million fundraising goal.
The city published an overview of the initiative in January that laid out a broad agenda filled with punchy phrases (e.g., "This is not a committee, but a commitment").
The document described four "pillars" for addressing homelessness: prevention, shelter, exit and housing. Each had a target dollar amount based on rough math of how many people the initiative aimed to assist.
By March, according to webpage captures in the Internet Archive, the city scrubbed the $370 million goal from the overview document (you can find the original version here and the edited version here). A document currently on the initiative’s webpage contains a description of the four pillars without the monetary goal.
In response to a request for comment, city spokesperson Matthew Hoffman did not address why the fundraising goal disappeared.
The city has left other commitments unfulfilled as well.
Dargan told Voice of San Diego in January that the city would post details about the initiative’s investments online. To date, this information has not been published on any city website.
"You can blame me for just being slow to making things happen," Dargan said.
He also committed to appointing a 10-member advisory board to help determine how the money should be spent. So far, Dargan has confirmed only five members and declined to share their names. He said the advisory board has yet to meet.
The city also initially committed to "conduct(ing) regular review sessions to discuss progress and identify solutions." When asked if any review sessions had taken place, Dargan was unaware of the obligation. No review sessions have been held.
"It's bad governance," said Jessie Schmitte, state policy manager with the advocacy group Alliance San Diego. "There's a real issue with the lack of transparency."
T-shirts and a trash pickup
With no advisory board and no formal review of the initiative’s priorities, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the initiative has spent little money so far. Still, the lone expenditure raises questions.
San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness spent $2,400 to purchase t-shirts for the July downtown cleanup event.
When asked why none of the money has been spent directly on homelessness prevention and response, Dargan said he’s looking into those efforts.
"Doing $2,400 on a cleanup to get volunteers to come and be active downtown and understand where a lot of trash is coming from — which is coming from the homeless community — that's a small effort," he said. "But to give a larger sum of money — whether it's 50,000, 100,000, 200,000, a million, whatever — I think that needs a lot more involvement, a lot more scrutiny."
Gloria touted the cleanup event on his social media. The pictures show one of the main beneficiaries of the cleanup was an Ace Parking lot.
A month earlier, Ace Parking had contributed $10,000 to San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness at the behest of Gloria.
"The root cause of trash in the downtown area is homelessness," said Keith Jones, owner and managing partner of Ace Parking, in a press release for the cleanup. "This event should bring more attention to the core of the problem."
The press release described Jones as "a key leader" of San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness.
Jones told KPBS that he personally participated in the cleanup with his 8-year-old son and donated parking to volunteers. With Ace Parking locations scattered throughout downtown, he said he isn’t surprised some of the cleanup occurred at one of his lots.
"We need to take back our community and make San Diego America’s finest city once again," Jones said in an email. "I thought of (the $10,000 donation) as a nonpolitical, nonconfrontational and pro-community effort."
However, Jones said he expected more from San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness when he made his donation.
"It hasn’t gotten the traction that I had envisioned," he said. "I had hoped that the city was going to be getting behind this and this was going to be the big cause (to solve homelessness)."
City sticking with initiative
Despite the initiative raising a small fraction of its original goal, Dargan made clear that the city will stick with San Diegans Together Tackling Homelessness.
"We don't say, 'Well, it was a failure, let's just quit and move on,'" he said.
He said the initiative will be focused on homelessness prevention and helping college students experiencing housing instability, though he did not provide further details.
"So stay tuned," he said. "I mean, we’re just getting started this year and once again, we're not on the clock, there's no deadline."
But advocates for the homeless say time is of the essence. More than 600 homeless people died in San Diego County last year, up from about 150 deaths a decade ago, according to Voice of San Diego. Meanwhile, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the county continues to rise.
Homelessness experts and advocates said the city should instead invest its energy and resources into existing efforts to resolve homelessness.
Schmitte with Alliance San Diego said the city should focus on the detailed community action plan the City Council unanimously accepted in 2019, which laid out specific short and long-term goals. Alliance San Diego claims the city has strayed from the plan in recent years.
Gentry, the former CEO of the San Diego Housing Commission, said the city should prioritize working with established nonprofits that — while lacking the flashiness of a newly-announced initiative — have a proven track record. Gentry pointed to organizations that work with vulnerable seniors, such as Meals on Wheels San Diego County (where he sits on the board of trustees) and Serving Seniors.
Mosley, the University of Chicago professor, encouraged the city to terminate the initiative and instead focus on building a stronger partnership with the San Diego Regional Taskforce on Homelessness.
"I don't think that this sounds like a very successful initiative," she said. "I think that the proof is already there in terms of the low amount of money that they've raised, the low amount of money they've give out and the fact that they don't seem to have built any infrastructure around it.”