How state funds will help San Diego’s homeless outreach program

Good Morning, I’m John Carroll, in for Debbie Cruz….it’s Friday, October 6th.

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State funds will help San Diego hire more staff for its homeless outreach program.

More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….

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The Kaiser strike continues.

Kaiser officials say progress is being made in the negotiations and there have been tentative agreements reached in some areas.

But officials from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions say workers are awaiting a ‘quote’ meaningful response on key priorities including safe staffing, outsourcing and fair wages to reduce turnover.

Should a deal not be reached, the strike will continue until 6 a-m tomorrow.

Kaiser leadership says they’re committed to reaching a new agreement that addresses wages, benefits, retirement plans and professional development opportunities.

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Seven S-D-S-U fraternities have been placed on interim suspension.

University officials say the action was taken because of possible violations of the university's student organization code of conduct.

Under the suspension, the frats are required to put their organizational activities on hold until the investigations are complete.

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Vice president Kamala Harris was among the dignitaries who honored the late senator Dianne Feinstein in a memorial service yesterday in San Francisco.

The two worked together in the U-S senate for four years.

Harris remembered Feinstein as a trailblazer who delivered results for Californians.

“The women of America have come a long way. Our country has come a long way, and you helped move the ball forward and our nation salutes you, Dianne.” 

Feinstein was mayor and a county supervisor in San Francisco before serving for 30 years in the senate.

She died last week at 90 years old.

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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now. Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

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State funding has been secured for San Diego’s homeless outreach programs.

Reporter Melissa Mae has the details.

MM: Assemblymember Brian Maienschein secured $750,000 dollars of the state’s budget to expand the San Diego Housing Commission's Multidisciplinary Outreach Program. MM: There are currently over 50 outreach workers who go out into the community to help unsheltered residents. MM: Erica Meador is PATH’s associate director for outreach services and describes how this funding will be used. EM “It will allow us to add more staff members to our team that we currently have and we’ll be able to connect our population and the clients that we serve to services like behavioral health, housing, medical needs, direct care, substance abuse services.” MM: The secured funds support the Community Action Plan on Homelessness for the City of San Diego. Melissa Mae KPBS News.

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San Diego and the region’s investor-owned utility are celebrating the first year of a program designed to get rooftop solar to those who can’t afford it.

Here’s Environment reporter Erik Anderson with more.

San Diego Gas and Electric says shareholders are donating a million dollars a year to install photovoltaic panels on homes in some of the city’s under-resourced neighborhoods.   S-D-G-&-E’s Estela de Llanos is pleased the company is helping. “We’re celebrating the completion of the first year of the 10-year program. And we’ve completed 36 to date.” The program is part of the utility’s 80-million dollar franchise agreement with the city.  That deal gives S-D-G-and-E exclusive use of the city’s right of way to deliver gas and electric service.  But critics say the solar program is just greenwashing for a company that doesn’t prioritize equity or rooftop solar. Erik Anderson KPBS News.

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In other environment-related news… this week, N-P-R is spotlighting climate change solutions.

Reporter Katie Hyson looked at how a community garden in City Heights is healing a patch of land and the people who tend it.

Auto shops crowd the corner of University Avenue and 39th Street in City Heights. But if you turn down the alley behind a Valvoline oil change, you’ll find a once-abandoned lot blooming with life. The Revolutionary Grower’s Garden is run by the local Black Panther Party. We just planted some potatoes, and they started sprouting, and they look real nice. And flowers and squash and we got peppers, jalapeno peppers, and we have bell peppers, and we have eggplants and some herbs . . . That’s gardener Dayze Dream. They’re non-binary and have chosen that name. This garden has absolutely transformed my relationship with the Earth in, like, the most beautiful way. Community members care for the garden together and teach each other. Sometimes I come here, and then I learn something. And then, like, 20 minutes later, someone asks me a question, and it's the same thing that I just learned . . . We're really just trading information all the time. They eat what they grow, and say it tastes better than grocery store produce. It doesn’t travel by truck or sit in a refrigerator. Often, it’s straight from the ground to their mouths. We had, like, a watermelon growing, and we cut it open. We were so excited. We shared it with everyone. We just, like, slurped that up, and it was so good. If there's more than we can take home, then we just knock on the neighbor's doors and we just like, hey, do you want any squash or tomatoes? Dream imagines this knowledge spreading. Like it would be so beautiful if we had this garden, not just in every city, but on every block, to feed the community in that block. We're only using party members' chosen names in this story because they’re concerned about being targeted by law enforcement. They say knowing how to grow your own food is vital for neighborhoods like City Heights that are expected to be overburdened by climate change. Fiel, another gardener and a Black Panther Party member, explains. As climate change progresses, fruits and vegetables are going to become more expensive because especially in California and Southern California, they need more water, and we're just not going to have it. She says she can get a couple weeks of produce from the garden’s harvests, saving her money at the grocery store. Gardening, she says is, is – Protecting your right to have a healthy diet. The garden builds the neighborhood’s resilience to climate change in other ways, too. The plants absorb sun, helping lower temperatures that are commonly higher in lower-income communities of color like City Heights that have fewer trees and more asphalt. And unlike asphalt, the soil retains water and reduces runoff. Which may become increasingly necessary as San Diego experiences unusually heavy rains. And, Fiel says, working together in a garden helps build trust between neighbors. If you're constantly feeling like you're in competition with your neighbors or you have to defend yourself against people who live down the street from you, it doesn't enhance your quality of life. And the gardeners are not just making the neighborhood more resilient. They’re healing this plot of earth, and changing how they relate to the rest of it. Fiel again. So even though we have some really huge spiders and they're really scary, they're also very important to the garden. So you have to leave them alone and let them do their thing. So it teaches a lot of respect. They grow a variety of crops in each bed, unlike most big farms that grow one crop and deplete the soil. They avoid tilling, which releases carbon into the atmosphere. They compost and make natural insect repellants instead of using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. These practices contrast with large-scale food production, which is estimated to create a quarter of global carbon emissions. Coyote, a Panther Party member and gardener, says he’s noticed the garden becoming less predictable. There's less kind of stability and I think that's what you notice the most. Yeah. I can't ever be like well, last year in January this happened. It's like, well, every January is a new January. He says this garden alone won’t fix the climate crisis. But it’s something most people can do. This isn't going to be the thing that does it right. This is one small part, but it is a small part that you can engage in. The gardeners invite anyone to come learn how to plant seeds and grow a movement on their own block. Katie Hyson, KPBS News.

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Coming up.... A street in Barrio Logan will be renamed after the neighborhood’s priest, Father Brown. We’ll have that story and more, just after the break.

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The street outside Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Barrio Logan will be renamed tomorrow after Father Brown, the priest who served the neighborhood for 50 years and earned the nickname: El Padrecito Del Barrio… father of the neighborhood.

He was known to bless lowrider cars with holy water and bring mariachi bands into mass.

Church member Adela Garcia shares his story in her own words.

Oh Father Brown was, he was newly arrived to San Diego after having been in Mexico City for about five years. And I was working as a volunteer here at the church when he came to our parish. At first it was difficult because – it wasn't because he was not Mexican. It's just that he was very progressivE. He was not – when he arrived he arrived in tennis shorts. When I answered the door, he was in white tennis shorts. They had just come from a tennis match. And he said he was Father Brown. And I said, who? And then he said, Father Brown. And I didn't believe him because all of our priests always dressed in the black cassocks, and they were very traditional, and the church was much more conservative. Once you got to the point where you spoke with him, you could see the beauty, but it wasn't the outer beauty. You could see what was inside of him. He brought out the best in people, and he dealt with the worst that was happening in our community, and it never scared him. He always felt like there was a solution to it. And he joined forces with people that were working to better the community. You would have to know the history of this area. The freeway really tore the community in half, and thousands of homes were eliminated in the construction of Interstate 5. Here it was like we had our own little community. We even had a movie theater. We had a furniture store. And families that used to live side by side. All of a sudden, like ants that you pour water on and destroy their path? That's the way everybody scooted out. And there was a sense of depression, I think, at that time, because what's our identity now? And yet he came in and he just understood that there was a need for people to gather. We have the best neighborhood in all of San Diego. It is rich with love, with talent, and a lot of people just don't know what a wonderful community this is to live in. He did, and he was here in San Diego, almost in this area, for almost 50 years. He had a Mexican heart. He loved our culture. He knew more about our culture than I think anyone I had ever met. In Mexico, you always had the fiestas with the queen and her court, and he loved that. He said, ‘Oh, let's do that.’ And our dances were huge. He wasn't just someone that was in here praying. Of course he prayed, and he had tremendous faith, but he felt that faith needed to be put in action. And so what he would do is walk around, meet people, engage people, open the doors of the church so that it wasn't us and them. He said to me, Adela, when you meet someone, don't start with where you differ, start with where you're alike and build up. And you will find that whatever differences you have, you probably can come past them, because we're not really all that different. And he believed that his whole life, and that's the way he treated people. And he had people that were very wealthy that loved him. He had people that were very poor that loved him. He was this man who just had so much energy and love for people. You just wanted to be around him. He had this magic like I've never seen anyone. He could attract the older generation, the younger generation, and everyone in between. He just connected with everyone. He had a goodness about him that I just can't describe. I hope that when people see that street sign, that they think about his work and that they say, ‘What can I do to help? How can I make a difference?’ I get emotional thinking about it. I get emotional because I think that he deserved that. He deserved, for generations to come, to say, who was this man named Father Brown? And for them to not know that there's a street sign for him, but that there is the history of what he contributed to this church and our community and how many people's lives he touched.

TAG: The celebration will kick off at 11 a-m tomorrow, and include many of Brown's favorite things – food, oldies and lowriders.

All are welcome.

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The county Health and Human Services Agency this week put out a list of the top 10 baby names from last year.

Mateo and Olivia were the most popular names for newborns in 20-22.

Liam, Noah, Emma and Isabella also made the list.

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That’s it for the podcast today. This podcast is produced by KPBS Producer Emilyn Mohebbi and edited by KPBS Senior Producer Brooke Ruth. We’d like to thank KPBS editor Megan Burke for helping the podcast team this week. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. Join us again on Monday to start the week with the day’s top stories, and, we’ll hear a story about what it’s like to be a college student living in the U-S and going to school in Tijuana. I’m John Carroll. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.