The San Diego Sun recently interviewed the two candidates facing off in the general election for the District 3 City Council seat. Incumbent Stephen Whitburn and challenger Coleen Cusack were both asked similar questions about themselves, each other and the city’s top hot button issue of homelessness. Here’s Cusack’s story; Whitburn’s piece ran ran October 7.
Coleen Cusack suggested we meet at a picnic table near the entrance to Morley Field. She arrived wearing a long-sleeve tie-dye shirt and jeans. Central casting couldn’t have picked a better grassroots setting or clad her in more populist attire.
She works 20 days a month as a substitute school teacher. Today, she covered a kindergarten class. Cusack subs for all grade levels. Some time in the near future she might be called on to take over a room full of 12th graders.
The younger kids can tire you out (see Kindergarten Cop starring Arnold Schwarzenneger). “They’re refreshingly honest, though,” Cusack said. “They’re all just so genuine, they’ve got emotions and they’re expressing them. Whatever they’re feeling, they’re telling you right then and there. I live for that.”
Teaching is her morning/afternoon gig. Evenings are for pro bono work as a criminal defense attorney for homeless individuals. She says she handles “hundreds” of cases each year.
Cusack got into this line of work as a student at California Western School of Law. She graduated in 1992 and got hooked on the idea of defending people with little or no resources. In 2015, she created a clinic, through the law school, to help defend homeless defendants and train Cal Western students to do the same. (The clinic is closed, but Cusack continues to do heaps of pro bono work.)
Her caseload often involves people charged with misdemeanors who are sent to jail. One of her incarcerated clients stole some lunch meat from a supermarket. Another was charged with stealing a $1 cup of coffee. The day she went to defend the coffee thief, he didn’t show up in court.
“The judge was really mad at me, but I said, ‘Your honor, my client is in custody and it’s the Sheriff’s job to bring him to court,’” Cusack recalled.
She says the Sheriff finally brought the man to court a week later. “My client got credit for time served and was released,” Cusack said. “But he was punished by the cop for seven days. Over a one-dollar cup of coffee.”
Cusack has had clients who were arrested for disturbing the peace, for simply touching a trash can or for placing personal belongings on the ground in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“My clients are charged unconstitutionally with things that people who live in houses don’t get charged with,” she said. “I’ve walked through the encampments where they live on a regular basis. I have boots on the ground. I see how homeless people are dehumanized.”
Cusack is personally and profusely committed to homelessness issues. She’s running for city council to represent District 3 because she believes the mayor and her general election opponent, Stephen Whitburn, aren’t just doing the bare minimum for unsheltered people, they’re making things worse.
She objects to having a police department where some cops are paid to “Chase homeless people around, just to keep telling them to move, move, move, move, move. It’s a waste of money.”
Cusack said the city criminalizes homelessness, which goes against every study about best practices in this field.
“Criminalization makes homelessness worse,” she said. “It makes it more traumatic and causes it to last longer. There’s no study that says the opposite.”
Cusack says Whitburn likes to claim there are 60% fewer encampments in downtown San Diego (92101) since the city enacted a camping ban.
“But he won’t respond to the fact that for the last 29 months more people have become homeless than have gotten out of it,” Cusack said. “If he’s getting rid of encampments he’s just spreading homeless individuals farther out. It’s easier for social workers to serve people in encampments. And there’s safety in numbers.”
Whitburn and Cusack both agree that San Diego doesn’t have enough shelter beds for people living on the streets and the supply will soon decrease.
“This isn’t a surprise,” Cusack said. “We don’t have enough shelters, and there are some that we’ve known for two years that they were coming offline. How can they act like this is a surprise?”
She says throughout his term, every time Mayor Todd Gloria held a photo op for the opening of a small shelter, the reality was that it was replacing another shelter that was closing. “Everything is reactive,” Cusack said. “Everything is performative. Nothing is proactive. Nothing is effective.”
Why does Cusack refer to the mayor when she’s running for city council?
“I effectively feel like I’m running against Todd Gloria because everything that Whitburn does is in support of Todd Gloria,” she said. “Whitburn won’t push back against Todd Gloria. He won’t call him out. He and Todd are twins. If you don’t like Todd, and I’m not thrilled with his policies, then you don’t like Stephen. He hasn’t had any original ideas. All he’s done is what the mayor wanted him to do.”
Whitburn denies that claim. “I make my own decisions on policy,” he said. “…I vote on matters the way I see them.”
Gloria and Whitburn both support the proposal to build a 1,000-bed Mega Shelter at Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street. However, the mayor has not brought the proposal to a vote of the council. Detractors, including Cusack, say the facility would be too dense, is in an unsafe location and the contract for the shelter is lopsided in favor of the landowner.
To partially meet the need of other shelters closing by the end of the year, the city council voted this week to add 235 tents at the city’s two safe camping sites (at 20th and B, and a Balboa Park spot dubbed the O Lot).
Cusack has been one of the loudest opponents of the city’s safe camping sites. On Friday, October 4, she held a press conference to call attention to a rat infestation at the O Lot. Cusack produced a petition with 100 signatures she says are from O Lot residents who demanded the infestation be eliminated.
Rats were nesting in the tent bases and had also invaded the camp’s drinking water supply, Cusack said. During the press conference, several residents spoke about the site’s rat population. One claimed to have seen a rat inside the water supply. Two said the water made them ill.
“Such atrocious conditions would not be tolerated for a pet shelter,” said housing and homeless rights attorney Ann E. Menasche, who attended the press conference.
City of San Diego Media Services Coordinator Matt Hoffman, also in attendance, issued a statement saying this was an “isolated rodent situation” and that a “small, isolated group of rodents had been found near a drinking water dispenser.” He says the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency took “appropriate follow up action.”
“Claims that this tent camp is safe are false and misleading,” Cusack insists.
Whitburn admitted the two tent sites “are not the equivalent of housing,” but says Cusack is “a chronic naysayer who opposes everything and offers no realistic alternative solutions.”
Whitburn scoffs at one housing solution Cusack champions – converting short-term vacation rentals into city-managed housing for unsheltered people. “Coleen wants to go abracadabra with short-term rentals but that’s not going to happen,” Whitburn says. “Short-term rentals in homes are not going to be anyone’s income-restricted, affordable housing.”
While Cusack and Whitburn agree on very little regarding homelessness policy, they do have a commonality. Whoever wins the election will be the latest D3 council member who’s a member of the LGBTQ community. The streak dates back to 1994. Whitburn is gay. Cusack says she is bisexual and an early adopter of polyamory.
Cusack – who recently cut ties with her campaign manager on bad terms – seems to be very much a longshot to win the D3 seat. Whitburn beat Cusack in the four-person March primary, 52.39% to 20.95%. Both are Democrats, though Whitburn has locked up most of the party’s organizational endorsements. Cusack seemingly got a boost in the primary when she was endorsed by The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Cusack says Whitburn has the funding to do polling and says the fact he won’t reveal the results points to her doing better than expected. “The polling is internal to the campaign, and that’s where it’s going to stay,” Whitburn says. SDSun
California mail-in voting is underway. General Election day is November 5. For more information go to: VOTE SAN DIEGO.
