San Diego’s captain-less homelessness infrastructure was among myriad vexing problems rehashed at a recent high-level panel discussion held July 11 at UC San Diego’s Park & Market facility in East Village.
Shelter proposals, funding sources, and police enforcement were also on the agenda for the “Burnham Community Dialogue: Addressing Homelessness in San Diego.”
Asked about getting politicians, service providers and concerned parties all on the same page, panelists indicated that San Diego’s overall effort lacks coordination, and that no one person is in charge.
In contrast, Houston is generally considered a success story in this arena. Homelessness is down 63% in the greater Houston area, and more than 30,000 people have been housed over the past decade.
Step One in Houston was convincing dozens of unconnected agencies, all trying to do everything, to join forces under a single umbrella organization: The Way Home, run by the Houston Coalition for the Homeless, according to CBS News.
One Burnham Community Dialogue panelist was Eric Dargan, Chief Operating Officer of the City of San Diego. He’s been on the job in San Diego for less than two years. Previously, Dargan served for two decades as Houston’s COO.
During the presentation, it was Dargan who pointed out that one person coordinates all sectors of homelessness in Houston. He said that enables groups to share knowledge of great things being done in silos.
“It really doesn’t matter who the point person is,” Dargan said in an interview after the panel discussion. “It could be any individual. In Houston it was one employee who works for the city. But it could have been anyone.”
After he was elected in 2020, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria hired Hafsa Kaka to head the city’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department. She stayed for less than two years before leaving to becoming a senior advisor on homelessness in Governor Gavin Newsom’s office.
Sarah Jarman replaced Kaka in Gloria’s administration.
Panelist Tamera Kohler is CEO of San Diego’s Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
“The system works but it is over taxed,” said Kohler, noting that for the past two years, every 10 San Diegans who escape the streets are replaced by 16 others who fall into homelessness.
On the overall functionality of San Diego’s efforts, Kohler said: “We are terrible at communication and at knowing when communication has broken down.”
Another panelist, Josh Callery-Coyne, VP of Policy & Civic Engagement at the Downtown San Diego Partnership, said the city falls down in communicating positive actions to the public.
“We need a greater level of collaboration,” Coyne said. “We need to collectively describe what we are doing.”
In his relatively short tenure in the mayor’s administration, Dargan says he has not seen an effort to duplicate Houston’s plan of homelessness leadership spearheaded by one person.
“I have not seen that effort now but I’m not saying that can’t happen in the future,” Dargan said. “…Will there be one to rise? Maybe, maybe not.”
Dargen didn’t think a city’s mayor should necessarily be the leader on homelessness. He also had a unique assessment of who owns the issue.
“I will always say this is not a government issue,” Dargan said. “This is a community issue. I think the community should get together and decide who is going to lead this effort, whether that person is working for the city or working for the Regional Task Force or working for the County. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that everyone’s at the table.”
Another panelist, Drew Moser, is CEO of the nonprofit Lucky Duck Foundation. Moser told The Sun it is indeed challenging to centralize all factions involved in homelessness.
That is not to say there shouldn’t be one ‘leader’ on homelessness,” Moser said. “But philanthropic resources pale in comparison to government resources. And the ability to coordinate all sources of government funding would certainly drive meaningfully stronger collaboration and results across the region.” SDSun
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