SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - There's a new push to try to discourage people from living on the streets of downtown San Diego.
Tuesday morning, San Diego Police were in the East Village asking the homeless to take down their tents during the day. They can put them back up to sleep at night, but they must come down at 6 a.m. daily.
Michael McConnell, a longtime advocate for the homeless, says the move accomplishes nothing.
"What I saw today is the police going around and just telling people to put their tents down. These folks had tents up on the sidewalk, and the police were just telling them to put them down. They can stay there, but for whatever reason, they said the mayor doesn’t want the tents up. I don’t know what it accomplished, but that seems like the new policy," said McConnell.
According to a spokesman with the San Diego Police Department, the policy is not new and was used in 2017 during the Hepatitis A outbreak.
"Given the recent rise in encampments across the city and the risk they pose to health and safety, the City will resume asking individuals to take down their structures. The goal is to clear public rights of way, ensure no health and safety hazards can accumulate over time, and ultimately, encourage folks to accept shelter and services."
If people refuse to flatten their tents, they may face enforcement.
"We have a record number of people dying on the streets. We have a record number of people living on the sidewalks downtown. It's all bad news for Mayor Gloria on homelessness, and unfortunately, bad news for him on homelessness means even worse news for the people out here cause they’re the ones suffering the crisis. Making people take down their tents isn’t really going to help anything," said McConnell.
Ruben Reyes lives in an apartment in the East Village. He says the area isn't safe or sanitary.
"They give them the shelter, but they want to do what they want to do, they want to do drugs," said Reyes.
McConnell disagrees. He says the vast majority will accept help when good options are offered.
"We need more options. We need more smaller shelters. We need hotel rooms for seniors suffering medical issues, and I think what would help is some safe campgrounds," said McConnell.
One woman who has been living in a shelter downtown says dismantling the tents is making things look even worse.
"It's an eyesore. It’s more of an eyesore than the tents, because now everybody is outside, and you can see what everyone is doing," said the woman who didn't want to give her name.
McConnell says the most recent count shows at least 1,600 people are living on the streets of downtown and roughly twenty to thirty shelter beds available on an average day.
"Just slapping band-aids on it, moving people from one sidewalk to another is what has got us in this mess," said McConnell.
