Serving-SanDiego

Do you know where you’re going to lay down your head tonight? Thousands of homeless people in the city of San Diego run the risk of getting ticketed if they sleep on the streets. Business owners and residents say the homeless are nuisances; homeless advocates say they have a constitional right to sleep on the streets. - Full Focus

A lot of us have seen the problem, the homeless need a place to safely sleep but the local businesses have a right to maintain and protect their property and livelyhood. The defacto solution has been to let the homeless sleep on the streets after hours that businesses have closed (7pm) and be off the street by the start of the business day (5am). But if there is any trouble (drugs, fights, trash) the police will make you move and/or ticket you.

Now if you’ve never worked with the homeless, you might imagine spending a few nights in jail would be a welcome relief from the streets. You’d be wrong. Aside from the fact that the jail is a very hostile place, even the homeless want their freedom. For many, this is the problem. They want freedom from responsability, rules and submission to authority (don’t we all) but if you have a job, provide for your family, or own property, then you know that those things come with strings attached. But i digress…should we provide a place for the homelss to sleep (like the tent city) or should they be allowed to sleep anywhere they can?

To get off the streets, you have to have a desire to work for it. There are services that provide for the homeless but they have limited room or resources. To make good use of what they have they aften require the “clients” to take some good faith steps demonstrating their desire to follow through. nobody wants to see homeless people but you don’t want to turn away someone who honestly wants to change their situation because of someone who wants to squander their opportunity used up all the resources.

Full Focus also aired a television interview in November of 2004 on KPBS. It references a few services and links to websites but there are no transcripts or archived clips for you to watch. It’s good to see it discussed but there still seems to be a lot of rhetoric.

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