Days Officially Unemployed: 47
I leave my girlfriend's house and attempt to drive into downtown San Diego toward a well-known charity, which is hosting an orientation for volunteers tonight. I accidentally get on the freeway headed the wrong direction, north, and by the time I get off and meander through the streets of downtown, I'm almost late. Unlike La Casa Pobre in Fresno, the streets immediately surrounding the charity aren't filled with homeless people. There are a few, but there's no encampment to drive through before the gate. I think the reason for the absence of homeless people is the different nature of the two charities.
While the charity in Fresno feeds the homeless three meals a day, without question, and allows a limited number of drug and alcohol addicts to obtain residency to help them overcome their addictions, the San Diego charity provides semi-long term living quarters, focuses on getting the homeless off the streets, and only serves one public meal a day.
One of the coordinators walks us through the San Diego facility, which encompasses several very nice multi-story buildings in a one or two block radius. They house each group separately: families; single women; and single men. Each group has their own floor or more of rooms and, as I understand it, every person is afforded a two-year timeline to make it out on their own. There's a nice courtyard playground for the kids, along with a children's education center and daycare on the ground floor of the main building. Upstairs, in the other central building, there's an adult education center and computer labs. Everything is designed to give the residents full access to improving their situation until they can get on their own feet again. They serve the residents three meals a day, while the public homeless population is offered one lunchtime meal a day and free access to downstairs showers.
The residents live under strict rules and a point system, which are there to help them. Too many points and you're booted. Bring drugs in and you're gone. While the facilities are nice, especially compared to La Casa Pobre in Fresno, the coordinator explains that the living situation isn't easy, especially since you have four men living in each single males room. The residents sometimes have disagreements and fights, and they often tell on one another if someone's breaking the rules.
Across the street, beyond where the charity's founder lives, there's a large low-income apartment building that the charity also owns. The founder's main goal right now is to get more affordable housing in downtown, because, as the coordinator explains, it's really difficult for people to make it out on their own when they can't afford the high rents of San Diego. I never really understood the process and problem of gentrification, which took place with the Gas Lamp District's expansion and then the addition of the Padres' Petco Park downtown, but poor people have nowhere to live. Many of the old, affordable motels in the area were bulldozed with the arrival of the ballpark, and luxury condos took their places. The poor got pushed farther and farther out, making getting to work downtown more and more difficult.
Just like in Fresno, fraternizing with the residents or lunchtime homeless people is discouraged. The coordinator echoes what was said in Fresno, that this is not the place to find your next date, though it happens. And with the emphasis on self-reliance, the coordinator tells us we're not allowed to give anything at all to the residents. "If you're by the soda machines and someone is just a dime short for a soda, don't give it to them. If you're standing out in the area where people tend to smoke and someone tries to bum a cigarette from you, don't give it to them." The charity operates on the old adage that "it's better to give someone a fishing pole than a fish." Well, they give them fish to eat while they're teaching them to fish, I guess. In contrast, to continue the metaphor, La Casa Pobre, in Fresno, functions mostly to give out fish and only a handful of fishing poles, which would explain why they're are so many people encamped just outside the gates.
As I drive away from the San Diego charity just after 8 p.m., I go under the freeway underpass and both sides are completely crammed with homeless encampments of shopping carts and tarps. I guess the situation here isn't that different than in Fresno; the homeless encampments have just been pushed a little farther out to the periphery of a gentrified downtown.
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