SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – The issue and topic of homelessness and how to address it have been going on for years. It’s also been a talking point of Mayor Todd Gloria’s State of the City for years as well.
“This issue is urgent. It is complex, and it demands action. “And the results of our efforts are becoming clearer,” Gloria said on Thursday. “You can see it, and the data confirms it. Together we are expanding shelter, strengthening outreach, creating real pathways off the streets, and we've done it by insisting on a simple truth: a sidewalk is not a home.”
While some have gotten off the streets, many have set up their encampments along the highways of Downtown San Diego.
Gloria highlighted the pilot partnership that started last July with the State and City to clear homeless encampments off the highway.
“Since then, we've been able to remove over 320 encampments, which has resulted in over 200 tons of waste removed, and then with that, though we do offer services before, during, and even after if they want them,” Franklin Coopersmith of the City of San Diego’s Environmental Services Department said. “Of which, we've gotten 95 people into a city shelter or service option, and of those, we've actually gotten 8 people into a permanent housing option.”
Gloria said he’d like to expand the program moving forward.
“I want to do more because this agreement with CalTrans has proven so successful. I am urging state leaders to expand it and allow city crews to cover more areas next to freeways where we know tent encampments exist,” Gloria said
ABC 10News spoke with some local non-profits about how they view the homelessness crisis at the moment.
“I think there's a lot of activity. I think there's a desire on the City's behalf to make progress around homelessness,” Drew Moser, Executive Director of Lucky Duck Foundation, said.
“That the crisis still remains, right? The fact remains that we have many unsheltered individuals on any given night on the streets,” Deacon Jim Vargas, President & CEO of Father Joe’s Villages, said.
Some had some questions about the progress.
“I think the mayor said that they had increased shelter capacity. Our question would be, where did that happen?”
The City’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department told ABC 10News it added two shelters in 2025 - one that has 43 beds (Safe Shelter for Transition-Age Youth (Safe STAY)) and another with 50 beds at the moment but can be increased to a capacity of 210 (Rachel’s Promise Shelter).
It also opened the H Barracks Safe Parking lot, and the Safe Sleeping site O Lot expansion of 235 more tents in late 2024 bled into early 2025.
“Those are, I mean, individual tents without heating or air conditioning or some of the many other benefits that exist at a bridge shelter or transitional housing,” Moser said.
“We also recognize that there are more seniors who are falling onto the streets, more behavioral health issues that we're seeing on the mental health side and the detox side,” Vargas said.
Gloria did acknowledge the need for mental health and detox resources in his State of the City.
“We need more treatment capacity, more psychiatric care beds, more detox, and long-term recovery options. We need faster pathways from the street and into care,” Gloria said.
