San Diego’s Unsafe Tenting Ordinance Goes into Impact, Enforcement to Start Monday

San Diego’s lately handed Unsafe Tenting Ordinance goes into impact Sunday, with police starting enforcement on Monday.

The ordinance, handed June 27 and signed into regulation by Mayor Todd Gloria on June 29, prohibits tent encampments in all public areas all through town if shelter beds can be found.

The measure, launched by Metropolis Councilman Stephen Whitburn, additionally bans tent encampments always in sure delicate areas — parks, canyons and close to colleges, transit stations and homeless shelters — no matter shelter capability.

Metropolis Council handed the controversial ordinance 5-4, with Gloria and Whitburn being robust advocates. Critics say it criminalizes homelessness and gained’t remedy the higher causes of the social downside.

Underneath an modification by Councilwoman Marni Von Wilpert, the ordinance wouldn’t take impact till 30 days after the primary protected sleeping lot was opened on twentieth and B streets, to permit non-law enforcement social employees to be the primary contact with homeless folks.

In line with town, “training, outreach and enforcement will start instantly,” after the regulation goes into impact.

How that shall be enforced stays considerably murky. Officers within the SDPD’s Neighborhood Policing Division have been skilled in a progressive enforcement mannequin and can “proceed to offer training and outreach to homeless residents concerning the ordinance,” a spokesperson from Whitburn’s workplace mentioned.

Gloria has intimated that enforcement will start closest to colleges and shelters and develop outward.

With metropolis taxpayers funding greater than $200 million to offer homelessness providers, “it’s proper and acceptable for us to set the expectation that folks experiencing homelessness should avail themselves of the providers we’re offering,” Gloria mentioned. “Enforcement of the ordinance will coincide with bringing on-line a whole lot extra shelter alternatives by our Protected Sleeping program and my pursuit of measures to chop bureaucratic crimson tape to hurry our homelessness response.”

Those that voted no on the ordinance have been council President Sean Elo-Rivera and his colleagues Kent Lee, Monica Montgomery Steppe and Vivian Moreno. The 4 additionally voted in opposition to the ordinance on its first studying June 13.

Metropolis Information Service contributed to this text.