Homeless Camp Outside City Hall in Vigil : Group Wants Needs to Be Noticed by All

About 60 homeless people and their advocates launched a 24-hour vigil Monday to call attention to the lack of housing and other problems besetting those who live on the streets of San Diego.

Singing songs such as “We Shall Overcome” and “If I Had a Hammer,” the loose-knit Coalition for the Homeless marched from the Salvation Army parking lot at F Street and 8th Avenue to the downtown Community Concourse, where it planned to spend the night in the shadow of City Hall.

The sign-bearing group included children pushing shopping carts full of belongings, as well as elderly folks toting sleeping bags and backpacks.

“The problem has to be brought to the public’s view,” said James Reese, vice president of the coalition. “People see the homeless every day, but no one is going to make an effort to help them unless they know that the homeless want help. And that’s what we are trying to let people know.”

Demands Called Simple

The coalition’s demands are simple, said its president, Harry Snyder.

“City officials should make the old Navy Hospital in Balboa Park available to the homeless as a shelter, and help with rehabilitation programs for homeless people who are alcoholics, drug addicts and unemployed,” Snyder said.

According to the director of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless appointed by Mayor Maureen O’Connor, acquisition of the hospital is not realistic.

“This group is looking for a simple answer to a complex problem,” said Frank Landerville, adding that he has discussed the issue previously with coalition members. “They tend to move toward slogans rather than looking at the complexity of what causes and what could help resolve homelessness.”

Landerville also noted that City Atty. John Witt and the city manager’s office have made it clear that voter approval and a detailed plan would be necessary before the hospital could be used to house the homeless. At this point, the coalition has neither, Landerville said.

Snyder said he believes the public is behind the coalition’s idea and would endorse the group’s plan.

“How anyone could say we don’t have the support we need is beyond me,” Snyder said. “They (city officials) don’t believe we have the support because they don’t show up when we invite them to come out to speak at things like this. Most of them would rather pretend things are fine here in old San Diego.”

Task Force Leader Doesn’t Share Goal

Landerville, who declined to speak at the vigil because he does not share the coalition’s goal of housing a shelter at the hospital, said the task force was established primarily to pull together the dozens of private and public groups that work with the homeless day to day.

The task force and the coalition have not met formally. Landerville said he has met only with several individuals from the coalition, and he dismissed them as “a group of people who may be here today but gone tomorrow. They are simply people with a desire to help the homeless, but they are going about it the wrong way.”

The two groups disagree not only in methods to help ease the homeless situation but in their estimates of the number of homeless in San Diego.

Landerville said there are about 5,000 homeless people in the city, with 3,000 of those congregating in the downtown area, and room for about 950 a night in city shelters. Seventy percent of that figure, he said, is made up of single adults, and the rest are family members.

But Reese said a more realistic estimate is about 10,000 “and growing,” with missions and shelters able to house only 200 people a night.

“I have helped homeless people do things that they otherwise couldn’t do for themselves, so I know much more than some politician what their needs are,” Reese said.

Landerville said the coalition presents the idea that the homeless are mostly single, middle-aged males who are not seeking employment. But he noted that among the vigil participants were at least a dozen women, seven couples and at least three families with children, in addition to the 30 or so men who waited patiently as they were served refreshments.

“We cannot just give these people an address and believe that they will automatically get jobs,” Landerville said. “There’s much more to it than that, and there is no funding for it.”

Sylvester Scruggs, 20, of Nashville, Tenn., agreed: “I know that just giving me an address is not going to get me a job, and I believe most of us out here realize that. That’s why drug treatment programs, job counseling, clothing and things of that nature are also needed.

“There are times I just get fed up with this type of life style,” Scruggs said, “but right now it’s the only choice I have.”

Scruggs, who was in the military until he was “thrown out,” has been on the streets a little less than two months. People pass him without having the faintest idea of his situation, he said, because he takes advantages of the services available at city shelters.

“If I’m different besides my age, it’s because I’m clean and I’ve learned to deal with my situation until it gets better. I don’t take out my frustrations by tripping out on other people,” Scruggs said.

He says homelessness for him is only temporary. “I’m off the streets in about three weeks,” Scruggs said. “I have a few plans that seem to be falling in place, but, if they don’t, I’ll just face it when that time comes.”

As of Monday afternoon, the coalition said, it had collected more than 5,000 signatures on a petition requesting the city to use the Navy Hospital as a temporary shelter for the homeless. The petition will be presented to the City Council at a later date, said Norma Rossi, a spokeswoman for the group.

The coalition joins scores of arts and civic organizations that have petitioned the city for the use of the hospital buildings, which officials say will not stand up to a major earthquake. The 42 buildings were made expendable by construction of the new Navy Hospital in Florida Canyon, which opened early this year. In February, 1987, the city voted to tear down all but three of the old buildings and return the space to parkland. The demolition, which was scheduled for July 1, has been postponed indefinitely.

The vigil is set to end today at about 10 a.m., when coalition members will deliver a closing speech highlighted with the final tally of petition signatures, Rossi said. More protests will be planned as necessary, she said.

“You have to have that never-say-never spirit to make it on the streets, and that’s why so many of us are not going to give up the homeless cause,” said one volunteer who requested anonymity. “We’re not going to stop protesting and whatever else it takes until we get something done.”