City Urged to House, Not Ticket, Homeless : Government: City manager asked to develop a shelter plan and declare a moratorium on fines.

The plight of San Diego’s homeless took a new turn Wednesday when city officials voted to ask the San Diego City Council to consider ways to house the homeless instead of ticketing them for sleeping in streets and doorways.

A subcommittee of the San Diego City Council passed a recommendation calling on the city manager to develop a plan for an emergency homeless shelter within 30 days that would include employment, community service and outreach programs.

The recommendation also directs the city manager’s office to place a moratorium on issuing misdemeanor illegal lodging citations to the homeless and to declare amnesty, which would invalidate all pending citations for the last 10 years.

The two-part plan, which must receive the City Council’s approval, follows a march and protest Tuesday through downtown San Diego and camp-out outside City Hall by about100 homeless people.

Larry Milligan, president of Habitat, a homeless activist group, and five speakers testified Wednesday and presented City Council members on the Public Service and Safety Committee with a petition containing 3,000 signatures.

“This is not just a question of illegal lodging and camping tickets,” Milligan said. “It’s a question of how the city of San Diego will choose to deal with the homeless situation--as a police issue or a social issue.”

Currently, San Diego has about 1,400 emergency shelter beds to accommodate an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 homeless people, according to the city manager’s office.

While city officials admit there is a shortage of shelter space, San Diego police have issued about 8,000 tickets to people caught lodging illegally in the past year and more than 20,000 warrants have been issued over the past five years.

Under a new policy made in December, San Diego police now only cite somebody for illegal lodging if they receive a complaint from a property owner. The policy change has resulted in a significant drop in the number of citations issued to the homeless in recent months, officials said.