City Action on Homeless Is Crucial : The council must summon the courage to provide housing throughout S.D.

Just two months ago, the San Diego City Council appeared ready to formally acknowledge that the plight of the city’s homeless had reached emergency proportions. But since then, proponents have led with their chins, choosing to focus the debate on the most controversial of options: a “tent city” managed by the homeless themselves and situated in Balboa Park.

Filtered through the emotional prism of a skeptical public, the unfair--but inevitable--image that emerged was of a Third World-style refugee camp run by the inmates and sprawling across prime parkland. Small wonder that residents in areas near proposed campgrounds--including one later recommended for Rose Canyon--are up in arms and council members are scurrying for the political hills.

Now the tent city concept isn’t the only thing in doubt. The council also seems to have lost the will to adopt the emergency ordinance. That can’t be allowed to happen, especially in a city that has shelter beds for only about a fifth of its estimated 7,000 homeless men, women and children.

On Monday, the City Council will consider the emergency ordinance again. We hope council members ratchet down the rhetoric and look at the facts. With winter fast approaching, reverting back to a piecemeal approach to the problem is unconscionable.

A formal declaration of the crisis--whether under City Charter powers or state law--allows the city to open or expand municipally operated facilities for the homeless without strict adherence to safety and health codes. That would open a legal umbrella under which the city could move forward with a series of humane projects that have nothing to do with tent cities.

The City Homeless Action Team--which includes business leaders, shelter providers, government representatives and the homeless themselves--has already drafted a menu of options that could open hundreds of beds for the homeless. The options include using federal emergency funds for motel vouchers, keeping the Neil Good Day Center open overnight and expanding emergency beds available at the Salvation Army’s downtown shelter.

These options are humane, but they have their downside, too. Only the voucher system would spread the solution citywide. The others continue the decades-old trend of dumping social-service programs within a few blocks of one another downtown.

Ultimately, the council must summon the courage to site new facilities elsewhere, despite the not-in-my-back-yard cries of affluent neighborhoods. Given the political panic that set in after the tent cities were proposed, we don’t expect to see that courage soon. But tomorrow the council should put aside the tent cities concept--at least for now--and move forward with more realistic options.