VanDiver is a Navy veteran and businessman He serves on the board of the San Diego Convention Center and leads #AfghanEvac. He lives in Clairemont.
I often find myself frustrated by the seeming black-and-white conversation that takes place regarding the rights of our unhoused neighbors compared to the rights of those who are housed. It is disingenuous to assert that any one San Diegan has more of a right to a peaceful and safe existence than another. In fact, everyone who lives here deserves an opportunity to thrive.
Like many parents in San Diego, I often find myself attempting to explain “why” so many of our neighbors find themselves on the streets, or “why” one of our neighbors is experiencing clear distress and acting in a manner that is inappropriate in front of anyone, let alone small children.
The fact is that we are dealing with the toughest domestic public policy challenge of our time, and it is important to understand how we got to where we are today.
A bad bet on trickle-down economics leading to outrageous income inequality, the shuttering of institutions for mental health and the lack of community based mental health investments stemming from that, and several generations of not building anywhere near enough housing has created a perfect storm that has ravaged our city, our state and our country. We deserve better.
California is one of the most progressive states in the country — a fact that many of us flaunt to other states with conservative leadership. Over the last handful of years, our state has put its money where its mouth is, investing in communities with forward-looking investments to help localities, but it hasn’t been enough.
As a lifelong Democrat, I believe strongly that it is not only possible but incumbent upon us to demonstrate that our policies can both value human dignity and address our housing shortages.
We can recognize that there is nothing progressive about leaving our neighbors on the streets languishing in squalor.
We can treat with dignity and respect those San Diegans who are experiencing homelessness.
We can protect innocent children and their concerned parents from the trauma of an acute mental health episode.
We can house a person returning to freedom following time as a system-involved individual.
We can build the homes that are necessary to San Diego’s economy and growing population.
We can do these things simultaneously because this is not, nor has it ever been, a zero sum game, just as it is not a problem that sprang out of the ground the day that any specific elected official was sworn in. To diminish the facts to sad sound bites does nothing for us or to solve the problem at hand.
Some say that the primary cause of homelessness is related to mental health. The data says otherwise, but certainly the most visible and acute cases of homelessness that San Diegans see often exhibit symptoms that indicate a mental health crisis. That people who are chronically unhoused are experiencing a crisis shouldn’t be surprising, and it should not be a cause for derision. Rather it should be a call for empathy.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act less than a month before he was assassinated. Seventeen years later, President Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act. Both pieces of legislation were meant to create a safety net for Americans unable to get the mental health services they sorely needed without local facilities available to them.
In 1967, when he was governor of the Golden State, Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, ending the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will or for indefinite periods of time. The year after this law went into effect, the number of mentally ill Californians entering the justice system doubled.
After defeating President Carter in the 1980 election, President Reagan repealed the Mental Health Systems Act in his first Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Repealing this pushed the responsibility for patients struggling with mental illness back to the states.
Today, there is no place for Californians who cannot care for themselves and don’t have family able or willing to care for them, so they end up in jail or on the streets. But that is a minuscule part of the homelessness problem.
The truth is that the primary cause of homelessness is the simplest answer possible: a lack of housing. California has been experiencing a housing shortage since the 1970s and that shortage has caused housing prices in California to skyrocket.
There are three primary causes for the housing shortage: density restrictions, environmental concerns and community involvement in the development process. And there is one place where all three of those factors combine and create the nightmare we see today: the abuse of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), also signed by Ronald Reagan.
CEQA was meant to ensure all state and local agencies gave consideration to protecting California’s environment by mandating that projects not be approved if there are feasible and environmentally superior mitigation measures or alternatives.
This sounds like a great idea in theory, but in practice this legislation has been used as a Trojan horse to prevent housing from being built, under the disguise of environmental activism. That’s why every California governor after Reagan — both Democrat and Republican — has recommended its reform. Routinely, those weaponizing CEQA have no history of environmental activism and often seem more concerned about an obstructed view or minor inconveniences.
Imagine believing that you have an inherent right to no new neighbors while residing in the eighth-largest city in the country?
Unfortunately, the California Legislature hasn’t found the will to act to replace CEQA.
On top of CEQA, our tax structures (Proposition 13), construction costs, labor costs and egregiously slow bureaucratic processes add to the problems faced by those who would like to build housing and put down roots in California.
It’s the lack of structural for mental health, coupled with an acute housing shortage, both of which can be traced back more than half a century, that have put us where we are today.
Surely many will point fingers at Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, or whichever elected official is most convenient for them to blame, but it is unequivocally true that they are working hard to turn the tide. Just as this problem did not occur overnight, it will not be solved overnight. Anyone who says they have found the silver bullet or a quick solution to this crisis is being untruthful. This crisis has been three generations in the making and will require significant time, investment and political will to turn it around.
Like a home, policies need to be updated from time to time. Californians need to see state, local and federal leaders working together, taking drastic action to replace CEQA and build the housing we need for the world’s fifth-largest economy to meet the demand for growth. Cities need to take action as well and that’s why I am ive of the policy proposal announced by Mayor Gloria and Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, provided the questions identified at the most recent Land Use and Housing Committee are adequately clarified.
It is unreasonable for anyone to believe that a crisis that has been built over nearly 60 years will be solved by any single leader or level of government. We need our elected representatives, and their appointed officials, at all levels to make the hard decisions necessary to make California a place where all families can thrive again.
And we need them to do it now.
