Dear Neighbor,  

Mental health matters, but historically we've shied away from discussing the topic openly. Yet by talking honestly and openly about mental health and its impacts, we can destigmatize it, which will lead to better care, research and public policy. 

Behavioral health programs and funding are the purview of the State and County, but it is cities like ours that are on the frontlines of the mental health crisis, dealing with its impacts every single day

In 2022, San Diego first responders went to over 53,000 mental health crisis calls, spending over 130,000 hours of service time handling them. The number of calls and service time is equivalent to 36 first responders spending their entire shifts every single day for a year responding only to mental health calls. 

Given the resources cities put into helping people in distress, I and mayors from around the state are getting more involved in pushing for improvements to our broken behavioral health system. 

The California Big City Mayors Coalition, which I chair, sponsored conservatorship reform legislation, Senate Bill 43 authored by Sen. Susan Eggman, which would expand eligibility for conservatorship and help get people suffering from severe mental illness and drug addiction into care. 

The City is also ready to begin referring people into CARE Court next month. This is a new voluntary program for a small segment of the population, predominantly those with schizophrenia and similar psychotic disorders, that mandates the County to provide services. 

I am also leading a push for more mental health beds by supporting Governor Newsom’s bed bond to fund up to 10,000 new permanent mental health beds across the state. Right now, we are woefully under-resourced, particularly in drug treatment beds, and must have opportunities available to people when they’re ready to get help for addiction and turn their lives around.

By addressing our mental health crisis, we can make a huge difference in the lives of so many San Diegans. 

As always, it’s an honor to serve as your Mayor.

Sidewalk Vending Rules, Explained 

In 2019, a state law decriminalized sidewalk vending and mandated that cities develop a regulatory program that allows micro-entrepreneurs to operate. 

The City of San Diego’s sidewalk vending regulations, passed last year, allow vendors to do business but also seeks to protect our local parks, beaches and business districts from overcrowding and health and safety issues that can arise from vending activity. 

The law partially bans street vendors in places where they block pedestrian rights of way and institutes a moratorium on vending during the busy summer months in Balboa Park and our shoreline parks and beaches. 

The regulations are working and being enforced, but as is often the case with new legislation, the set of rules need to be refined now that we have seen it in action.

Councilmember Jennifer Campbell, in collaboration with my office, will be bringing forward changes to the sidewalk vending ordinance this fall to improve its clarity and enforceability. 

Some vendors have found and exploited the lack of clarity in the definition of vending and are claiming First Amendment protection for their sale of goods. We’re not talking about mom-and-pop vendors displaying art and handmade crafts, but vendors selling mass-produced products that cannot be stretched to fit the definition of free expression. 

The amendments that will be brought forward will ensure that there is no ambiguity on who is subject to this regulation under the Sidewalk Vending Ordinance. The amendments will also work to improve our enforcement efforts. 

The City will also be creating zones where people claiming freedom of expression or speech can legally operate, similar to how Balboa Park has regulated this kind of activity for years. 

These upcoming amendments will help provide the clarity needed to help our rangers enforce these new rules fairly and swiftly.

U.S. Mayors Meet to Share Policy Innovations 

The U.S. Conference of Mayors was in town, with more than 60 mayors from across the country converging in San Diego County to share and discuss city-level policies and programs that are working to help address some of the biggest issues facing American cities.

I am proud to report that City of San Diego officials were tapped to talk about how we’re leading the way on addressing homelessness, mental health issues and gun violence prevention.

San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit led a panel at the conference on how other cities can adopt ghost gun ordinances. I signed into law a ban on ghost guns in San Diego in 2021. The ban prohibits the possession, purchase, sale and transportation of non-serialized, unfinished gun frames, receivers and non-serialized firearms within our city.

I was asked to participate in a panel on homelessness solutions. I had the chance to share some of our innovative shelter strategy, with a focus on our success getting people out of encampments and into shelter – including new non-congregate options such as our Safe Sleeping site that are more appealing to some people than traditional shelters. I also shared our work advocating for mental health reforms and our pro-housing policies that incentivize building homes in every neighborhood of San Diego. 

I’m grateful to the U.S. Conference of Mayors organizers for choosing to have their leadership meeting in San Diego and for all the great work they're doing to keep the nation’s mayors engaged and informed. 

County Convenes Roundtable on Homelessness  

County Supervisor Chair Nora Vargas invited our region’s mayors and other local leaders to a roundtable discussion focused on collaborative approaches to addressing homelessness.

Our cities do not operate in silos, and what each city does – or doesn’t do – about homelessness affects neighboring cities.

For example, in 2022, the City of San Diego had the vast majority of the region's shelter beds – 85% -- but 57% of the region's homeless population became homeless in San Diego. Meanwhile, several cities in San Diego County lack a single shelter bed within their city limits, despite being home to people experiencing homelessness.

According to the 2023 Point-in-Time Count, the region saw a total increase of 22% in the number of people experiencing homelessness this year compared to 2022. Nearly every city saw an increase in their population of people experiencing homelessness. But while the cities of San Diego and El Cajon substantially increased shelter capacity in recent years in response to this increase, only three other cities have added any shelter beds. Five cities actually decreased shelter beds from fiscal year 2022 to 2023.

Eleven cities and regions have no shelter beds or comprehensive city-level homelessness response. 

The majority of the region’s mayors joined the County-led discussion, and we all left with a renewed commitment to working together on solutions to getting people housed. We all need to work to put up more detox beds, and we all must work closely together as CARE Court begins enrollment in coming weeks.

I want to give my thanks to Chair Vargas for her leadership in convening the regional players and for treating this issue with the seriousness it deserves. 

More on the Improvements to the Public Utilities Department  

Last week, I gave you a broad overview of the improvements happening at the City’s Public Utilities Department.

This week, I wanted to pull out some of the success stories we’ve seen since overhauling the department to improve customer service and billing issues.

Check out these areas of improvement:

• Between August 2022 to August 23, the average customer service call wait time went from one hour and 20 minutes to 35 minutes. While we are still working to get wait times much lower, that is a 56% decrease in wait times in just one year. 

• In March of this year, our Public Utilities Department launched new webform services that make it much easier and more efficient for customers to do things like ask questions or set up new service. We have received and resolved 13,000 webform requests so far and successfully brought down our new service backlog by 80%.

We’re nowhere near where we want to be, but we’ve made significant progress and will continue until the Public Utilities Department is providing the excellent customer service San Diegans expect and deserve.