Dec. 30 marked the one-year anniversary of our Facebook community group, Escondido Fights Illegal Fireworks: Coco’s Crusade. While awareness has increased, illegal fireworks continue unchecked. On Christmas Eve, our neighborhood was again bombarded. Our dog was shaking uncontrollably and had to be sedated — no family should have to medicate a pet to survive a holiday. This is not a minor inconvenience. Across the city, parents struggled to get children to sleep, residents with PTSD experienced severe distress and workers were left exhausted. These are deliberate, illegal acts that disrupt entire neighborhoods.

Other cities have taken decisive action by using drones and deploying officers on key nights. While Escondido’s mayor and council say they are listening, current measures lack urgency and enforcement. Families are fleeing town or sitting in cars for hours simply to find peace. Illegal fireworks violate noise ordinances and can constitute animal cruelty. Strong, immediate enforcement is required.

— Heather Middleton, Escondido

For years, asking for shelter in the city of San Diego has often been a first-come, first-serve process.

Everyone deserves a safe place to sleep, the thinking goes, so anyone living outside should have a shot.

But as the region’s overwhelmed shelter system continues to reject staggering numbers of requests, some leaders are considering overhauling that approach by creating a priority list based on vulnerability.

“Do we need to look at how we prioritize differently?” Lisa Jones, president and CEO of the San Diego Housing Commission, asked during a board meeting in December. “Maybe we have to look at our most vulnerable that are on our streets and think about it from that perspective.”

Local city-funded shelters have long been at or near capacity, with the pressure becoming particularly intense in recent months.

In November, San Diego received 2,442 requests for a bed, according to Casey Snell, a senior vice president at the housing commission. Only 199 of those led to someone getting a spot. That’s a success rate of around 8%.

The main reasons most requests failed were familiar ones: There just weren’t spots available.

The bigger picture is not much better. Since July, people have asked for shelter 12,275 times. A little more than 1,200 succeeded, meaning about 9 out of every 10 requests failed. “What happens with credibility and effectiveness when people repeatedly get a negative answer?” Housing Commissioner Ryan Clumpner asked during the same meeting. “Do they keep requesting, or do people, the more times they hear ‘no,’ begin becoming more resistant?”

Some residents are certainly asking more than once. November’s 2,442 beds requests were collectively made by 868 separate households, officials said. That’s an average of about 3 asks per individual.

‘It makes sense to me’

The idea of trying to rank those requests appears to have at least some supporters within both the service world and the homeless population.

Bob McElroy, CEO of the nonprofit Alpha Project, said in an interview that using vulnerability lists would be a return to how shelters operated decades ago. “I’ve been irritated all these years when they turned away from it,” he noted. Disabled residents, older adults, those who’ve been outside the longest — McElroy believes it’s only fair to give them first dibs.

That’s roughly the process already in place at Father Joe’s Villages, at least when it comes to beds relying on private, not government, funding. The stricter criteria applies to hundreds of spots in the nonprofit’s family, sober-living and recuperative care programs.

“We look at, for instance, is a person pregnant?” said Deacon Jim Vargas, Father Joe’s president and CEO. “If they have very small children, or if they’ve given birth recently, they’re considered more vulnerable.”

Gustavo Prado, a 52-year-old who’s been homeless for the last two years, agreed with the general concept. “It makes sense to me,” he said while standing on a downtown San Diego sidewalk.

Prado added that he’d been unable to get into a local shelter program. Speaking a few days before Christmas, he was trying to plan for the coming rain. “I gotta get a tarp or something.”

Shelters do sometimes focus on specific populations. There’s a program downtown, for example, for women and children, and another for young adults. But guidelines known as the Continuum of Care Community Standards, which help dictate who’s allowed in, don’t have prioritization criteria.

In response to a request for comment about changing the status quo, city spokesperson Matt Hoffman wrote in an email that “staff are always open to evaluating new tools to better serve those in need.”

Leaders will likely discuss the possibility of creating a priority list at another public meeting before a specific proposal is drawn up.

More requests

One factor potentially driving the surge in demand is San Diego’s decision to expand encampment sweeps.

In July, the city signed an agreement with the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, to get access to land that would normally be under state jurisdiction. Since then, many areas near freeways have been cleared of tents and dozens of individuals did receive some form of shelter. A few even made it into a permanent housing.

Yet they appear to be in the minority.

Housing commission officials have so far declined to blame the Caltrans agreement for the increase in requests, saying mainly that they’ll continue studying this trend. They did, however, note a few other factors at play.

For one, the city may be getting better at fielding requests for shelter. On the same day local crews got access to Caltrans property, San Diego opened a homelessness resource center in the downtown library. That office, known as The Hub, coordinates with the help line 211 to make it easier for people to ask for aid. “It’s actually streamlining our referral process, which is another reason you see a big jump,” added Snell, the vice president.

In addition, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office continues to roll out a phone app that lets outreach workers look for shelter beds in the same way a tourist might search for hotel rooms. While it used to take hours to determine whether facilities had any openings, officials have said this program can flag vacancies within minutes.

Eleven members of Point Loma High School sports are among the All-CIF honorees announced recently in the San Diego Section, including a Coach of the Year.

Here are the Pointers selected:

Football

First team

Romeo Carter, wide receiver, senior

Mateo Correa, linebacker, senior

Second team

Brandon Bartocci, defensive line, senior

Owen Ice, defensive back, senior

Teams are based on a vote of media members and the Coaches Advisory Committee.

Girls cross country

Coach of the Year

Keith DeLong

DeLong guided Point Loma’s girls team to its best finish in school history this past season, placing second at the CIF Division III State Championships after winning the San Diego Section Division III title.

First team

Isabella Ramos, senior

Second team

Kelly McIntire, junior

Nicole Witt, senior

Sara Geiszler, senior

Teams are based on finishes at the San Diego Section championships.

Boys cross country

Second team

Ethan Levine, senior

Teams are based on finishes at the San Diego Section championships.

Girls tennis

First team

Noel Allen, senior

Teams are chosen based on finishes in the San Diego Section individual championships.

— The San Diego Union-Tribune contributed to this report.