San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria reacts to 22% year-to-year increase in homelessness

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The latest point in time count of San Diego’s homeless population showed a significant increase.

During a news conference at City Hall Thursday morning, Mayor Todd Gloria offered his reaction to that count. The data looks at the number of people living on the streets and those who are in shelters.

There was a 22% increase in homelessness in the San Diego region compared to the homeless count from June 2022. This year, the total was 10,264, while last year the total was 8,427.

Mayor Gloria says a perfect storm of the lack of affordable housing combined with the mental health and addiction crisis has created the environment for this problem to exasperate.

Gloria also pointed to other cities, saying they need to do more to help.

“The City of San Diego stands alone when it comes to taking on these issues seriously, and we need other cities to step up and help and house their own individuals from becoming unsheltered, rather than passing them on to our tax payers to provide for,” he says.

Follow this linkto see the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness’ data.