The city of San Diego is set to clear homeless encampments at the San Diego Riverbed, posting notices early Monday to tell people who live there that they have to collect their belongings and leave by 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.

It’s a coordinated effort with multiple agencies — the first of its kind at the riverbed, the culmination of months of outreach efforts paid for by millions of dollars in state funding.

The bright green notices posted early Monday indicate the city plans to perform the abatement within 24 hours.

Outreach workers from People Assisting the Homeless have been in the riverbed for months, working to find housing and offer supportive services to those living there.

“The abatement is going to happen no matter what, like it was going to happen. So it was: Do they abate and keep doing the same thing that they’ve been doing, abating ticketing, arresting and throwing people’s stuff away so we have to start over?” said Autumn McCann, of PATH. “Or do we partner together and provide the case management services first and try to get people everything that they need?”

San Diego Riverpark Foundation’s latest census numbers, released last month, show an estimated 423 people were believed to be living along the riverbed.

San Diego’s homeless crisis only continues to grow. Now, we have new numbers highlighting one local hotspot — the San Diego Riverbed. NBC 7’s Shelby Bremer explains.

McCann spent all Monday in the riverbed near where Interstate 5 and Interstate 8 intersect to try and get those remaining there into some form of shelter, like to the city’s safe sleeping sites or into temporary housing.

She said MTS, lifeguards, Caltrans and the city will all be involved in the abatement Tuesday morning, with a lifeguard boat brought in as well as a crane that will lift loads of debris from the riverbed.

“I really don’t want to see any of my clients being ticketed or arrested,” McCann said. “I don’t want that to happen, so I’m a little stressed and pressed, but I am feeling confident that we can help the majority of the people that are still left out there.”

“It gets depressing, and I’m already depressed, so it just makes it more worse,” said Joseph Miller. He’s been living on the streets for six years and came to the San Diego Riverbed about a month before the notices went up.

“I didn’t think this was going to happen, you know?” he said. “They’re washing us out.”

“This is about providing assistance, providing resources and then going in and doing the abatement, doing the cleanup, restoring this area back to what it was,” said city spokesman Matt Hoffman.

The effort is paid for with $3.6 million in state grants awarded the city of San Diego from California’s Encampment Resolution Funds. That’s part of a total of $17 million in grants awarded the city, San Diego County and the city of Santee under those funds last June.

The funding used to clear the riverbed can be spent on rental subsidies, outreach work, supportive services and more.

“This is about building and providing resources that people need to get out of homelessness and not return to homelessness,” Hoffman said. “That’s part of the benefit of this grant. These funds are flexible so that somebody something doesn’t work for someone, we can try something else.”

The city said, after months of outreach, individuals still in the riverbed Tuesday morning will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Officials said the timing of the abatement process – beginning on Election Day – was a coincidence, put into motion when the city applied for the Encampment Resolution Fund grants in 2023. The abatement process will continue all week as the city looks to get ahead of the king time and the upcoming rainy season.

Miller said he planned to take the offer to go to O Lot, one of the city’s safe sleeping sites. He said he plans to take care of some medical issues then look for work — still hopeful he can get back on his feet.

“I couldn’t pass up this, you know? Land of opportunities out here,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of things to do out here in San Diego.”

A San Diego man who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl while the pair were passengers on a cross-country flight was sentenced Monday to two years in prison.

Ryan Coffey admitted in a plea agreement to giving the teen rum and inappropriately touching the girl, who he did not know, on a Jan. 7, 2023, American Airlines flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to San Diego.

Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum that another passenger on the plane overheard the girl tell Coffey — who was 31 years old at the time — that she was underage.

“When he heard that she’s afraid of flying, he took a bottle of alcohol out of [his] bag and said it would help her relax,” prosecutors wrote.

The girl later reported the abuse to a friend.

“Thanks to the courage of a brave girl who reported what happened in the dark on a plane and swift engagement from law enforcement, this defendant was brought to justice,” U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said in August 2024 when Coffey pleaded guilty. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office is committed to protecting the public in the air, on the ground, or at sea.”

Coffey pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of abusive sexual contact of a minor on an aircraft and received the maximum sentence for that crime.

On Tuesday, the presidential election finally takes place. When it comes to what led to the outcome, a case can be made that political pundits on the left and right have got it all wrong. That’s because their expertise makes them uniquely unqualified to understand disengaged voters. Political pundits are like sportswriters trying to fathom why some people pay no attention to the Super Bowl. Yet disengaged voters will likely determine the winner. Why? Because these are the only voters still up for grabs.

Engaged voters have already decided who they’ll vote for. Some decided based on ideology (liberal or conservative). Others decided based on group interest (labor status, ethnicity, gender, religion). Some decided based on how they answered the question: Are you better or worse off than you were four years ago?

So who are the disengaged? These are undecided potential voters who just don’t care about politics. As a result, they process information about campaigns in ways that are unfathomable to those fully engaged.

In July, YouGov reported crunched polling numbers from a survey to identify characteristics of “disengaged” voters. The disengaged consume little political news; they are largely ignorant of political issues. They are less likely than others to actually vote. They tend to be “on average younger, more likely to be women, more likely to be Black or Hispanic, less educated, and have a lower household income than the average engaged American voter.”

Scientific models suggest that people take in information and make decisions using different mental processes. To varying degrees, engaged voters process information systematically. They connect issues together through mental links. Because of these intricate connections, the engaged decide early and are unlikely to change their minds. Changing their minds on one issue means changing their minds on others.

The disengaged take a different approach. They do what scientists call “heuristic” processing. They rely on peripheral cues that have very little to do with issues and candidate qualifications. For example, physical appearance of candidates can sway the disengaged. Research shows that people tend to like others who are physically attractive. If one doesn’t care much about politics, then appearance could serve as a basis for choosing. Using stereotypic notions of “good looks,” John F. Kennedy was better looking than Richard Nixon. Kamala Harris is better looking than Donald Trump.

Research dating from the 1940s shows that many disengaged voters depend on more engaged voters for advice (two-step flow). They also tend to take advice from people they admire, regardless of political expertise.

Arguably, this is why Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris could prove so impactful. After the Sept. 10 debate, the singer posted her endorsement on Instagram. According to Axios, Swift has 283 million Instagram followers. The Instagram post inspired 338,000 Swifties to visit Vote.gov, the federal voter registration website, during the 15 hours after her post.

One can only speculate how many Swifties are young women that YouGov identified as politically disengaged. Whether Swifties actually registered and will vote is also subject to speculation. Historically, celebrity endorsements don’t seem to improve a candidate’s chances. Ask Hillary Clinton. Normally, debates don’t have much impact either. But this is no normal campaign. Ask Joe Biden. In a close race, a percentage point boost from the disengaged in swing states could decide the election outcome.

Dozier, Ph.D., is professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. He lives in Encinitas.