San Diego, CA

The Mayor Is Still Saying He Increased Shelter Capacity by 70 percent. He Still Hasn’t

Published

1 year ago

October 23, 2024

The Mayor Is Still Saying He Increased Shelter Capacity by 70 percent. He Still Hasn’t

As a central component of his re-election campaign, Mayor Todd Gloria continues to claim he’s increased homeless shelter capacity by 70 percent.

That claim is no more true now than it was in June 2023, when Voice of San Diego first fact checked it.

From the airwaves to his November ballot statement, Gloria is pushing the 70 percent figure as a key reason voters should re-elect him.

In one ad, a narrator ticks off several accomplishments. She tells voters Gloria has “increased shelter for the homeless by 70 percent!”

An independent expenditure group supporting Gloria called San Diegans for Fairness has also been pushing the claim.

Here’s how Gloria’s team does the math: They pick a convenient starting point where the number of beds was unusually low due to the pandemic.

Before the pandemic, and before Gloria took office, the city had 1,409 shelter beds.

Gloria’s team doesn’t use that number. They use a date in April 2021, about three months after Gloria took office.

Up until then, the city had been using the convention center as a shelter, because of the pandemic. But just before April 1, 2021, the convention center closed. Other shelters within the city were operating at lower capacity due to Covid restrictions.

So on April 1, 2021, there were only 1,071 beds available.

Today, there are roughly 1,856, according to the mayor’s campaign staff.

The math works like this: Between April 2021 – when the number was significantly restricted by the pandemic – and now, city homeless shelter capacity increased by roughly 73 percent.

But the city wasn’t providing 1,071 beds before Gloria took office. It was providing around 1,400. That math works out to a roughly 32 percent increase.

That’s not a small increase. But it doesn’t come close to the 70 percent Gloria is claiming.

I asked Gloria about the math at a press conference on Wednesday. He stuck to his administration’s interpretation of the numbers.

“In April of 2021 we had a very small number of beds,” he said. “We don’t have that anymore.”

Since Gloria’s 32 percent increase on shelter capacity, progress has actually stalled.

During the last 16 months, the city has only increased the net number of shelter beds by 51.

In January, at his State of the City speech, Gloria said he wanted the city to deliver 1,000 new shelter beds by early 2025.

That’s not looking likely. It would mean increasing overall shelter capacity to roughly 2,800 in the next few months.

The mayor had hoped to purchase a warehouse at Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street that could be converted to shelter for more than a thousand people, but that plan is now in limbo.

It’s possible the city will tally a net loss of beds by early 2025.

The city is set to lose 614 beds at two large shelters operated by Father Joe’s Villages by the end of the year – and Gloria has known this was coming for months. City officials are now trying to come up with solutions to address the closures.

Meanwhile, Gloria’s administration has come up with alternative options. He has opened safe parking lots, where people can sleep in their cars, and safe camping sites, where people can sleep in a tent.

“We can parse on the numbers,” Gloria said. “We worked aggressively over lots of concerns and complaints and feedback to get this done,” he said, referring to shelter expansion.

Lisa Halverstadt contributed to this report.

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San Diego, CA

SDPD investigating suspicious death

Published

2 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

UNIVERSITY CITY (KGTV) — San Diego police are investigating the death of an 81-year-old woman who was found unresponsive in her apartment in the 6300 block of Genesee Avenue.

Officers and San Diego Fire-Rescue personnel responded to a 9-1-1 call at about 11:56 p.m. on March 6.

First responders found the woman in her bedroom, unresponsive and “positioned awkwardly on a bed.” Despite immediate life-saving efforts, she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Detectives from the San Diego Police Department’s Homicide Unit were called to the scene due to “unusual circumstances,” police said. The cause and manner of death remain undetermined.

Investigators are working with the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office to determine what happened.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.

This story has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

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San Diego, CA

One killed in fiery three-vehicle crash on 805 freeway in San Diego

Published

14 hours ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

One killed in fiery three-vehicle crash on 805 freeway in San Diego

A person was killed Sunday in a fiery three-vehicle crash on the Jacob Dekema (805) Freeway in San Diego, authorities said.

The crash occurred at 4:22 a.m. Sunday on the northbound freeway south of Miramar Road, the California Highway Patrol reported.

At least one vehicle struck the center divider and caught fire, the CHP said.

The numbers one through five lanes of the northbound freeway were closed at 6:01 a.m. for an unknown duration.

No further information was immediately available.

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San Diego, CA

Veterans weigh in on U.S. involvement in Iran

Published

1 day ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

Veterans weigh in on U.S. involvement in Iran

“It seems pointless. They change the reason for aggression against Iran daily,” Army Veteran, Forest Gray said.

Gray was among dozens of protestors who gathered at Memorial Community Park in Logan Heights Saturday calling for an end to the war in Iran.

Seeing the conflict play out is personal for him. Gray served eight years in the front lines in the Middle East.

“I fought in Iraq and you know, everyone wears the uniform, and gets deployed, we kind of expect and accept that we have to put our lives on the line, but ideally it should be a sense for a greater good. I don’t see what greater good there is here,” Gray said.

Gray is not alone.

Jonathan Chavez who served in the U.S. Marine Corps at Miramar Base in San Diego also disagrees with the U.S. involvement in Iran.

“No one wants these wars, no one has asked for these wars. Public opinion in this country is also very clear, the vast majority of Americans do not support these conflicts,” Chavez said.

Some Iranian Americans took a different stance last week, as hundreds took the streets of Clairemont.

“It was a feeling of euphoria knowing that my people are free, knowing that a dictator that has ruled Iran with iron fists for well over 37 years, has been killed, has been pushed out of the power and we can have a democratic Iran,” Bobby Shah told NBC 7.

Despite the sentiment, Saturday’s protest was hosted by an organization opposed to war in the Middle East.

They used signs and chants to make their stance clear: Stop the War in Iran.

Watching from a distance we found Marine Corps Veteran Chris Mondestin.

Even though he was not part of the protest, he also opposes the war saying the conflict should stay between Iran and Israel and the U.S. should stay out of it.

“It’s real scary. It’s real scary because I know there’s a lot of people that are truly against this war, but they don’t have much of a voice. That’s why I was kind of happy to see this, because we do have a voice. We just got to speak loud,” Mondestin said.

He also worries about the effects the war could have on the country’s safety, economy, and relationship with countries in the Middle East.

According to Iranian Diaspora Dashboard from UCLA’s Center of Near Eastern Studies, about 600,000 Iranians live in the U.S. and about half of them are in California.

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