One evening last September, Patrick Gilligan drove to a rest stop north of Oceanside.
He parked his Jeep, lowered the back seat, laid out a sleeping bag and lay down.
Gilligan mentally replayed his past decades. There had been childhood abuse, service in the United States Marine Corps, divorce and firing, and countless other decisions, large and small, that had led him one way or another. another not having his own bed.
In that time, Gilligan was part of a countywide trend that reshaped public policy, dominated elections and cost millions and millions of dollars.
March was the 24th consecutive month that the number of housing-related homeless residents was eclipsed by the number of people who lost their housing for the first time, according to a new report from the Regional Homelessness Task Force.
1,226 people were sheltered, while 1,337 became homeless.
The situation is not much better further away. Since October 2021, when the task force began publishing this data, there have only been two months in which the crisis did not worsen. Even so, the gains were minor: only nine more people gained housing than those who lost a stable roof in March 2022.
“There just isn’t enough affordable housing,” said Jennifer Nations, executive director of the Homelessness Hub research lab at UC San Diego. “This is particularly evident in the number of new homeless people,” she added, many of whom are elderly.
More and more research has shown that areas with a high cost of living tend to have more people on the streets, and the city of San Diego recently saw some of the highest rents and the biggest increase property prices nationally.
Combine that with substance abuse and mental health issues — a survey last year found that about a fifth of homeless people suffered from a substance use disorder and more than a quarter reported serious mental health diagnoses – and the ripple effects are profound.
“It’s horrible,” Moe Girton, owner of Hillcrest restaurants Gossip Grill and Barrel & Board, said of the nearby encampments. The sidewalks were stained with feces. Needles could be found near the asphalt. A man had recently tried to burn down one of her buildings, she added.
Stefan Chicote, general manager of nearby restaurant Baja Betty’s, said confrontations with volatile bystanders led him to distribute pepper spray to staff. “It’s like no one is on our side.”
Perhaps no recent case better embodies the way life on the outside can intersect with crime than the death of a 41-year-old man earlier this month in El Cajon. Police said the victim, a man with “blunt force trauma,” and the suspected killer, a 37-year-old man arrested last week, were homeless.
People are dying from fentanyl, hypothermia, and heart disease. A decade ago, about 150 homeless people died each year, according to the county medical examiner. Last year, the toll was 624, an average of one person every 14 hours.
Even as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether to give local officials more leeway to clear encampments, leaders in the region have increased penalties for people living in tents.
Poway has adopted a camping ban. Chula Vista could be next. San Diego’s order corresponded with a drop in the downtown population and more people seeking shelter, but there aren’t enough beds and some proposals to increase capacity are facing challenges. an uncertain future.
A project to convert an empty warehouse into a 1,000-bed facility has slowed due to apparent concerns over the real estate deal. A separate proposal to accommodate hundreds of people on land near the airport faces a possible legal challenge.
Meanwhile, people sleep in trucks, against horse stalls and under tarpaulins.
On Tuesday in Point Loma, Sheila “Chye” Nezzie, 45, sat on a walker in front of a Goodwill. Two years ago, she and her husband lived in a river bed. Now they live in a tent on Midway Drive.
Nezzie said his partner, Juan “Chino” Cota, suffered from advanced stomach cancer but struggled to find regular medical care.
“I just want him to be comfortable,” Nezzie said as he began to cry. Cota stopped rearranging the boxes and took his face in his hands.
Gilligan, the 59-year-old who worked at the rest stop, had high hopes when he left Massachusetts a few years ago to move to North County for a job selling software financial.
It arrived in January 2020. The pandemic emerged shortly after. By the middle of the next year, he said the company couldn’t afford to keep him.
Gilligan moved out of her apartment in Solana Beach. The hotels have exhausted his savings. He tried to live with a friend, but the relationship fell apart. Child support bills have increased.
“It was just this year and a half where we just slipped and slid through all the gate checks,” he said.
Gilligan also struggled with the aftermath of sexual assault as a child, and a recent report from a psychologist revealed signs of post-traumatic stress. He wondered if it was worth staying alive.
The turnaround happened when Gilligan called the VA.
They connected him with a range of support services, including the nonprofit People Assisting the Homeless, and he landed an apartment downtown. Gilligan briefly received rental assistance, but now makes a living from his new job as development director at Lived Experience Advisers, a local homeless advocacy group.
“I thought I knew what homelessness was, but I didn’t,” he said. “The guys you see in public, the ones talking to themselves and harassing people passing by, that’s actually the tip of the iceberg.”
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