Opinion: Don’t accept homelessness as a fact of life in San Diego. We must do the work to end it.

DeVries is the CEO of Monarch School Project and resides in Scripps Ranch.

Is homelessness a fact of life? Living in a major metropolitan area, San Diegans too often believe that homelessness is a given for our city. Housing will remain unaffordable. Not everyone can be housed.

I reject these assumptions. And all San Diegans should too if we want to make any real, systemic change possible.

Advocacy is my primary role as the CEO of the Monarch School Project, the public-private partnership that serves as our nation’s only public community school that exclusively nurtures the development of unhoused students. Through this work, my team and I face our region’s homelessness crisis head-on every day.

Commentary

These San Diegans are entering the new year with big personal, community aspirations

While local, national and global events demand our attention, the arrival of a new year is the time for many to look within — and to look around

Jan. 12, 2024

From my perspective, we hold a collective obligation to commit to a path to end homelessness that prioritizes human dignity, sustainable solutions, collaboration, trauma-informed support and shared responsibility.

In short, let’s do the hard work — the work of making it impossible to be unhoused in our city.

San Diego is rich with resources that are often intangible: There is a palpable sense of responsibility for improving conditions for others, forming a generous and giving community. A vibrant, active urban core means we’re a region that takes pride in what’s ours and what we represent as a thriving metropolitan area. Our enthusiastic and robust commitment to cross-border collaboration illuminates our dedication to economic and social innovation.

San Diegans believe in a boundless capacity for growth. And grow — and build — we must.

To start, our planning processes must center on the dignity and humanity of those experiencing homelessness. When social and economic decisions reflect a deep understanding of the challenges faced by unhoused individuals and families, these strategies and their impacts shift from temporary to transformational.

As with any challenge, we are most effective when we focus on fixing the root of the issue. And today’s challenges with homelessness are mainly rooted in housing. As the city of San Diego’s 2023 Annual Report on Homes said well: “The solution to homelessness is housing, and housing is also a solution to address climate change and a path to economic opportunity for all San Diegans.”

Thus, to truly make a lasting impact, our solutions must extend beyond surface level short-term “fixes” and instead focus on improving conditions by investing in permanent supportive housing. Permanent supportive housing includes long-term housing, along with case management and wrap-around support services.

By providing this type of housing, we lay the foundation for stability and support the self-determination of individuals seeking to rebuild their lives. It has also proven to decrease chronic homelessness, while increasing housing stability and positive health outcomes.

Embracing cross-sectoral collaboration is key to addressing the root causes of homelessness. To close the gap for all those that need housing, the city of San Diego’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment estimated that we must build 13,500 housing units per year, and more current estimates put the production needs at 16,000 housing units per year for the next six years.

This is a significant number of units to create, but is attainable with the right collaboration, processes and staffing. Let’s take advantage of our region’s inclination to work together and address the silos that have been built around housing. If we work across industries and in partnership with government, we can facilitate systemic change for housing access and affordability.

It will take collective effort to cultivate mixed income living environments that will measurably impact the development of students from all walks of life. Unhoused children deserve more than interventions that offer temporary bandages; they deserve unwavering support from a community that envisions a stable future for all of its youth, regardless of their family’s economic status.

It’s a simple fact: The success of San Diego’s unhoused youth is inextricably linked to our region’s future success.

It is crucial for the adults in their lives (that’s us) to understand the trauma unhoused children carry and actively work to create environments that foster healing and nurture their potential. Let’s recognize our own stability and good fortune as blessings that inspire opportunities for others.

The greatest gift San Diego could offer our youth in this year and the years to come is to make, and keep, one promise: Homelessness does not have to be a fact of life. We will move mountains to cultivate a community — our community — to house all.