Since the city’s homeless camping ban took effect in 2023, camps in Balboa Park and other city parks have been the focal point of police crackdowns using the new city law.
From August 2023 through this February, a Voice of San Diego analysis of police data shows two-thirds of the 260 camping ban citations and arrests happened in city parks – and 40 percent were in Balboa Park.
Police and city officials including Mayor Todd Gloria say they are trying to address public safety concerns and complaints in areas including parks and encourage homeless residents to accept shelter, though they often can’t supply open beds.
Balboa Park stakeholders credit the camping ban for reducing the number of homeless camps in the park though they emphasize that they still regularly deal with challenges with unsheltered residents.
Meanwhile, homeless San Diegans and service providers trying to help them say the crackdown in Balboa Park and elsewhere in the city has led unsheltered people to disperse to try to avoid police and stymied efforts to move them off the street.
Police say their enforcement focus on parks shouldn’t be surprising. The city’s camping ban allows officers to cite people staying in makeshift structures in so-called sensitive areas such as parks and within two blocks of schools – even when there isn’t shelter available. Police initially prioritized those areas in 2023 and say they have found the camping ban to be a useful enforcement tool in parks.
Officers have also continued enforcing other city laws aiming to address homelessness too. The city’s encroachment law, which essentially bars blocking a sidewalk, continues to be their foremost tool. During the past 19 months, police wrote 1,735 citations and made 216 arrests for encroachment. That volume is more than seven times the number of campaign ban violations.
San Diego police Capt. Steve Shebloski, who leads the police division focused on homelessness and quality-of-life issues, said those statistics reflect the department using the camping ban as a tool in specific areas where the city has decided homeless camps present public health and safety concerns, including parks with camping ban signage. He also said police follow a progressive enforcement model, offering shelter at each encounter and warning violators before issuing citations.
“What we’re trying to do is have the right-sized shoe on the right foot,” Shebloski said. “We don’t want to use unsafe camping as a catch-all when encroachment is more appropriate.”
Indeed, Shebloski said he briefed Neighborhood Policing Division officers earlier this year on using the encroachment law to target tents on downtown sidewalks and the camping ban for those in sensitive areas like parks that the city has marked with camping ban signs.
Shebloski and Central Division police Lt. Geoff DeCesari said Balboa Park has also been a hot spot for camping ban enforcement in part due the dedicated team of officers that patrol there.
DeCesari said the park has a sergeant and four officers who often focus on encampments due to complaints and more recent concerns about fires.
Shebloski and DeCesari both acknowledged enforcement – and the threat of it – can lead homeless residents to relocate elsewhere to avoid police, including more under-the-radar areas like canyons.
“I think displacement is gonna be a natural consequence of more enforcement,” Shebloski said. “It’s gonna happen.”
Jayna Lee, associate director of outreach at city-contracted provider PATH, said that dispersal has made the nonprofit’s case manager assigned to Balboa Park for the past few years less productive. She is enrolling fewer unsheltered residents into services and PATH has considered having her spend more time elsewhere so she can help more homeless residents.
Lee said people sleeping in the park often move to hillsides, canyons or under-the-radar areas with lots of brush to avoid police. This makes it challenging for their case manager to find them – and PATH has decided some of those areas aren’t safe for its case manager to traverse.
“Clients are really putting themselves in harm’s way just to be out of sight of (the police department) in the Balboa Park area,” Lee said.
For example, Lee said, one unsheltered client moved to a hillside where he fell and broke his hip. After a hospital visit and a stay in a skilled nursing facility, Lee said he moved back to the same remote area of Balboa Park to try to stay off police officers’ radar.
Craig Thomas, outreach supervisor at nonprofit Alpha Project, said his organization’s outreach workers have faced similar challenges tracking down clients in parks and elsewhere in the city.
“They’re finding it very difficult to maintain contact with their regular clients in the park and canyon areas because they’re being shooed along so often,” he said.
In at least a dozen instances, Thomas said Alpha outreach workers have been unable to find clients who previously requested shelter after a bed opened up. He suspects increased enforcement has in some cases made some clients more interested in shelter.
Several homeless residents told Voice that increased police enforcement has left them feeling forced to constantly be on the move or under the radar. Some have moved into city-backed homeless campsites on the edges of the park – or were there for a time. Others say the campsite and city shelters don’t meet their needs.
“No matter what you do or where you go, you’re going to be in trouble for it,” said 50-year-old Michael Johnson, who often stays in the Balboa Park area.
John Vigilante, 43, said he was recently arrested for a camping ban violation in the park after he took refuge from the rain under a Morley Field structure. Vigilante said he was arrested the next morning when it wasn’t raining anymore and spent about six hours in jail. He was previously ticketed for the same violation at another park in North Park in November.
Vigilante said the increased enforcement makes him anxious and put him out of touch with medical outreach provider Healthcare in Action, which had previously connected with him in the area.
“I can’t get anything done,” Vigilante said. “I can’t focus on anything.”
Vigilante remains in Balboa Park much of the time, he said, because it often still feels safer than other options.
Shebloski said more constant enforcement in Balboa Park and elsewhere in the city is meant to make public spaces feel safer for all residents and to encourage homeless residents to move off the street.
“There is a place at the table for some level of enforcement to encourage people to accept those services,” Shebloski said.
Most homeless service experts argue otherwise.
Ann Oliva, lead author of the city’s 2019 homelessness plan and now CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, warned in 2023 that the camping ban clashed with the city’s homelessness strategy.
“Without safe and affordable housing and services, people will continue to perish on the streets, no matter how many times they are arrested or ticketed,” Oliva wrote in a statement at the time.
For Balboa Park leaders, camping ban enforcement in the park has meant a reduction in the homeless camps that once dotted areas of the park more visible to visitors.
Before the camping ban took effect, Museum of Us CEO Micah Parzen said museum staffers were often confronted with uncomfortable encounters, needles and trash. Those situations are still everyday occurrences but aren’t as frequent as they once were.
“It is not an issue that’s gone away but has I think gotten markedly better,” Parzen said.
“Of course, I’m not sure where those folks are going and if they’re going to places that are safer for them and if there are resources for them, which I think is just as important a question.”
Peter Comiskey of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, which represents park institutions including Parzen’s, said his group appreciates the decrease in encampments throughout Balboa Park as well as the city’s investments in homeless services in the area, including the two safe campsites. He encouraged continued enforcement in Balboa Park.
“While your analysis has shown a majority of citations and arrests have occurred in Balboa Park, the members of the Cultural Partnership continue to report substantial activity that remains to be addressed including graffiti, fires and other related incidents,” Comiskey wrote in a statement.
These people are continously being offered shelter, but turn it down because they refuse to follow these simple rules:
1) Don’t use booze and/or illegal drugs.
2) Do take any prescribed anti-psychotic medication.
3) Don’t HOARD.
4) Do come and go at reasonable hours.
5) Don’t be too loud or otherwise bothersome to others (e.g. DONT STINK, dont steal, etc.).
Please explain why an individual is denied shelter if they are taking prescribed anti-psychotic medication for an actually diagnosed mental health or medical issue such as schizophrenia to help control their condition? Or why they would be denied shelter due to the rule of “don’t stink?” Because there are many people out there that can’t bathe themselves unless supervised due to high risk of injury or drowning and are even scared to bathe themselves unless there is supervision such as some with refractory epilepsy.
He said “Do” take
Julie, are you offering to bathe these folks yourself, in your own bath? Wow, how kind of you!
Yes, it is like the years-long running gag with Gilda Radner playing the hopelessly clueless character Emily Litella, who ALWAYS completely misinterprets the subject, then after droning on erroneously for 5 minutes in a broadcast TV opinion, is corrected by the news host… and she would always say; “Oh, that’s different… NEVER MIND!”.
The 3 strikes approach being implemented by San Jose’s new mayor seems to be effective: unhoused are offered a place off the streets, and services, and, if they don’t accept them on the third offer, they are arrested.
Unhoused are not as much an issue with me as are panhandlers, median walkers, who dangerously wander into traffic and annoy drivers with seeming impunity. Some look pretty far gone, but many appear fairly “together” and healthy and look like they could easily manage a $20 hr. job on which they often get free food.
Yes, some look and superficially act “OK” – but most of those type homeless are HOARDERS. Hoarding is one of the most insidious and progressively-worsening-with-age disorders. By 50 years of age, a long-term untreated hoarder has progressed to the point of having virtually no chance of starting “treatment” to allow them to properly manage their condition and live a normal life, let along continue with long-term treatment. They become “unemployable” because they are unable to complete tasks on time (if ever).
As someone who regularly spends time downtown and in Balboa Park after dark, I’ve had uncomfortable encounters with unsheltered people who often act erratically (mentally ill, on drugs, alcohol, some combination??) and personally appreciate the efforts to make these and other public spaces safe for the general public.
Halverstadt has been writing the same article for ten years. Grow up already.
“Grow up already?” Said something called “Petey”.
It feels like homelessness and the camping ban are more the impetus for proposed paid parking at Mission Bay, particularly, but also Balboa Park, since the programs as proposed barely pay for themselves, let alone make any dent in the City’s budget shortfall. It’s gross. Enough with the luxury condos, rapid-build dorm-style SRO housing, and let people live with dignity.