In the last few years, homelessness has become more visible across the United States with vagrants illegally camped on city streets, under bridges, and wherever else they can find temporary shelter. According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) there are “roughly 582,500 people” experiencing homelessness on any given night across the country, but not in Coronado, California.
Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, 37, told Fox and Friends in an interview last week that his city’s successful solution to the homeless problem was a no-encampment policy implemented by his office. Quite the feat in a state that leads the nation with a homeless population of over 170,000, according to HUD.
The Daily Mail shared:
Bailey, a Republican who became the youngest mayor in the city’s history, credited the vagrant-free streets to his office’s funding of “reasonable” services designed to get people “back on their feet,” and a zero-tolerance policy toward homeless encampments — a phenomenon that has grown all-too prevalent since the pandemic.
Coronado is on a peninsula just across the bay from downtown San Diego and is a quaint get-away paradise with clean sandy beaches, ocean-front restaurants, galleries, theaters and the famous Hotel del Coronado. The city of near 24,000 has been dubbed “The Crown City,” as Coronado means “the crowned one” in Spanish.
The mayor’s policies appear to be working in comparison to San Diego and the rest of California, where the homeless problem continues to grow. Cities and counties throughout the state implement their own policies on the homelessness issue. Some locations have more liberal policies than others, which have actually increased the number of homeless in their communities.
Bailey pointed out the consequences of other cities’ lax policies on homlessness in his Fox and Friends interview, saying, “The policies that are in place at the regional and statewide level that are tolerating this type of behavior that is personally destructive and also destructive to the surrounding communities are really enabling this situation to increase throughout our entire state, and throughout our entire region.”
A state report on California’s homelessness challenges stated that “while homelessness is a complex problem with many causes, the high cost of housing is a significant contributor. Rising housing costs that have exceeded growth in wages, particularly for low-income households, put Californians at risk of housing instability and homelessness.”
The report estimated that before the pandemic California “would need to provide roughly $10 billion per year” to assist low-income renters in keeping a roof over their heads. But even government assistance isn’t enough to slow the growth of homelessness. HUD reported about 30 percent of people without homes are experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness. This means they’ve been without homes for more than 12 months or have experienced extended periods of extended homelessness over the past three years. Chronic homelessness jumped 16 percent over the past two years and has grown by 64 percent since 2016.
Coronado’s homeless population has been reportedly “the lowest number — per capita in the entire region.” Part of that is due to the city’s strict policies and how they help the homeless. The mayor told the Daily Mail, “As of the last point in time count, that number was one and the individual subsequently got off the streets and got help.”
Coronado’s success in lowering the number of homeless is that the city simply enforces the laws, while giving the homeless person a choice. Mayor Bailey shared with Fox, “We also make it very clear that we don’t tolerate encampments along our sidewalks, and we don’t tolerate other code violations such as being drunk in public or urinating in public or defecating in public. We just simply don’t tolerate these basic code violations. What ends up happening is an individual either chooses to get help or they end up leaving.” And those vagrants that leave usually end up going to other cities that allow encampments, adding to the growing homelessness numbers in those locations.
Homelessness is a growing problem across the nation. Bailey’s tough-love solution to the problem works for Coronado, and could very well be an answer for other communities. But is it a good long–term solution to a problem that appears to have no end in sight? Only time will tell.
