SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The debate between San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and police officer and challenger Larry Turner covered a wide range of issues from transportation, flood infrastructure failures, housing shortages and of course homelessness.
“He has had temporary band-aid approaches to this, many of these beds will be gone in January. He’s going to tout all the new shelter opportunities, they are not beds. He has changed the definition of that to living in a parking lot or living in a car is something that is an opportunity, that’s not helping homeless people,” Larry Turner said.
“Yes, we have expanded our safe parking lots because that’s the number one growing part of our homeless population, but we have also created the safe sleeping sites and I’ll tell you why those are important: our data shows that over 80% of some of the folks who are accessing our safe sleeping sites are accessing our homeless shelter system for the very first time. This is helping us to reach folks who have never previously been in and off the streets, surrounding them with the services to diagnose the underlying causes of their homelessness and help us address it,” Gloria said.
The mayor says when it comes to housing he is ready to build his way out of the crisis.
“We saw historically our city has permitted roughly 5,000 new homes per year. Last year we hit nearly 10,000 new homes. It’s a good increase but we have to do more and we have to make sure working and middle-class people can afford to live in San Diego,” Gloria said.
“The problem is it’s not affordable, so to just continue to build more in the hopes that it’s just going to lower prices, that’s not going to happen here in San Diego and there is a reason for that. The outside investors that come to San Diego are the ones that are raising the prices,” Turner said.
Turner says his supporters have urged him to take the reigns.
“We are really going to get in there and really make some differences as an independent with no strings attached and not taking donations from these big donors like he’s doing, I just can’t wait,” Turner said.
Gloria says he’s just getting started.
“My opponent has no record; he also has no plan and no vision. That was on display tonight. So it’s up to the San Diegans to choose, but I think that they know that they have someone who is effective and capable and has the experience to deliver change and you have someone who is really good at identifying problems, but has no idea on how to fix them,” Gloria said.
