SD City Council to Vote on Plan to End Chronic Homelessness

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published October 23, 2006 at 11:34 AM PDT

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

After two-and-a-half years of work and planning, San Diego City Council will vote tonight on a community plan designed to end chronic homelessness. San Diego is one of 100 cities nationwide challenged

After two-and-a-half years of work and planning, San Diego City Council will vote tonight on a community plan designed to end chronic homelessness. San Diego is one of 100 cities nationwide challenged by the Bush Administration to come up with such a plan. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The plan’s goal is to find a more effective way of getting the chronically homeless off the streets. The chronically homeless include those with serious mental health or drug problems. They make up about 15 percent of the 10,000 homeless people in San Diego County. However they take up a disproportionate share of the $70 million in public money spent on homelessness in San Diego last year.

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Research suggests it would be better to find permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless. That would leave more resources to help people who wouldn’t end up homeless if they received support before they landed on the streets.

About half the region’s homeless live in the city. San Diego City Council will consider how to find more permanent supportive housing. And they’ll discuss what to do about ticketing the homeless, since the city is short more than 2,000 shelter beds to provide people on the streets with an alternative. Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.