San Diego Battles Homelessness With New Bridge Shelter, County Bans Vaping Products, San Diego GOP Leader Discusses 50th Congressional Race And More

Speaker 1: 00:00 San Diego city council is moving forward on homeless issues. This week after approving an ambitious community action plan on homelessness, the council gave the okay for the alpha project to run a new fourth bridge shelter at 17th and Imperial Avenue in downtown San Diego. The new tent, we'll add 150 beds to San Diego's homeless resources and we'll focus on providing services to underserved populations within the homeless community. And joining me is Bob McElroy president and CEO of alpha project. And Bob, welcome back to the show. Speaker 2: 00:34 Thanks for having me, Marie. Speaker 1: 00:36 It wasn't in the initial plan to have a fourth bridge shelter in the city. Can you remind us how that came about? Speaker 2: 00:42 Wow. Well, actually it was, you know, after our last council meeting for funding for continuation of the existing shelters that the city, uh, recommended that the family shelter run by Sam. And so the Paul would stay at the civic center. And so now we have an extra tent, uh, that they operated on 16th. And so the city suggested or move to create this for shelter on 17th and Imperial. Speaker 1: 01:08 One of the reasons that homeless families are still at golden hall is because there were concerns about their safety at at 17th and Imperial is alpha project taking up any additional safety precautions for this location? Speaker 2: 01:21 We are, we're providing enhanced transportation for our people. We would all, you know, the city is doing, you know, sidewalk improvements and crossing improvements and stuff, but we transport motive most of our folks to and from appointments. So we should be able to mitigate that. Speaker 1: 01:35 Let me get your overall impression about the city's new homeless plan. I said is ambitious. What do you think about it? Speaker 2: 01:42 Well, we were an active participant in the creation of the plan. Lot of our input and I appreciated the group and it uh, you know, put this thing together. They were very comprehensive in their effort. They talked to everyone from homeless people to citizens, residents, businesses, politicians, providers, all of us and got our input and it's, you know, it's been months and months and months working on this thing. So, yeah, we're pretty happy with, I think it's, it covers the gambit of what we need to do here in San Diego. Speaker 1: 02:07 Well, instead of putting all resources focused on temporary shelters or on permanent shelters, the city's new homeless plan aims it putting together a number of different elements. How do you see this additional bridge shelter fitting in with the city's plans? Speaker 2: 02:24 Burns. Supportive housing is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the entire puzzle. Um, and it takes decades and billions to build this, the inventory that does not exist today. So there's gotta be a place for someone, for folks on the street to have a choice between homelessness or, you know, dealing with the consequences of the streets. And that's where the bridge shelters, you know, step in there where we've got Rob wraparound services there. People can wait there and get healthy and, and all the interactive services there. Mental health services, health services, educational services. They're there on site and job services while they wait for that housing that may or may not come. Speaker 1: 02:59 Now, what population is this new bridge shelter going to serve? Speaker 2: 03:02 We'll still be doing single adults, but we want also want to, you know, do some outreach to a at risk youth, the 18 to 24 year olds, the populations. We see quite a bit of young kids, you know, on the streets that are, uh, aging out of foster care in most circumstances. You know, and I've always had a burden for these kids. They're the, we don't want them to become the next generation of homeless men and women. And so we're, we're gonna provide an intervention for that and see if we can get these kids on a track and, uh, you know, to be successful. Speaker 1: 03:34 How about people with physical and mental disabilities? Is this new bridge shelter aimed at that population as well? Speaker 2: 03:40 Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what we're doing a, you know, with these shelter we have right now for 324 folks on 16th and Newton the most infirmed, the most at risk or priority population. But we're also going to provide some comprehensive mental health services here for those folks that are out there now that nobody really talks about the 10 to 15% of the population just so mentally ill. There's no fit for them. There are no institutions, there's no assisted living facilities. Our institutions for the severely mentally ill, our jails and prisons and that certainly doesn't work. So we've partnered with some other agencies and also the County for some comprehensive mental health services for some of those folks in that population. Speaker 1: 04:23 Now these shelters are called bridge shelters because they're supposed to take people from the streets and get them connected with permanent housing. That's the goal. How's that working out at the other shelter out alpha project operates? Speaker 2: 04:37 Well, we're close to placing over 400 people. I think we're at three three 93 to three 94 right now. But here, here's the thing, right? You know, San Diego has, you know, a big, it's 4.3% vacancy rate from affordable up. There is a zero vacancy rate for low income housing. You know, we have affordable does not equate to our population. Our population is low income, 30% AMI and can afford maybe four or five $600 a month. We can't live in Sandy find any place to live in San Diego for four or five $600 a month. There is no place to move people to, that sounds great on paper, but in reality it's tremendously challenging to try and find law income units that are appropriate for our people. Speaker 1: 05:24 So do you see basically shelters being more or less permanent way of life here in San Diego? If, if we don't have permanent housing to house people in? Speaker 2: 05:33 Well, until we build it, and that's going to be the case. And you know, we, we had, we had all the, just last Friday we had the whole delegation of the County of LA come down, everybody, every council office come down and see what we're doing. And they're planning to do 42 bridge shelters inL a in the next two years. So as I said it, the consequences, and I said this when the city drank the Koolaid, the housing first Kool-Aid years ago, when they said, we're not gonna do shelters anymore, we're just going to go no housing first. It's all going to be housing. And I said, it's going to be a disaster. And what happened, we had 20 people dying here in San Diego, San Diego from Hep a and the numbers skyrocketed on the streets because there was no choice for people to be homeless. There was no place for them to go. Speaker 1: 06:13 Now, the action plan that was approved by the city aims of getting half the city's homeless population off the street and into shelter within three years. Now we've seen a lot of these goals for the homeless just sort of fizzle out. They're not there. Impossible. What's your take on whether or not that timeline can be achieved this time around? Speaker 2: 06:33 Well, we're way I've been to every city that's been impacted from Seattle to LA, to San Francisco, Sacramento, all in between Portland. We're so far ahead of those cities. I mean, they're right. They haven't even gotten started yet. We're so far ahead of them in our efforts here. You know, I think we can achieve that. I think the, the foot's going to be still continually applied to the pedal of the metal or whatever you call. Uh, I've talked to every council member and the mayor certainly motivated, uh, providers are certainly motivated. County's getting motivated, they're going to participate also. So if we do this thing together, we can be a shining star for cities all across the United States as we already are. Speaker 1: 07:10 Now that the contract has been approved, what's next for alpha project and getting this fourth bridge shelter up and running? Speaker 2: 07:17 Well, it was some for the grace of God, we'll get this thing started and a couple of weeks. Um, it's, it's being put up fairly quickly and we're already interviewing. Uh, we're out there looking for the folks that are the most infirmed. Uh, we're trying to do preregistration for folks. We're hiring of staff. Um, we're building all the infrastructure. So, you know, first and November is not, uh, a pipe drain. We'll start with, we do a soft opening and maybe get 40 50 people at a time and do it incrementally. But, uh, we should be up and running here fairly quickly. Speaker 1: 07:46 And I've been speaking with Bob McElroy, he's president and CEO of alpha project. Bob. Thank you. Speaker 2: 07:52 Definitely not right. Speaker 3: 07:58 [inaudible]. Speaker 1: 00:00 The San Diego County board of supervisors has voted to impose a temporary ban on the sale of vaping devices by a three to two vote supervisors moved to put a one year moratorium on sales in unincorporated areas of the County and permanently ban flavored nicotine. The recent outbreak of lung illnesses linked to vaping prompted the supervisor's actions, but the details of the ban and its impact on local business remains unclear. Jeremy is KPBS health reporter Taren mento. Taryn, welcome. Thanks Maureen. The board of supervisors, as we see with this three to two vote were split on the ban on vaping products. What was the debate like at yesterday's meeting? Speaker 2: 00:42 Right, so to break it down, it's easier to think of it and kind of of trying to approach two issues. The first one is youth vaping and the way that supervisors, Diane Jacob and Nathan Fletcher who introduced this measure wanted to address that was by permanently banning the flavored nicotine products. And Nathan Fletcher said that he personally knew how these flavors can draw you in because he himself, when he was at a County fair when he was young, was handed a some candy flavored smokeless tobacco Speaker 3: 01:11 and then you go from the pouches to the long cut flavors and then you go from the warm cup flavors to the fine cut flavors and then eventually you go to full Copenhagen usage, which I did for many years. And an environment both as an athlete or as a baseball player and in the military was very conducive and socially acceptable. And then you wake up one day having three major oral surgeries to rebuild your gum and job. So Speaker 2: 01:34 he'd a supervisor, Diane Jacob and supervisor Greg Cox, all voted in support of banning this, but supervisor Kristin gas bar and Jim Desmon, they voted against it and supervisor gas bar said she was on board with preventing youth usage, but she wanted to, she wanted to focus it on the actual bad actors banning flavored products from storefronts. Wasn't necessarily the problem. She said it was online sales and she knew this because she asked her son who she said didn't vape, but he was very familiar with how kids are actually accessing these products. He went to Instagram and he showed me right in front of my own eyes the things that pop up there, the sales that are happening there. And then like one of the speakers suggested today, he showed me the endless supply of websites that are out there and all you need to do is click that you are not a minor and you move on and you have access to the world. Speaker 2: 02:26 And the second part of this ban is addressing the vaping related illnesses. And Fletcher says a ban on devices, a temporary ban and devices is what they're, they're looking at to help with that. And if we temporarily ban them, it can give investigators time to figure out what's causing the illnesses. And then the County can draft regulations to help keep the public safe. But supervisor Jim Desmond, who again voted against this says that's unfair to businesses who sell nicotine vaping products. Because federal investigators have said most of the patients suffering from these illnesses are using THC. Some are using nicotine products, but most are THC products. You've reported that health officials actually disagree on whether a ban is the right approach. Why is that? So some of the individuals that I've spoken with say a band could push people to the black market. And federal investigators have said that the black market, a TFC devices are linked to a majority of these illnesses. Speaker 2: 03:21 So if we remove these products, pushing people to getting them from the black market, um, and that could possibly contribute to the illnesses. And the other thing is if you limit access to these devices that a lot of people say have helped them quit smoking cigarettes, you might get some people who will then be motivated to quit. But you're going to have a lot of addicted people looking for getting a fix. And where are they going to go? Possibly going to the black market to get those nicotine devices, but more easily, easily accessible. Uh, cigarettes perhaps. And there was a study about 10 years ago that one of the, one of the leaders of a cancer center told me about that when they said, Hey, if there's a ban on menthol cigarettes, where would you go? About a third said they'd be motivated to quit. Speaker 2: 04:01 About a third said that they would go to something different, maybe a different type of cigarette, and a third said that they would continue to seek out maybe contraband, menthol cigarettes. Now when the band was initially proposed to supporters said that they were hoping other local cities would follow suit. Have any other cities in the County taken steps to ban vaping products? Most recently El Cahone has discussed it, but they ultimately decided to focus on increasing fines on bad actors, people who sell to kids, and I have heard that Chula Vista is looking at a potential ban, so kind of monitoring and seeing how things are going. There have been 25 cases in San Diego County of vaping related lung illness. What's the status of the investigation into what's causing people who use e-cigarettes to get sick? The simple answer is it's ongoing. And I've had a lot of people ask me, why don't we yet know what's causing it? Speaker 2: 04:53 You've got the devices that are making people sick, you've got the products making people sick. Let's just test them, find out what's in there and connect it to these illnesses. The problem is that there are so many devices, so many different substances actually being used. Some people are mixing substances, some people are getting things that are off the market or off the off the street. Some people are getting things from online and some people are getting um, THC cartridges from States that have a recreational marijuana program and some States that actually don't have them. So they're getting online and we don't know exactly what's in these devices across the board. So they're testing for things that they know could be harmful testing for things that they know could be in these products. But there's a whole category of chemicals that could be in these products that we don't know that they're harmful. Speaker 2: 05:36 Meanwhile, do you have the sense of how the ban and when, when it is finally approved, when the wording is decided upon how it's going to be implemented and enforced? We don't know that exactly because the ordinance is not drafted. So we'll get more, um, so the, the counties out the supervisors action directed staff to come up with the ordinance and bring it back to them in 60 days, and then we'll have more information about the final language there. And one of the interesting things is the way that the policy was written, or the direction from the supervisors was written is that the ban may touch other flavor tobacco products, which could be menthol cigarettes or it could be these flavored cigars. So we don't, we won't know how it will affect those, um, those products, but it could. And so that's something we'll also be looking for when the final language comes back. Before the board, I've been speaking with KPBS health reporter at Taran mento Taryn. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 4: 06:32 [inaudible]. Speaker 1: 00:00 Lithium ion batteries are central to modern life, from mobile phones to electric vehicles that the United States lacks reliable sources of lithium that could change. Thanks to research being conducted in the desert East of San Diego as part of coverage from the KPBS climate change desk. I spoke with Los Angeles times reporter Sammy Roth about his story on lithium development on the shores of the salt and sea. Well, first let's talk about geothermal power generation at the Salton sea. How many plants are there and why are they under utilize compared with other renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which after all depend on the weather and the time of day. Speaker 2: 00:37 So right now there are 11 geothermal plants set down by the Southern end of the Salton sea. Uh, most of them were built in the eighties and nineties. So the, you know, the resource has been utilized for awhile. Um, the thing is that building these geothermal plants and generating the energy from this underground, uh, you know, heated geothermal reservoir, it's, it's quite expensive compared to solar and wind. So while it has virtues, uh, namely as you just sort of refer to the fact that that geothermal can go around the clock, unlike solar and wind, which are weather dependent. And by the way it's renewable, it's carbon free like solar and wind, but it's, it's much more expensive to build these plants. Um, and the electricity is costlier. So that's why there hasn't been, hasn't been more development. Speaker 1: 01:15 And tell us a little bit about the geothermal process. Why is it so expensive and what do they have to do? Speaker 2: 01:20 Well, it's um, it's interesting, it's, it's, it's a lot more similar to sort of traditional, um, you know, power generation like you'd see from a coal or gas plant. It involves drilling Wells down into these, you know, underground reservoirs pumping stuff up to the surface. Um, you bring up this super-heated fluid that you, uh, you generate steam off of, you lower the pressure, creates steam. It turns turbines. There's just sort of a lot more machinery and equipment and uh, you know, upfront expense involved as compared to solar and wind because, uh, as solar and wind, which have gotten a lot cheaper, mainly because it's just this, you know, technology creating solar panels, building wind turbines that has just gotten cheaper and cheaper over time in a way that you can't really do with geothermal. Speaker 1: 02:01 It is a naturally heated, uh, as, as we should note there. And this, Brian, you're talking about this, this geothermal brine that's, that's pumped back up to the surface. That's where the highly valuable lithium is extracted, right? Remind us why lithium is in such high demand. Speaker 2: 02:15 That's right. So this, this Brian that comes up to the surface, it's um, it's fluid that's about 70 or 75% water and the rest of the, you know, the last 25 or 30% is mineral. So it's super, super salty. Um, a little tiny portion of that is lithium. And the reason lithium is so valuable is because it's this key ingredient in lithium ion batteries, which are what's used to power electric vehicles and increasingly for energy storage on the power grid and also for our cell phones which have a lithium ion batteries in them. So it's, it's something that the world is probably going to need a lot more of and there's very little production of it in the United States right now. If, if there was a commercial lithium facility at the salt and sea, it would be the first major source of lithium in the U S Speaker 1: 02:58 and the San Diego that you wrote about Speaker 2: 03:00 has a technique that's promising. What generally is the process? I know it's kinda secretive as you noted in your story. Yeah, the tricky to, to get a good description of it, but, but basically, um, what folks have been trying to do down at these geothermal plants for a long time is figuring out a way after you've generated the energy off of this geothermal drying to take it, to run it through some kind of system that's going to pull the lithium and potentially other minerals out of it. Um, and, and to get those out before you re-inject the Bryon back down into the reservoir. Um, the failures of companies in the past to have mostly been when you've had, uh, sort of, uh, startups or technology development efforts where folks have been trying to come up with something new and unique. Uh, what this company now energy source, uh, says that it's, it's done that's different is rather than try to come up with, you know, a fancy new technology, they've instead taken processes that are in place elsewhere and other, you know, mining or wastewater related industries around the world and basically just lined them up in a way that is well suited to this sort of unique, very hot, very salty geothermal. Speaker 2: 04:03 Dryden. Speaker 1: 04:04 And so they're taking processes that were there and they're just improving on them, which, which happens all the time in American manufacturing. Speaker 2: 04:09 That that's what they say they're doing. That's what, uh, you know, their claim is that, uh, that's what's enabled them to succeed where a lot of other companies have failed in the past. Okay. Speaker 1: 04:17 And lithium, now it's being imported from far away places here in, in terms of the United States, right. And the process you're talking about, the, uh, conventional process is time consuming and expensive. Speaker 2: 04:28 That's right. So most of the lithium that's used in the U S today comes from either South America or Australia. And both of those places have, um, these extraction processes that are much more like traditional mining that are pretty environmentally destructive and not especially well loved. But that's where the lithium comes from. So people take it, one of the, the virtues of the Salton sea, geothermal resources, if you can, you know, figure out how to get large quantities of lithium out of there. There's a pretty minimal environmental impact and it's a quick process relative to what happens elsewhere in the [inaudible]. Speaker 1: 05:03 And what might all this mean to the economy of the Imperial Valley, which has a horrible employment rate. Speaker 2: 05:08 Yeah, there's a, there's sort of always been hope in the Imperial Valley that, uh, if you get, you know, lithium and mineral extraction off the ground and if that helps get more geothermal projects built, that this could be a significant source of, of tax revenues and royalty payments and, you know, potentially construction jobs. It's something that they've wanted for a long time. I think the, the folks there, you know, rightly skeptical anytime a company comes around now and says it's going to get this done because so many others are promised in the past. But there's, you know, there's, there's hope, it's an industry that, uh, you know, it's a farming region mostly. Uh, a lot of the jobs are, are low paid agriculture jobs. And so this is an industry that, that people that are hopeful can, can provide something new and different for that economy. Speaker 1: 05:49 And, uh, if there was a way to remove this lithium from the brine in a cost effective way, uh, that could lead to more geothermal plants being built there. Right? Speaker 2: 05:59 Yeah. That's, that's one of the potential virtues of it. So geothermal is, we, as we discussed earlier, it has this potentially very valuable role that it could play as, as California tries to achieve 100% climate friendly energy sources, which is that it can go, you know, around the clock 24, seven unlike solar and wind, um, you know, advocates for the technology say that we just need to figure out ways to get around these high upfront costs and get investors to actually finance these plants. Um, so that can play that role. The lithium could help with that because basically it's, it's another revenue stream, right? If, if someone's trying to get a geothermal project built, it looks a lot better on paper. If you can say, not only am I going to generate revenue selling electricity, I'm also going to be able to sell all this lithium. Speaker 1: 06:42 I've been speaking with reporters, semi Roth of the Los Angeles times. Thanks very much. Happy to be here. Speaker 3: 06:48 Uh. Speaker 1: 00:00 LA Jolla Playhouse kicks off another without walls or wow festival tomorrow. There are local as well as international companies performing 22 site-specific works through the weekend. KPBS arts reporter Beth Armando looks to a quartet of local artists and lets them describe their shows and explain what the wow experience is like. Speaker 2: 00:23 Hi, I'm David Israel Renoso. I'm a scenic and costume designer as well as the founder and creator of [inaudible], which is an immersive theatrical company here in San Diego. Uh, working on a new piece for the without walls festival Speaker 3: 00:37 [inaudible] Speaker 2: 00:37 so let's continue. This is an immersive show in which audience members enter two at a time and you are assessed, you're outfitted with some sort of optical year and you enter into what I kind of like to call an analog virtual reality in which you do enter kind of a new dimension, if you will, and much in the same way that you do when you enter and put on sort of VR goggles. But what you're seeing is something that's completely analog. What's really amazing about working in site specific work or work that sort of non traditionally set in a containment of a theater proper is the opportunity to really have the space dictate what the story is and how it is that you take in the story. As you're creating a work, you're always taking that into consideration as to how it is that audience members maneuvers of the space. Speaker 2: 01:27 What is it that the picture that's provided for them? What are the sights and sounds and the texture that's already alive and well within the space? What are sort of the ghosts, if you will, that are already in his space and what is it that that does to then bring a filter or sort of a lens for this experience? It's this other character within the story that is very, very crucial. I think strangely, my hope is that in some ways this piece leans into maybe being categorically classified as a work of horror, but I think in a non, not sort of the way that you expect it, I think it's more so in the way that falling in love is actually terrifying. Leaving behind the season of your life is really scary. Uh, embarking a new one is actually really quite frightening. Those are like great sort of monsters in our own psyche and so my hope is that that tension and that sense of courage that it takes to embark into a new season is harnessed within the piece and it is a bit of nerving and that that tension is captured in your experience of less than 10 years. Speaker 3: 02:35 [inaudible] Speaker 4: 02:36 my name is Molly per year. I'm the executive director for malice shock dance and we're here getting ready for without a net, which is a big circus themed production. It's an immersive interactive experience that involves dance and acrobatics and all sorts of different apparatus. We have contortionists and sideshow and all of this is part of LA Jolla play houses without walls festival. We are big fans of without walls and just seeing and being inspired over the years by the different types of projects and partnerships that they've created inspired us to get outside of our norm. John Malouf shock is well known as a choreographer. He's been here for 32 years, but this gave us an opportunity to get out people outside our normal dance world to come in and be part of this project. So it pushed us to reach out into the community to get to know the circus community here, which has been really, really fun and get people on board like a contortionists that we never would have worked with before. So it's really expanded how we view performers and gotten us outside of our, our dance community a little bit. Um, which is really exciting for us and just having it run by a theater company and someone who produces, you know, an organization that produces theater has also pushed us to make this really theatrical and have speaking parts and have people that interact with the audience in a way that we normally wouldn't Speaker 5: 04:08 and break that wall with the audiences as a damn high. Speaker 2: 04:14 My name is John Luke from San Diego circus center. I'm the founder and owner. We've been around for eight years and we're so excited to be part of wow festival. We were approached about a year ago and we had to come up with an idea. And what happened at that time as I had so much problems with immigration, I had international students wanting to come train. Uh, visas were expensive. So when wow approached me, I said, well, our world right now and without walls is let's break down the walls. So therefore this whole show is about inclusion. Circus is international circus, Africa, France, Cuba, Brazil, Canada, the U S Australia. So what we're trying to do is represent the world and how difficult it is to get into the country to express your culture. If we have more and more walls, then we won't be able to understand other people. We won't be able to share our culture. So this show for the wild festival is called inclusion, not exclusion, inclusion. And we go through clowning Tito board, a Russian bar, Lira, trapeze, acrobatics to express Speaker 5: 05:29 are art. Speaker 6: 05:32 My name is Blake McCardy and I'm the director of artistic development for blind spot collective, which will be producing hall pass in this years without walls Fest. Speaker 6: 05:43 And the whole show takes place in a high school. So the audience traverses the halls and classrooms and bathrooms of a high school because at any given moment during the show, there are five things happening simultaneously and in many ways the audience chooses their own adventure and receives a class schedule at the beginning of the performance from which they are choosing the things they will see and those things don't repeat. So it is impossible to see everything that's in the show in a single performance because it has a cast of over 60 performers and 24 different playwrights and composers, each of whom contributed a single short play or musical, all of which are about high school and about what high school might be like in 2019 so our entire performance will unfold at high tech, high in the high school at high tech high. And so we are responding completely and entirely to the architecture and the environment that is on that campus. Speaker 6: 06:53 Part of our goal with this show is really to potentially engage an audience that otherwise might not attend. Traditional theater. Theater generally has a lot of rules. You sit in a dark room, you turn your phones off, you don't talk, you clap. When it's over. An immersive theater and site responsive theater, a lot of those rules get thrown out the window. And in many ways, the audience gets to engage in material in a very different way that has fewer rules, fewer structures, and really relies on on the audience's participation and their investment and engagement in the work. And so for us, I think it's a, it's an exciting opportunity for the audience to have choice and agency to actually craft their own experience because it's entirely up to them to actually choose what it is they want to see and how it is they want to engage with those pieces. Speaker 7: 07:52 [inaudible] Speaker 1: 07:53 LA Jolla, play houses without walls or wow. Festival begins tomorrow. It runs through October 20th at Liberty stations arts district. Tune in tomorrow for part two of Beth's wow. Coverage, which will feature the New York companies performing at the festival.