San Diego Hospitals, County Pledge To Improve Emergency Care For Older Patients And More Local News

Speaker 1: 00:00 It's Tuesday, December 10th I'm Deb Welsh and you're listening to San Diego news matters from KPPs coming up. San Diego hospital's pledge to improve emergency care for older patients and deny. New source investigation. Finds that hundreds of fire incident calls this year sided homeless encampments a situation leaving many residents on edge. That's my major concern that people are going to get hurt that more San Diego news stories coming up right after the break. San Diego emergency departments want to better serve the counties. Seniors KPBS health reporter Taryn Minto says nine local health care providers Monday pledged to improve geriatric care over the next year. The medical facilities agreed to get special training and certification to improve care for older patients. Local providers say more than a quarter of emergency department patients in 2017 were older than 60 seen Eagle's first accredited senior focused emergency department or ed opened at UC San Diego health earlier this year. Chair of emergency medicine, dr Ted Chan says, preliminary data show it's lowering the risk of patients returning. Speaker 2: 01:13 There's a 12% decrease in their risk of coming back to the ed within 30 days. Speaker 1: 01:17 The San Diego senior emergency care initiative is a public private effort to expand this specialized care county-wide. By 2021 Taryn mento KPBS news, the number of people apprehended crossing the Southern border continued its downward trend according to numbers released by customs and border protection. On Monday, KPBS reporter max Ryland Adler explains how last year's record eyes ever turned to more typical numbers along the border. Speaker 2: 01:45 According to CBPs newest numbers, the amount of people caught crossing the Southwest border in November, 2019 as compared to November, 2018 dropped by a third apprehensions along the Southwest border peaked in may, explained to acting commissioner of CBP Mark A. Morgan during a press conference on Monday. This decrease is more than 70% at the height of the prices in may. Remember that was 144,006 months later, we have reduced the monthly apprehensions by more than a hundred thousand CBP credits that drop district, your controls and immigration inside Mexico and policies aimed specifically at central American migrants in the San Diego sector. The amount of families apprehended so far in the fiscal year has dropped by 40% as compared to the same time last year, max Riverland, Adler K PBS news, Speaker 1: 02:36 Cal fire's making substantial progress on fire prevention projects identified at the start of 2019 Capitol public radio. Scott rod reports Speaker 2: 02:47 upon entering office, governor Gavin Newsome told Cal fire to take on 35 priority projects to help mitigate future wildfires. They included prescribed burns in vegetation management. Cal fire expects to complete three projects by the end of 2019 and the remaining two before next year's fire season. Heading into winter, CallFire is typically able to shift more resources from fighting fires to forest management. The agency says it will continue to identify new projects in the future. In Sacramento. I'm Scott rod. Speaker 1: 03:15 For about four and a half years. The city Heights coffee house has provided a place for community involvement and employing local youth. Recently it closed leaving some people wondering what's going on. KPBS speaks city Heights reporter Ebony Monet says the name of the business has changed but not the mission. Speaker 3: 03:37 The coffee is brewing again on university in 45th after about a month of locked doors, the city Heights coffee house is now Ryan brothers coffee, former city Heights coffee house, co-owner Sterling Tran says it was she and her husband's connection to the community's youth that inspired their coffee business. Java was the vehicle to bring people together and to facilitate a youth employment program, but it became too much to juggle. But we found that what we're really thriving at was the employment side of things. Um, but the business side of things is just really difficult. Speaker 1: 04:10 Tran will continue the workforce youth employment program under the new moniker worthy partnering with Ryan brothers coffee to train up to 10 young people a year. Ebony Monet K PBS news as spring Valley man's being held on $1 million bail after being arraigned Monday on charges of possession of assault weapons and child endangerment KPBS reporter Prius Schreder was in the courtroom. Speaker 4: 04:35 San Diego police arrested 30 year old Steve hummocky Thursday after being tipped off about a YouTube video. Hummocky allegedly made at a hotel in downtown San Diego. In the video deputy district attorney Wendy Patrick says hummocky simulated a mass shooting with several weapons. I describe this defendant basically as in a dangerous combination of having, um, a lot of weapons that were unsecured of having three illegal assault weapons and of having just reenacted a simulated mass shooting home. [inaudible] was not charged with any crime related to the video, but Patrick says police searched his home after being tipped off about the video, which led to his current charges in a jailhouse interview with channel eight. Hummocky said the videos were part of an art project and he never intended to carry out an attack. Priya, Sri, they're K PBS news, Speaker 1: 05:26 a one stop shop for homeless services. That's the goal of a new homeless navigation center. The city of San Diego is opening downtown. KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman has more on the project that's been in the works for a while Speaker 2: 05:40 and old indoor skydiving business near Imperial and 14th street is now the city's new homeless navigation center. At the beginning of last year, the city paid $7 million for the property that is now opening a year and a half behind schedule. I'm trying to get back up. No, Marcus Rouse says he's been homeless for the last three years. He visited the center with his girlfriend and five month old son on Monday looking for a place to stay. Right now their only income is social security. Speaker 5: 06:05 We can't be out here on the streets with woo baby Keylan. We know that already. So I mean it's like it's, it's very hard and difficult to find a place right now. There's a plan, but that's far Farfetch right now. You know, I mean $900 a month. That's not good. Not good at all. It should be more like 15 2000 maybe that gets him somewhere. You know for sure Speaker 2: 06:23 there are no beds at the navigation center, but staff could help the family get placed into a shelter, receive medical care and learn about substance abuse or mental health services among others. Matt Hoffman, K PBS news. Speaker 4: 06:33 Some of San Diego is highest fire risk areas are in his canyons and parks and that's a problem is homeless people seek shelter. They're setting fires to stay warm and cook. I knew source investigative reporter Mary plumber says it also puts homeowners on edge. It's set up time for the Oak park community council meeting. People are taping up a banner and mingling among rows of folding chairs. Some neighbors in the room want nearby North choice community park to be safer. One of the biggest fears, fire, dangerous tied to the local homeless population and Kampmanns abandoned trash and illegal fire rings have all been spotted among the parks. Dry brush neighbor Bruce Thompson takes the mic and talks about what was found during a recent park. Cleanup Speaker 6: 07:19 about eight lighters, eight empty, very water containers, countless cigarette buds. Um, Speaker 4: 07:25 Thompson says the city has poorly responded to the community's calls for help. Sometimes leaving encampments for several weeks before they're cleared out or he's have grown since August when a fire did break out in the park. But residents like a leader, Chavez worry next time it could be worse. That's my major concern that people are going to get hurt. The children. Families are gonna get hurt and whoever was living in this area is going to get hurt too. And I, new source review of resident complaints to the cities, get it done. App found long delays. Residents told us some submissions were described as closed or corrected, but the problems never fixed. On top of that, the city's own rules present challenges only the park perimeters are required to be cleared of brush, not Canyon beds where some homeless camp and use fires to cook. Residents. Fears are playing out across the city as San Diego grapples with a large unsheltered homeless population. Speaker 4: 08:20 They see a lot of homeless people in this area and especially when it rains, they seem to come out of the canyons and seek shelter. That's Timothy eLeads. She lives near Presidio park in old town and says she liked to see the city do more. She worries about homeless people living in the park. We certainly should be helping these people find safe places to live and to be clean and also for our safety too because they need help. Fire incident call records obtained by news source show. Firefighters are often responding to homeless problems. For the first nine months of this, 11% of the calls mentioned homeless encampments. Speaker 7: 09:01 Yes. Speaker 4: 09:01 After sunrise and Balboa park, a few dozen people are starting their date near Florida Canyon, where many homeless live there a makeshift tents and bags of cans and leftovers from a fire the night before. Tiffany Gifford says there are fires every night, but she'd rather stay outside than in a shelter. I feel safer. More people that I know around Gipper. It says she's waiting to get a section eight housing voucher assistance that could end her homelessness. Until then she says she uses a camp stove to cook food or a makeshift set up of wax wrapped around cotton balls inside an aluminum can. Gifford says she wishes there was more compassion for the homeless from the public. Don't know people just like you. They're not homeless or houseless. They just less fortunate. Do you guys, deputy fire chief Doug Perry oversees fire prevention in San Diego. He says to protect against fires connected to homelessness. The best solution is to get people out of encampments within the parks. Speaker 8: 10:03 When they're cold, they're going to start fires and they're going to start fires wherever they are, where they think they're safe and people don't know that they're there. Preventative wise, we've got to find places for them, uh, to be housed and taken care of. Speaker 4: 10:16 But the city's efforts so far have not worked. The latest homeless count found 2,600 people living with no shelter. As for mayor Kevin Faulkner's take on fire, danger is tied to homelessness. We asked for an interview instead, his spokeswoman emailed that the office is doing quote everything possible to mitigate the potential for spark. For KPBS, I'm I new source investigative reporter Mary Plummer. I knew source is an independently funded nonprofit partner of KPBS. That's all for San Diego. News matters. If local news matters to you, consider supporting KPBS by going to kpbs.org and clicking on the give now button.