San Diego City Wire

Mayoral candidate Larry Turner isn’t being hyperbolic when he describes homelessness in San Diego as a “humanitarian crisis” spiraling under the watch of his opponent and longtime city policymaker, Mayor Todd Gloria.

The Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel veteran turned San Diego Police Community Relations Officer said he’s just calling it like he sees it from the front line of the homeless crisis that has experienced a 45% population increase during Gloria’s first term, 20% of which spiked between 2022 and 2023 alone, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.

In an interview with San Diego City Wire, Turner described what it’s like policing a city with Gloria’s policies on homelessness and if elected, how his plan would address the crisis differently. 

“I just can't see people dying like this anymore,” Turner told San Diego City Wire. “It's shameful and [Gloria] should have dropped out and taken a job somewhere else because we can’t take four more years of this failure. His plan is horrible, he’s doubling down on it, and you know, lives are on the line.”

The latest polling by 10News and the San Diego Union Tribune shows that it's a close race between Gloria (37%) and Turner (33%), with 28% of respondents still undecided in the high stakes election. 

Unlike Gloria’s approach and track record of shuffling individuals between temporary shelter locations to a costly tune of $200 million during his tenure, Turner, an Independent, said he’s equipped and ready to deliver practical solutions to the crisis, including permanent, affordable housing where those in need can easily connect with the services they need to remain housed.  

This people-first, proactive strategy is based on Turner’s service in humanitarian aid missions around the world, and his hands-on experience working with the homeless in San Diego.

“The key issue in my plan is identifying the people that are on the cusp of homelessness ahead of time, through a network of property managers, security guards, pastors, nonprofits—linking them all together into an intelligence network to let us know who those people are,” Turner said. “Let's get them fixed up so that they can go on to a healthy happy life, not just shove them into a warehouse so that they don't count as being on the street anymore.”

Despite the money Gloria has thrown at the crisis to the effect that Turner equates with ‘shoveling snow during a snowstorm,’ the 10,605 homeless people in the city far exceeds the 2,508 shelter beds available, with hundreds that will be removed from the equation in the coming months due to temporary permits expiring, among other reasons.

The shelter bed to homeless ratio in San Diego makes Gloria’s year-old Unsafe Camping Ordinance nearly impossible for police to enforce, Turner said. Passed by a torn City Council last year, the ordinance prohibits camping altogether in “sensitive areas” giving police the authority to disband encampments and even arrest individuals using a three-strike citation system—but only if shelter beds are available and refused by individuals. Otherwise, law enforcement can only move individuals along to their next sidewalk location, perpetuating the cycle.  

But Turner makes clear that despite his opponent’s narrative, being a cop doesn’t mean he supports arresting the homeless.

However, Turner also said there’s a population of people who cannot remain on the streets due to the risk they pose to the public and themselves.

“There's a criminal element that hides amongst the homeless and that group of five to 10% takes advantage of the larger homeless population—they get robbed, raped, overdose on bad drugs, have excited delirium and get hit by cars on the highway. There has to be a plan for all of them.” 

He recalled a recent meeting with a Bankers Hill business owner to discuss a string of incidents in which a homeless man repeatedly blocked the front door to their office while masturbating, forcing the mostly female staff to barricade until help arrived.

Ultimately, Turner blames the city for the recurring incidents, not the man blocking the office door.

“I don't like busting on the mayor's plan all the time, because I've got a great plan, but I end up spending so much time just destroying his because it's almost criminal,” Turner said about the amount of human suffering for both the homeless and business owners.

Yet Gloria’s focus remains on temporary shelter beds, according to Turner, who said the city is on track to lose hundreds more spaces than Gloria’s projected 600 by January. He blasts the mayor’s “mega shelter” proposal dubbed Hope @ Vine that would cost an estimated $18 million to build out a warehouse, located in the tourist-heavy cultural enclave of Little Italy, with the city estimating annual operating costs at $26.4 million.   

Turner projects the actual cost will be more like $1 billion for around 600 beds, since the mayor’s projection is based on the currently empty warehouse’s square footage, he said.

With his experience assembling teams to aid in global crises, Turner is confident that his approach to homelessness will be more effective than Gloria’s, while costing taxpayers far less. 

Meanwhile, Gloria is campaigning on the addition of over 900 “shelter beds” in the last year, when in reality most “beds” are actually tents in Safe Sleeping Program parking lots.

Turner said Gloria’s Unsafe Camping ordinance has failed, estimating only a couple dozen successful encampment removals since going into effect, while Safe Sleeping Program locations are anything but—rife with criminal activity and blocked off to police unless emergency services are requested by management or private security.

“I've had homeless friends who stayed at some of these, and they would meet me over by Balboa Park, further away from the where they wouldn't be seen talking to me because they're afraid of getting booted for reporting what’s going on,” Turner said. “There's rampant drug use, drug sales, violence and sexual assaults. All that happened there according to them.”

Turner recalled an encounter with a visibly injured mother and daughter who confided in him that a large male entered their tent and restrained them by sitting on their stomachs as he repeatedly punched them in the face. He said when he saw their faces, he encouraged them to file a police report but they declined, Turner thinks, over being scared of getting kicked out of the program.  

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, in early 2024, a United Nations expert on the right to adequate housing toured the Safe Sleeping sites occupied by roughly 500 San Diegans and criticized the use of roofless ice fishing tents to shelter the homeless. Balakrishnan Rajagopal said the tents are not warm enough to qualify as shelter, and at least need to have roofs. He also expressed fire hazard concerns, observing that tents were placed too close to one another.

“The best and brightest amongst us aren’t making these decisions—we're not relying on the experts in the field to empower the homeless. This is a politician's plan and that's where it really gets messed up,” Turner said of the roofless, bottomless ice fishing tents.  “I know a number of people who are homeless who didn't want to stay there because the rats were so bad and able to come into tents because there's no bottom.”  

Besides the dangers of Gloria’s Safe Sleeping Program, Turner also shared that increasing numbers of Venezuelan gang members infiltrating the homeless population are responsible for an uptick in violent crimes, including multiple stabbings, in the area surrounding the Golden Hall temporary shelter site in Downtown.

In the Sept. 23 mayoral debate hosted by 10News, Gloria insisted that violent crime is down in San Diego, to which Turner balked and cited underreporting as the culprit, noting that dispatcher shortages mean fewer 9-1-1 calls answered, which ultimately deters the public from calling for help.

Turner is additionally concerned about the true number of homeless people in San Diego, pointing to the city’s flawed point in time reporting that doesn’t employ infrared technology.

“As somebody who works with the homeless and does go into canyons and riverbeds—I have a really good idea for how many people live out there, and they’re not being counted,” Turner said. I've seen the way the city moves people before the count happens so it keeps the number artificially low.”

In August, CBS 8 reported the San Diego River Foundation’s plans to begin clearing out the city’s largest known waterway encampment known as “The Island,” where drone footage captured a boat taxiing inhabitants to and from the location under a freeway overpass near SeaWorld. It’s home to an estimated 40 people and roughly two tons of trash and debris the Foundation said will be removed in the three-phase cleanup, funded by a $3.6 million state grant the city received last year to address homelessness. 

Although the homeless crisis in San Diego reached a fever pitch in 2017 when a hepatitis outbreak linked to human waste and illicit drug use at downtown encampments infected 592 and took the lives of 20, alarm bells are again ringing as the election approaches and voters are confronted with decisions to consider that will impact the years ahead.

“I never wanted to be mayor,” Turner said regarding the high stakes election. “But I'm running because I want my kids to be raised in the best city in the country, San Diego. If this guy is running it for four more years, I think it would take decades to get back on track.”

The poll by 10News and the San Diego Union Tribune indicates a drop in support for Gloria since July, with Turner now trailing the incumbent by only four points.

“I’ve got business owners telling me, ‘I'm holding on until you win but if you lose, we have to shut down,” Turner said. “It’s a really bad environment for the businesses here except for developers who are mostly not from here, make a lot of money off San Diego and spend it back in their hometown. But our restaurants, hotels, realtor’s offices are suffering through this everyday.”