Candidates for San Diego mayor clashed Wednesday night over homelessness, bike lanes, street vendors, the housing crisis and other issues during a televised debate.
Incumbent Todd Gloria said reducing homelessness is his top priority and touted his creation of 931 new shelter beds in the past 12 months, the city’s year-old ban on homeless encampments and his plan for a new shelter with as many as 1,000 beds.
Challenger Larry Turner said the encampment ban isn’t enforced aggressively enough and called the proposed shelter a bad financial deal that was sprung on neighbors after months of secret negotiations.
The mayor said shelter beds are crucial because they get people off the streets and can be a key first step toward housing, behavioral health treatment and other help.
“It is not acceptable to leave people living on our sidewalks, and the only way to solve that is to make sure we have shelter and housing for them to go to,” he said, conceding he hasn’t yet solved the problem. “In the first four years, we’ve done a lot. I need four more years to do more.”
Turner said the mayor hasn’t come up with any solutions to the underlying problems causing homelessness, suggesting city officials identify people at risk of becoming homeless and give them money to help stay housed.
Gloria and the City Council have created rent subsidy programs to help some people avoid homelessness.
Turner also accused the mayor of making an aggressive push on homelessness this year in hopes of getting re-elected.
“You’re seeing there’s a lot of solutions coming out here in the ninth inning,” Turner said. “A lot was not done during the first three years of his administration.”
The two candidates also disagreed about controversial city efforts to add protected bicycle lanes in many neighborhoods, which often face backlash over lost car lanes and street parking.
Turner said most of the bike lanes San Diego builds aren’t planned well enough to achieve the goal of keeping people safe, saying such lanes make more sense in flat places like Denmark, and he complained that Gloria’s staff doesn’t give neighbors enough notice of new projects.
Gloria said keeping all San Diegans safe requires the city to make public infrastructure that serves people who use all modes of transportation, not just drivers and pedestrians.
“Right now, for too many San Diegans, the only choice to get from A to B is their car,” Gloria said.
Another key issue during the debate was the city’s recent crackdown on street vendors, a piece of legislation that has also outlawed some yoga classes and other commercial activities in city parks and beaches.
While the mayor said he is open to reforms, he praised the legislation as a strong improvement over the “wild West” atmosphere that existed without it.
“Our public spaces are more accessible to everyday San Diegans,” Gloria said.
Turner said the legislation goes too far and has had unintended consequences, such as making it illegal for performers to blow bubbles in a park.
“I would start from scratch,” said Turner, criticizing the mayor for waffling on several parts of the legislation and how it would be enforced. “If that’s not the approach the mayor wanted the police and the park rangers to take, he should have been a leader.”
Gloria and Turner also debated the city’s housing crisis, particularly the shortage of affordable housing and the key impact it has in light of San Diego’s high cost of living.
Gloria touted a long list of reforms and incentives he’s created to spur more housing production, speed up approvals and diversify housing choices.
“The most effective way a mayor can address the issue of cost of living is to build more housing,” he said. “My administration has made that a priority, and we will continue to do that.”
Criticizing Gloria’s approach as “Build, baby, build,” Turner said most of the new housing created by Gloria’s policies is market-rate, not subsidized.
He also criticized the mayor’s policies for allowing the replacement of older housing that tends to be lower-rent with shiny new high-rises that cost more than most people can afford.
“We’re losing affordable housing with this build, baby, build approach,” Turner said.
Gloria is a Democrat who previously served in the state Assembly and on the San Diego City Council. Turner is an independent candidate and retired U.S. Marine who has been a San Diego police officer for the last eight years.
A poll conducted for the San Diego Union-Tribune and 10 News and released this week showed Gloria leading Turner by 4 points, down from a 13-point lead in a similar poll conducted in July. Both polls also found large shares of voters still undecided — 36 percent in July and 28 percent this month.
Gloria’s campaign said it has conducted polls where the mayor holds a more comfortable lead.
Gloria got more than twice as many votes as Turner in the five-candidate primary, a little more than 132,000 to just under 61,000. Gloria drew 49.9 percent of the vote, while Turner got 23 percent.
Originally Published: