Scott Lewis at Voice of San Diego:
A few weeks ago, a man in the alley behind our house began screaming. Screaming is not unusual around us, unfortunately. But usually it comes and goes – less frequent than the airplanes, more frequent than the helicopters.
One man walks around screaming all the time. Long beard, bike. Sometimes he begs on the corner. Sometimes he disappears for weeks. But he’s always back and almost always screaming.
This wasn’t him. We know him. This was deeper, closer and more disturbed. And it wasn’t going away. It scared my daughter. I went back there with the flashlight and found the man. He was ensconced in a combination of blankets and garbage. He was ranting incoherently, unaware of me even as I tried to get his attention.
I finally yelled “Hey!” He turned and looked right at me. “You’re freaking people out.”
He snapped out of it. “I’m so sorry. I know, I know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”
The way he snapped out of it turned my anger and fear immediately into pity and wonder. It was like he was two people. The one made mad, screaming at the cold, fueled by the drugs, the trauma. And the one below the surface almost watching himself.
It was cold. San Diego is more comfortable than most places to be homeless but try sleeping in 45 degrees. It is bone-chilling cold. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t last more than a night or two before … well, before I did things that would probably lead to screaming.
We are now entering the eighth year of the homeless crisis…. We are numb to so much of it. The suffering and poverty. The disorder and chaos.
…
San Diego is facing a catastrophe. The city is teeming with suffering. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Its cost of living is extreme and escalating rapidly. People are leaving. The region’s growth projections, for the first time in decades, show a peak and downturn not because people don’t want to be here but because they can’t afford to be. Public school enrollment is down.
San Diego’s history, however, is full of moments when it seemed irredeemable. Every city has a similar story – moments of prosperity followed by recessions, public health crises, disasters, despair but then great leaps in design, construction and innovation followed by growth and prosperity.
We can, once again, meet the moment. But in 2025, it will take something we did not see in 2024: creativity and leadership.
