Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey: ‘Housing First’ plan for homeless is failing

Posted: February 15, 2023

Updated: 4:16 PM  KUSI Newsroom

CORONADO (KUSI) – As we all know, San Diego’s homeless crisis is only getting worse under the leadership of Mayor Todd Gloria, who continues to pretend like he is working to fix the issue. In September of 2022, local icon Bill Walton partnered with the Lucky Duck Foundation to call out Gloria’s failures, which made national news.

At that time, there was a then record 1,609 homeless people living on the streets of San Diego.

Fast forward to the present, and that number has increased every single month.

The Downtown San Diego Partnership just finished their January 2023 count, which found nearly 2,000 homeless people calling the streets of downtown home.

The one bright spot in the County of San Diego is the city of Coronado.

Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey has been committed to keeping the public safe, by keeping sidewalks as sidewalks, and parks as parks. Meaning, Coronado does not allow sidewalk encampments.

As a result, the City of Coronado has the lowest number of homeless per capita in the entire region.

Bailey pointed to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s preferred “Housing First” plan, as a reason for San Diego’s now out-of-control homeless crisis. Bailey simply said the Housing First plan does not work. Bailey also said you can put the local homeless people into two categories, “those that want help, and those that do not want help.”

Bailey suggested working with those who want help, and then find a way to prevent those who do not want help, from continuing to live on the streets without consequence.