Hillcrest eyes assessment fees for security, homeless outreach

Businesses and residents in parts of Hillcrest soon may be asked to support an extra tax to pay for more security and outreach workers to deal with homeless people in the neighborhood.

“Everybody is seeing the impact of the increase in homelessness,” said Benjamin Nicholls, executive director of the Hillcrest Business Association.

A new assessment fee will provide enhanced security, more street-cleaning and homeless outreach to deal with a population of homeless people many in the neighborhood say are sometimes aggressive and disruptive to businesses.

It’s not the first time the HBA has attempted to address the issue. In response to a growing number of complaints of aggressive panhandlers and unsanitary conditions in the community, the association hired Santee-based City Wide Protection Services in 2016 to patrol the area.

Even at the time, Nicholls acknowledged that the security team was not an ideal solution. Private security workers do not have much authority and often resort to simply annoying a person causing a disturbance, causing them to merely move to another location, he said.

The association has been working on improving its effort through the formation of the Greater Hillcrest Community Benefit District, which would operate a clean and safe program similar to ones run by the Downtown San Diego Partnership and Little Italy Association.

Like those programs, the new Hillcrest effort will include social workers who would meet with homeless people on the street to try and connect them with services that could lead to treatment, shelter and housing.

“We don’t have the budget to do that,” Nicholls said. “We barely have the budget to do the security we do now.”

The assessment, which would have to be approved by property owners and business owners, would be based on lot sizes and would have different formulas over four zones. According to the association’s website, the cost to a condo owner in the Atlas building would be the equivalent of 3.2 Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes each month.

Nicholls said San Diego City Councilman Stephen Whitburn, whose district includes Hillcrest, has supported more outreach workers in the area. Providing outreach workers rather than law enforcement or security forces also has been a growing trend throughout the country in dealing with homeless populations. The city of San Diego recently contracted with a firm to do outreach specifically at encampments on Caltrans property in an effort to find people shelter or services before they are moved out.

The new assessment also would pay for regular sidewalk and gutter sweeping, sidewalk steam-cleaning, trash pick-ups beyond what’s provided by city services, maintenance of existing and new public spaces and the installation and maintenance of plants and flowers throughout the district.

The plan began in late 2019 with a community survey, followed by the creation of a management plan developed last year by New City America. The plan is under review by the mayor’s office, the city attorney and the city Office of Economic Development.

A series of public reviews of the plan was completed this month, and the next step will be to petition property owners to ask the City Council to authorize a vote on the assessment. The petition must be signed by 30 percent of all property owners.

Bob Ray, owner of Ray’s Tennis on University Avenue, agrees that more efforts must be undertaken to address issues with homeless people in the neighborhood.

“There’s always a mess in front of the store when I show up in the morning,” he said. “It takes about 10 minutes to clean it up.”

Even worse is the alley behind his shop, which Ray described as an outdoor toilet. Homeless people around his business usually aren’t aggressive, but he said there was one person who was sleeping on his front step and refused to leave until he squirted him with water.

While he agrees more should be done to address the issue, Ray said he is not convinced the Hillcrest Business Association’s plan will work because he hasn’t seen much improvement since the group hired a security firm in 2016.

David Snyder, who owns a commercial mall on University Avenue, also is skeptical about the new assessment.

“They’ve been trying to deal with homeless issues for years, and it hasn’t improved,” he said about the Hillcrest Business Association. “Their efforts have been ineffectual. I do not believe they are the appropriate group to be handling this type of issue.”