Vince. Welcome to Inside city election edition, an interview show produced by the students of San Diego City College. Each week, we speak to the news makers of this campus. I'm Vince outlaw. Since April, City Times media has conducted a survey in advance of this November's election. We asked, what are the issues you'd like to hear candidates talk about as they compete for your votes? Housing and homelessness stood among the top results today, we're chatting with special guest about this topic. Michael Evans is a mental health counselor here at San Diego City College. He's also a case manager for our Welcome Home City program. Michael is here to share his thoughts on housing and how it affects San Diego, City College and our community. But before we get started, here's a story City Times media is following right now that is tied to housing and homelessness. Let's take a look.
The former site of City College's Child Development Center will soon have new high rise housing a parking lot on the corner of 16th and B streets is the future location of the new housing project. Its aim is to help students and faculty in need. The plans include single and multi residents, units with 200 plus rooms and over 600 beds. For now, the site will serve as parking as the project develops. Officials expect the building to be complete in 2028 for cttv. I'm Ryan mateci.
Welcome back and Hello, Michael. I want to first thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
Thanks for having me. I'm very pleased to be here.
As we mentioned, you're a mental health counselor and a case manager for the Welcome Home City program here on campus. Could you provide some insight for our viewers who may not have heard of this program before?
Absolutely, I'd love to welcome home. City is a program that has been around here at City College for about four years, so dating back to 2021 and our whole goal as a program is to help our housing insecure and homeless student population do better in the classroom, and we do that by focusing on helping them find long term stable housing. So we do that with a number of different resources. We've compiled a bunch of resource lists to be able to provide students. We can also provide brief rental assistance, in some cases, if a student qualifies for that, if they're on a lease agreement. And then kind of our most robust service is being able to offer case management to students. So that's where someone like myself, a trained mental health professional, is meeting with the student regularly to be able to walk with them through all the various barriers that might be preventing them from entering and ultimately, just staying in long term housing. And a part of that process also looks like bringing in a housing navigator that can help students apply to housing, and as I mentioned, we can help with some of the costs of moving into housing as well. So we tried to take a more wrap around approach to the topic.
Originally, welcome home city was a three year funded program that began in 2019 and due to the pandemic, was extended for a couple more years. Can you tell us a little bit more how the program is funded, and for how long? Yeah, absolutely.
So originally, the program was funded, like you said, for three years as a pilot program. Our funding came from the state of California, from the Community College Chancellor's Office, the CC CCO, and we've gotten two one year extensions, so for a total of five years of funding, and we are in our final year of guaranteed funding, which means that we're also in the process of trying to find where our funding for the years to come is going to be. If there's one thing that I've learned in our time here doing Welcome Home City for the last four years, it's that the students are greatly benefited from from this program the community of faculty and staff and other professionals here on campus know and rely on us in a lot of ways to help their students that are in their classrooms dealing with homelessness, and so we're very determined to find long term funding, and I feel confident that in the next year we'll be able to secure long term funding to be able to stick around
longer. Okay, well, City College held a ground breaking on a student housing complex in October of 2023 How do you think this initiative will help combat the problem in our community?
Yeah, it's so exciting to think about a community college offering affordable student housing. It's something that doesn't exist very often or very many places, and certainly in the community college world, not something that exists at all, really. So we're excited that City College is going to be kind of the pilot school here in the district in the community college district San Diego to be running this program. It's going to be a large learning experience. It's set to take off in four years. So the fall of 28 is last I heard, when it's going to be getting off the ground. And ultimately, what it means for our students is one more resource to be able to help the housing climate in San Diego is very difficult, as most of us are aware, and this ultimately gives city college students one more resource to be able to try to find a place to live that is affordable and close by their top priorities. In this case, campus
excellent. It's a relief to know our campus is providing these types. Services for students. We're going to go to a quick break, but when we get back, we'll continue our conversation with Michael Evans,
I'm voting for more than just a person. I'm voting for affordable housing, I'm voting for my education, I'm voting for women's rights,
I'm voting for a fair living wage. I'm
voting I'm voting for our future, for my family, I'm voting because my life depends on it. Listen, it's time to reclaim your vote. Whatever your reason, whatever your issue, just vote. I'm voting.
Are you go to reclaim your vote.org? For more. This message is paid for by the National Urban League. Welcome back to Inside city election edition, we're continuing our conversation with guest Michael Evans about the ongoing housing and homelessness issues in San Diego. Programs like Welcome Home City are intended to help combat the housing crisis in San Diego. What are some of the main reasons you believe this city is so prone to these issues?
Yeah, I think one of the things that first comes to mind that I think most San Diegans are aware of as a sunshine tax. It's a great place to live. San Diego offers so many fun things to do on the weekend. Our weather is fantastic, and that has ultimately led to a lot of people moving here to San Diego to enjoy that. And functionally, what that has led to is a housing shortage. We don't have enough housing. I was just doing a little bit little bit of research before this, and found that last year in 2023 San Diego built more housing than they have in, I think 17 years, was the number that I saw. So where, hopefully, if we can continue that kind of trend, we're headed in a good direction. But ultimately, where we're at right now is we still have such a shortage of housing that programs like ours need to exist to be able to meet the needs of in this case, our students, but our community at large.
What do you believe are the key factors that need to be addressed this election season to help some solve the ongoing homelessness and housing problems here in San Diego? Yeah,
having worked in homeless services for a lot of years now, and volunteer work before that, a lot of people in my life ask me, how do we solve this issue? Because it's so visible and such a difficult thing and pulls on your heart strings and things like that. Ultimately, I think that it has to be a multi faceted approach of how we how we deal with this issue. So if we're coming across things on the ballot that have to do with health care, access to health care, including mental health care. Again, as a mental health professional, I have a bit of a bias, but we know that that's a part of the issue for a lot of folks. If we are expanding access to people, for for people to be able to get the help with substance use treatment and the mental health services that they need, we're going to be doing something right. And I think the most obvious answer is, if we are paying attention on the ballot and see any initiatives that have things to do with building more housing make it easier to to build housing, and ultimately, to maybe stop rent prices from driving all the way up as they have been in recent years, we're going to be doing something right. So we just need to make the conditions a little bit easier. A little bit easier for folks that are might that might be living either paycheck to paycheck, or might just need that lucky break to get into a house. And so anything that we can do that's going to allow that to happen, we have to pay attention to those kind of core basic needs first, so access to food, access to health care, and then ultimately helping people get jobs so they can get into
housing just down the street from us, the city of San Diego is using tents as temporary shelters for the unhoused people. It's been both praised and criticized by the public. In what ways is this approach by the city sustainable and helping the problem?
Yeah, and so you know, with the law that passed around camping in downtown, I believe last year that basically made it illegal to camp downtown. The city needed some kind of solution, and this was it was it was cheap and easy to make a lot of or to make a space where we can buy a lot of tents and have people live there. The issue is that it really isn't quite sustainable when I think back to some of the conversations I've had with students here at City College who have lived in those tents and had to experience the flooding that happened early in January this year, and then the kind of very intense heat that we had over the summer. We live in a temperate climate, and still living outside in a tent is not easy, and so ultimately, I hope that we are able to make our way to making just shelter spots more available. So I know that the city has been in conversation about expanding access to shelter, so we ultimately need a roof over people's heads, not just tents.
Great. So we're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we'll continue our conversation with Michael and tell you all how you can make a change this election season. We'll be right back. Hello. I'm John Legend and
I'm California Secretary of State, Dr Shirley Weber, did you know California recently extended the right to vote to eligible people currently in jail as well as those on probation and parole. Talk
to your friends, your family. Family and your loved ones, make sure they are registered and understand our shared responsibility.
Everyone should have a say in the political and economic systems that shape their lives. You
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Welcome back to Inside city election edition. Before we wrap up with Michael Evans, we want to let everyone watching know that their voice matters. Michael, with the election just around the corner, how can our viewers get involved in solving housing and homelessness issues in San Diego? What are the things that we can do ourselves?
Yeah, it's a great question, and something we all need to be asking as community members in San Diego, as I alluded to previously, there's not one solution to this, but I do think that it needs to start with us as responsible community members, having empathy for our neighbors that live outside. It's not as easy as just assuming that this person is living outside because of a drug addiction or mental health problems. Often, there are many things happening that could actually happen to you or I, and so I would encourage all of the folks that are watching this to to have empathy, to enter into someone's story, to listen, to go out of your way, to try to get to know someone that's in a harder experience, that might be experiencing homelessness, and allow that story to guide you to the polls and hopefully be able to support people by voting. Well, I
take it that that may be your message to students and others in the lead up to the election about the importance of voting.
Yep, we need to vote, and we need to be informed voters. So in a situation like this, where we're talking about homelessness and housing insecurity, getting to know the needs of the community from the community itself, that means allowing yourself to be in the same space as someone that might be experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity and asking them about their experience if they felt comfortable sharing, listen and allow that to guide us.
Great. That's all we have time for tonight. On this special edition of Inside city election edition, you still have time to add your voice to the City College community agenda and guide our coverage of the election, the link to our agenda survey can be found in the description below, and remember to follow SD City Times on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Thank you so much for joining us today, Michael. We really appreciate you taking the time Absolutely. Thanks
for having me.
I'm Vince al law for City Times media. Good night, everyone. You
