OUSTED: Hillcrest Business Association’s restraining orders target homeless

In an effort to reduce the impact of homelessness on local businesses, Hillcrest Business Association (HBA) now uses temporary restraining orders to ferret out people who are simply homeless from those who are homeless and pose a threat to their own safety and that of others because of severe mental illness or criminality. (hillcrestbia.org/clean-safe/homeless-outreach-program/)

According to HBA’s executive director, Benjamin Nicholls, adding restraining orders will expedite the efforts of a program in Hillcrest modeled after downtown San Diego’s Homeless Outreach Team, or “HOT.”

“We used the downtown model to set up our own homeless outreach team – the Alpha Project,” says Nicholls. “Using $50,000 provided by Councilman Todd Gloria’s office and another $30,000 from HBA over two years, we basically created a full-time team of specialists with a van full of supplies going around Monday through Friday helping to get homeless people in Hillcrest off the streets and into services they need.”

But, he says not all of Hillcrest’s homeless population want services, no matter how badly they need them. According to Nicholls, a “core group” of about eight homeless residents of Hillcrest “refuse assistance.”

“They tend also to be the ones who intimidate businesses, their employees and the customers trying to do business or make purchases in the neighborhood,” Nicholls says. “With a restraining order, we can enlist the help of police to guide them into medical and mental-health services.”

According to Nicholls, volunteers and staff working under the auspices of the Alpha Project, have enlisted the help of local businesses to hone in on a core contingent of chronically homeless and purportedly mentally ill people who he says “cause the most trouble” for local residents, businesses and shoppers.

“We’re not talking about simply asking for money,” says Nicholls. “Spitting on people, threatening physical violence, blocking customers from entering stores, openly using drugs where children are present; these are the kinds of things we’re talking about – not your ordinary homeless person just down on their luck.”

One barista at a Hillcrest coffee house who asked not to be identified by name because she is not authorized to talk to the media believes heroin use by local homeless youth is on the rise. She says she has encountered evidence left behind in Starbucks’ restrooms as she was cleaning.

“It’s really scary,” she tells San Diego LGBT Weekly. “You’ll find needles, even blood splatters in the restroom right after one of these young homeless teenagers leave. I understand that they need treatment, not jail. I fully support that. But maybe the restraining orders, which I didn’t even know we’re being used, will help them get into treatment.”

Says HBA’s Nicholls, a single individual has been identified as the source for as many or more disturbances at local coffee houses, retail shops and businesses along University Avenue and nearby streets, than all of the others in the “core group” of Hillcrest’s chronically homeless population combined.

“We know that individual’s name and have gotten a temporary restraining order to help protect our members who say he’s been harassing them for a long time,” says Nicholls.

One local business owner and HBA member claims to have suffered particularly severe damage to their storefront business in the form of vandalism and lost customers due to intimidation by the same homeless and possibly mentally ill individuals upon whom Nicholls and the Alpha Project team are now focusing.

“I’m glad someone is finally taking action,” says the business owner, who asked to remain anonymous because they fear being retaliated against. “Sometimes extreme problems call for extreme solutions.”

But critics say programs like the Alpha Project simply criminalize homelessness. They say arresting people or using restraining orders to move them out of neighborhoods like Hillcrest does nothing to solve the root problems that cause homelessness.

Advocacy organizations have said for years that the root of the homeless crisis is insufficient access to mental health services and addiction-treatment programs, as well as a lack of affordable housing. Indeed finding affordable housing is a major challenge in cities like San Diego that one need not be homeless to encounter.

“Making us criminals because we ain’t got nowhere to go just don’t seem right,” a homeless man who goes by the name, “Buck” tells LGBT Weekly. Since the weather got colder and wetter in recent weeks, Buck has been sleeping in Hillcrest storefront doorways instead of the nearby canyons where he spent much of the summer and fall.

“Sometimes you ain’t doing nothing wrong and someone will call the cops on you just for breathing,” he says. “It ain’t easy. Oh yeah, they’ll take you away in one them vans if you act crazy enough, but they don’t give you no home to live in. So, you just come right back to where you started from.”

According to the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty, San Diego has 100 municipal ordinances that effectively criminalize homelessness.

“Criminalization is not successful at reducing homelessness,” authors of the report, titled “No Safe Place: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities” write. (nlchp.org/ documents/No_Safe_Place)

“[C]riminalization measures are expensive, ineffective, and may be unconstitutional,” the report continues. “Instead of criminalizing the life-sustaining conduct of people who are involuntarily homeless, cities should institute constructive alternatives to criminalization that reduce homelessness while also meeting the goals of the local business community, service providers, government and taxpayers.”

Yet homeless advocacy groups and organizations like Hillcrest Business Association share the opinion that society is putting too much pressure on agencies whose primary purposes are anything but providing mental-health and social services.

“The police can only do so much,” says HBA’s Nicholls. “HBA can only do so much. We would like to do everything possible to help these people get help and find homes. But we’re a business advocacy organization first and foremost. That’s our mission; that’s our job, helping businesses in Hillcrest thrive.”

According to him, the Alpha Project has “removed” hundreds of homeless people from Hillcrest’s streets. However, many question his claim, not least among them Anthony Gioffre. Gioffre recently authored a column in this publication lambasting what he describes as a failed “care-not-cash” approach to homelessness. (lgbtweekly.jeffjungblut.com/2015/12/07/ homeless-in-hillcrest-why-the-care-not-cash-approach-just-isnt-working/)

Nicholls is unfazed by such criticism.

“The critics don’t understand the problem businesses face,” says Nicholls. “We’re trying to find a balance of doing the right thing for the chronically homeless and mentally ill in Hillcrest, while making a safe, enjoyable place to shop and do business.”