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“We need to have a Supervisor that gets serious about homelessness and cleaning up our streets,” Faulconer said.
San Diego County has seen quite a political shift in the last decade. Long a bastion of conservatism, the formerly red region has gone Dem for key offices including the majority of seats on the County Board of Supervisors. But with this blue wave has also come a wave of problems that Republican political hopefuls plan to capitalize on. Among them, former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer who is looking to unseat incumbent Terra Lawson-Remer for the County Board of Supervisors District 3 seat.
“We need to have a Supervisor that gets serious about homelessness and cleaning up our streets,” said Faulconer on X. “We actually need to construct the housing that our families need, that we need to have a supervisor that’s going to get serious about homelessness and cleaning up our streets and our public spaces.”
The Annual Point in Time Count for 2023 tallied 10,264 individuals experiencing homelessness across the county. That is the highest amount ever seen in the region’s history and an increase of 14% over the previous year, despite officials throwing money at the problem for a decade.
Homeless service providers received $2.37 billion in taxpayer money from local governments in San Diego County between 2015 and 2022, according to the San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation and the numbers have only gone up.
“While spending on homelessness has increased dramatically in recent years, taxpayers have not seen the commensurate decrease in homelessness numbers that many expected,” the report states.
Faulconer believes frustration over the issue could get voters in the district to see red.
“People are dying on our streets at record levels thanks to the inaction from Terra Lawson-Remer while in office,” said Faulconer in a Post on X. “It’s not compassionate to let people die on our streets. We must change that and I will as your next Supervisor.”
In his first year as mayor in 2014, the number of homeless went down and the number of sheltered went up. Faulconer pushed for more homeless and bridge shelters in the city which led to those declining numbers.
Faulconer also is firing off about rising crime in the region and believes law enforcement needs the backing of the government as the Sheriff’s Department deals with a staffing shortage county-wide.
“With me you're going to have a supervisor that makes the county safer,” said Faulconer. “We need a supervisor that understands if we don’t have a safe county, we don’t have anything.”
The seat will be decided in the general election on November 5th, 2024.
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