Homeless San Diego

On a cold and rainy day a few weeks ago, Vernon Lamarr Clark robbed a bank. He said he did it so he could go to jail, get fed and stay warm and dry. He said he could not think of any other way to get help. Since work ran out two years ago, things have just gone to hell. After awhile, the unemployment checks stopped coming. His wife kicked him out. He was living on the streets, pushing a shopping cart and digging through dumpsters, sleeping in cars abandoned in back alleys.

Short on judicial majesty but long on streetwise practicality, Homeless Court is in session. "No one is going to jail this afternoon," Superior Court Judge Leo Valentine Jr. assures three-dozen people waiting nervously on folding chairs at the city's largest homeless shelter. "We're here to work with you."

After the Border Patrol van departed carrying the boys who did not run fast enough, Carlitos whistled, the sound echoing in the park beneath sun-glazed downtown office towers. "They're gone!" he shouted in Spanish, inhaling a blast of Octane Booster--a gasoline additive and makeshift drug--from a Coke can. "I chased them off." A dozen youths emerged warily from the trees: homeless illegal immigrants who earn a living in a verdant corner of Balboa Park where the cars circle day and night.

Police fatally shot a transient who allegedly charged at them with a stick Tuesday outside a fast-food restaurant. A patrol dog was wounded by one of the bullets. Five officers were attempting to arrest the man and three fired after he lunged toward them, said Bill Robinson, a spokesman for the San Diego Police Department. The man, whose name was not released, had struck a man on a bicycle and two people inside a McDonald's restaurant with the stick before police arrived, Robinson said.

The last thing the Neil Good Day Center wants to be seen as is just another shelter for the homeless. The center--which is the model for a similar facility that Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan wants to build in Downtown--is driven by a philosophy of offering hope to the hopeless, by taking tough stances toward the people whose lives it aims to turn around. For that reason, it offers no sleeping cots or food to the homeless.

It was a jolt: an unexpected announcement by one of the city's most acclaimed citizens. A bit of shock therapy for the body politic, perhaps. At the very least, it drove home an unpleasant fact of life: Even in boom times, there are growing numbers of homeless families in San Diego desperately searching each night for shelter. The jolt came last week when Catholic Msgr.

In the small park in front of Horton Plaza, the downtown shopping mall, the usual assortment of drifters, derelicts and screaming street corner proselytizers are gathered on a warm afternoon. Among them is William Troy Landreth, a young homeless man with a genius-level IQ who at age 18 became an underground hero to computer hackers nationwide. A pioneer in the craft, he was known at the height of his fame only by his code name: The Cracker.

Residents of Rose Canyon, whose expensive bluff-top homes overlook scenic hiking, biking and nature trails, are joining in opposition to a plan to erect a nearby "tent city" for the homeless within view of their affluent neighborhood. "Suddenly, Rose Canyon is becoming an embattled area," said Sandra Boyce, who helped organize a meeting of worried homeowners Wednesday night. "I know it sounds like, 'Not in my back yard,' but. . . .

In the most painful night of his life, Victor Ballard crawled along a rocky Encinitas beach for 12 hours, the crashing waves drowning out his cries for help, after a 60-foot fall from the bluffs above had broken both his feet. His shattered left foot wrapped in his shirt, the 33-year-old transient picked his way through the darkness along a half-mile stretch of rocky coastline until he was rescued Wednesday by an early morning surfer.

Short on judicial majesty but long on streetwise practicality, Homeless Court is in session. "No one is going to jail this afternoon," Superior Court Judge Leo Valentine Jr. assures three-dozen people waiting nervously on folding chairs at the city's largest homeless shelter. "We're here to work with you."

It was a jolt: an unexpected announcement by one of the city's most acclaimed citizens. A bit of shock therapy for the body politic, perhaps. At the very least, it drove home an unpleasant fact of life: Even in boom times, there are growing numbers of homeless families in San Diego desperately searching each night for shelter. The jolt came last week when Catholic Msgr.

The last thing the Neil Good Day Center wants to be seen as is just another shelter for the homeless. The center--which is the model for a similar facility that Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan wants to build in Downtown--is driven by a philosophy of offering hope to the hopeless, by taking tough stances toward the people whose lives it aims to turn around. For that reason, it offers no sleeping cots or food to the homeless.

On paper the issue is a fight over what to do with an industrial section of downtown San Diego called Centre City East, a jumble of warehouses, vacant lots, bus and trolley yards, and aging businesses with fences topped by barbed wire. But the fight could just as well be called a struggle for the soul of California's second-largest city. On one side is Roman Catholic Msgr.

After the Border Patrol van departed carrying the boys who did not run fast enough, Carlitos whistled, the sound echoing in the park beneath sun-glazed downtown office towers. "They're gone!" he shouted in Spanish, inhaling a blast of Octane Booster--a gasoline additive and makeshift drug--from a Coke can. "I chased them off." A dozen youths emerged warily from the trees: homeless illegal immigrants who earn a living in a verdant corner of Balboa Park where the cars circle day and night.

Byron Fuller, 39, a computer programmer who stays fit by playing a take-no-prisoners brand of basketball several times a week, surveys the incongruous scene and decides that it's working out fine. "We play ball and they watch," Fuller says. "Nobody gets rowdy and nobody crowds anybody." Joe Frazier is also pleased. He is on the other side of the social equation: 27, an unemployed cook, homeless these past few years. "This is an acceptable situation," he says. "It's not ideal.

Jimmy Church tries to earn a few bucks each day by dashing into the downtown streets and offering to wash the car windows of startled tourists and office workers. But he says police in recent days have twice poured the contents of his spray bottle onto the ground and warned him to stop pestering people. Church, 38, says he will continue hustling but in a more restrained manner. He does not want to get arrested and spend 72 hours in jail.

Byron Fuller, 39, a computer programmer who stays fit by playing a take-no-prisoners brand of basketball several times a week, surveys the incongruous scene and decides that it's working out fine. "We play ball and they watch," Fuller says. "Nobody gets rowdy and nobody crowds anybody." Joe Frazier is also pleased. He is on the other side of the social equation: 27, an unemployed cook, homeless these past few years. "This is an acceptable situation," he says. "It's not ideal.

Barefoot, dirty and frightened, three young children wandered up to the Mission Bay visitor's center and told a horrifying story of how their mother was brutally killed by a courthouse security guard she had turned to in a desperate plea for help for her homeless family.

First came the news that the San Diego Trolley and a new commuter rail line would come slicing through the canyon. That's Rose Canyon, near some of San Diego's most affluent neighborhoods, including the pricey homes of La Jolla Colony. Now residents here are being informed that the canyon, full of hiking, biking and nature trails, is being considered for a "tent city" for the homeless. The ensuing outcry has given new meaning to the Southern California buzz phrase Not in my back yard .

Residents of Rose Canyon, whose expensive bluff-top homes overlook scenic hiking, biking and nature trails, are joining in opposition to a plan to erect a nearby "tent city" for the homeless within view of their affluent neighborhood. "Suddenly, Rose Canyon is becoming an embattled area," said Sandra Boyce, who helped organize a meeting of worried homeowners Wednesday night. "I know it sounds like, 'Not in my back yard,' but. . . .