Inside Todd Gloria's tent city: what the mayor doesn't want you to see

Mayor Todd Gloria likes to call his tent camps "Safe Sleeping." A new video from inside one of them shows what that really means.

On Thursday, Amy Reichert posted what she called an exclusive inside look at "@MayorToddGloria's taxpayer-funded homeless tent city." The video shows rows of red pop-up tents, many patched with blue and camouflage tarps, spread across a dirt lot under the eucalyptus trees.

Reichert says she went in last year looking for a homeless woman whose family had not heard from her. "The nonprofit running the site would not help her family locate her," she wrote. "The media are barred, and even elected officials have reportedly been denied access. I walked right in and spent two hours inside before I was recognized and asked to leave. I complied."

The deaths

According to Reichert, more than 40 people have died at the tent city. She has been inside the camp herself and has followed these deaths closely, and her count is the one to watch.

Even the lowest count is damning. A 10News investigation in July could document only 19 deaths at the city's two Safe Sleeping sites since 2023, 15 of them at the O Lot site by the Naval Medical Center, and could not get a cause of death for most of them. When the press is barred and the city won't say who died or how, counts built from what reporters can document will always fall short of the real toll.

The city's answer was a statement that participants' "health, safety, and well-being" remain its "highest priority."

More than 40 people dead in a city program that promised safety is not a priority being met. It is a program failing in plain sight, behind a fence the public isn't allowed past.

The joke is on the taxpayers

Gloria opened O Lot in 2023 with room for up to 400 tents and sold it as a clean, safe step toward housing. San Diegans have paid for the land, the tents, the security, the meals and the nonprofit contracts ever since. In July the city extended its deal to keep feeding the people living there.

What have taxpayers gotten for it? Camps they can't see inside. A death count they have to learn from TV reporters. And a mayor who keeps telling them the system is working.

A federal lawsuit now in court says the camps are "anything but safe." Reichert pointed readers to @eyeoftheSTORMsd, who has been covering that case.

Open the gates

There is a simple test for any program run with public money: can the public see it? If the Safe Sleeping sites are what the mayor says they are, he should welcome reporters, council members and families looking for their loved ones. Instead, a citizen with a phone had to walk in on her own to show San Diego what it's paying for.

San Diego deserves to know how many people have died in these camps, how they died, and what the city is spending to keep them running. Until the mayor answers those questions, it's hard to see him as anything but a joker running a very expensive, very deadly act.

Christopher South is the publisher of San Diego Newsline. Video stills courtesy of Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) on X.