Will Balton: “If the mayor can’t help us deal with these vagrants, then maybe he needs to give over his position to someone who can.”

“It’s hard being homeless,” said homeless person and Tent City mayor Will Balton, speaking at a recent city council special session on homelessness in San Diego. “You’ve got the cold and the cops to deal with, plus the insane real estate market. I know people who are paying four or five days’ worth of panhandling just for a spot under an overpass. Others are having to sublet space in their tents to total strangers. But the real problem is the homelesser. These people seem to think it’s okay to just bed down wherever they please. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been pitching your tent in the same spot for weeks or even months, taking care of your little patch of concrete. They’ll just come in an shit all over everything — sometimes literally. Tent City is a community; we take care of each other. But when the homelesser move in, they harass folks, pick fights, and just create an unstable atmosphere. I know a lot of those people have fallen on hard times, and I’m sorry for them. But that doesn’t make it okay for them to come in and just ruin our neighborhood. On a purely economic level; it’s bad for business. You can’t run a proper bicycle chop shop when someone is sleeping at the entrance to your sales room and stealing your inventory. When is Mayor Gloria going to step up and do something about this?”