A few weeks ago a man started screaming in the alley behind our house. Unfortunately, screaming is not uncommon for us. But usually it comes and goes – less often than the planes, more often than the helicopters.

A man runs around screaming all the time. Long beard, bicycle. Sometimes he begs on the corner. Sometimes he disappears for weeks. But he’s always back and almost always screaming.

That wasn’t him. We know him. This was deeper, closer and more disturbing. And it didn’t go away. It scared my daughter. I went back there with the flashlight and found the man. He was wrapped in a combination of blankets and trash. He ranted incoherently and didn’t notice me even when I tried to get his attention.

Finally I yelled “Hey!” He turned around and looked straight at me. “You’re scaring people.”

He lost his temper. “I’m so sorry. I know, I know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

The way he recovered immediately turned my anger and fear into pity and wonder. It was like he was two people. The one who has gone insane and is screaming from the cold, fueled by the drugs, the trauma. And the one beneath the surface was almost watching itself.

It was cold. San Diego is more comfortable for homeless people than most other places, but try sleeping in 45 degrees. It’s freezing cold. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t last more than a night or two before…well, before I did things that would probably result in screaming.

…

We are now in the eighth year of the homelessness crisis, dating back to 2017, when deaths from viral infections spread due to poor sanitation worried San Diego leaders enough to mobilize the government to address the problem . Now, almost eight years later, things are as bad as ever.

We are numb to so much of it. The suffering and the poverty. The disorder and the chaos. The screaming. It almost needs someone new, a visitor, to remind us to look at it.

Matt Greene had that experience. He is a hotel manager who recently returned to San Diego to become general manager of Hard Rock San Diego. When he arrived, he was stunned by the disarray downtown. The city’s inability to care for dangerous or suffering people shocked him. He decided to dig in and find out what was going on. Now he’s the latest in a long line of businessmen who have tried it solve it. Since this summer, it has taken months of research and meetings with law enforcement, city leaders and experts.

He basically accomplished nothing. Just trying to answer the simple question of why the police and prosecutors don’t try to enforce the regulatory offenses they are confronted with every day drove him crazy.

“The city and county are completely broken — the way the jurisdictions are divided. They don’t work together,” he told me.

He met many executives.

“Everyone cares. You can see that on their faces. They don’t agree with any of my frustrations. But no one knows what to do,” he said.

“The last thing I want to be is an opponent. But things have to change, and quickly. “It’s at a catastrophic level,” he said.

…

San Diego is facing disaster. The city is teeming with suffering. Its infrastructure is crumbling. The cost of living is extremely high and rising rapidly. People leave. Growth forecasts for the region show a peak and a downturn for the first time in decades, not because people don’t want to be here, but because they can’t afford to be here. Public school enrollment has declined.

However, San Diego’s history is full of moments when it seemed unsalvageable. Every city has a similar story – moments of prosperity, followed by recessions, health crises, disasters, despair, but then great leaps in design, construction and innovation, followed by growth and prosperity.

We can meet the moment again. But in 2025 it will take something we didn’t see in 2024: creativity and leadership.

We begin 2025 with yet another lack of leadership on the county board of supervisors. The chair suddenly disappeared again. The agency responsible for the region’s huge behavioral crisis must again wait for an election to determine its priorities.

San Diego City Mayor Todd Gloria has declared this an “era of austerity.” With a budget deficit as large as the one he is facing, we can expect austerity measures. But austerity is not a vision. It is a practice, a discipline, to increase revenue and reduce expenses.

What we cannot do is curb our creativity, as if we also had to curb our ambition and determination.

This is not a storm we can hide in and let pass. Creativity and ambition are our only way out. We need people to embrace ideas, look for resources and partnerships, and push their colleagues and superiors to cut bureaucracy. And all of this is just to get the beds we need to treat people, the shelters and rooms they can go to, especially if we want to drive them out of other areas.

If we are ever to build the infrastructure and housing needed to sustain a great city, we need to move even faster to move things forward and provide the resources.

This New Year will have to be a year of ambitious problem-solving efforts. If not, San Diego, the city and the entire region will see another turn into the spiral of decline and despair.

The thing that scared me the most when the man in our alley woke up to my voice was his statement: “I’m so sorry. I know, I know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

It scared me because I didn’t know what to do or where to go either. I am one of the most well-connected people in the city. I know more about how it works than almost anyone. And I had no idea what to do for him.

He got up, packed up his things and left. I called after him and asked if I could help, but he said nothing. As I entered our house, I could hear the screaming start again.

Voice of San Diego will complete its 20th year of operations in 2025. It represents a small investment in the sea of ​​San Diego’s vast wealth, in a conscience for San Diego – a voice in San Diego’s head reminding the country how it must be better, how it can be better, and how it is strong enough to face its problems head on.

We’ll be there in 2025 to report on the future of San Diego. We must face the clamor head on.