San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria Tells Bill Walton to Shut Up and Dribble
San Diego’s own Bill Walton, the former UCLA and NBA basketball and broadcasting great, has always had a social conscience and has never been timid about expressing it.
Walton recently came down hard on San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria for doing nothing to solve the homeless problem in the city. After having been assaulted by homeless people while riding his bike in Balboa Park, Walton wrote on Instagram:
“Sadly, and with a broken heart, I can no longer say that my hometown of San Diego is the greatest place in the world, I can no longer say that SD is a safe, healthy, clean, and beautiful place, I can no longer urge my family, friends, tourists, and businesses to come to SD to live, work, and play,” Walton wrote.
“I can no longer say that our neighborhood for the last 43 years is still my dream, I am brokenhearted, Mayor@toddgloria—clean up our city, and let us reclaim our lives, we must fix our homeless crisis, we need engagement, rehabilitation, and constant enforcement, and we need it now.”
Walton named San Diego’s many homeless camps “Gloriavilles,” a reference to the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression, and called upon Gloria to resign
Gloria effectively told Walton to shut up and dribble, going so far as to call Walton and two others who spoke out “liars.”
Gloria’s spokesperson said “he has done far more to address [homelessness] than anyone else in our region’s history. He has dramatically increased and diversified the city’s network of shelter beds, launched and expanded a highly effective street outreach program, initiated 18 different policy reforms to make it faster and easier to build affordable housing, directly invested city funds in 10 affordable housing projects, championed efforts at the state level to enhance access to mental health care, and stepped up sidewalk cleanups and law enforcement to protect health and safety in our public spaces.”
Yet there are record numbers of homeless people living on San Diego’s streets. A recent count in and near downtown tallied 539 tents.
