The mayor of a small coastal community on the California coast has claimed there are no homeless people in his scenic resort city – thanks to no-nonsense policies implemented by his office.
Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, 37, made the claim during a televised interview Thursday, in which he addressed California’s worsening homeless crisis – and his city’s success in finding a solution.
Set on a peninsula that juts out into San Diego Bay, the situation in Coronado – where the typical home is worth more than $2million – is a far cry from those facing liberal-led cities set just miles away, including the city of San Diego.
Bailey, a Republican who became the youngest mayor in the city’s history, credited the vagrant-free streets to his office’s funding of ‘reasonable’ services designed to get people ‘back on their feet,’ and a zero-tolerance policy toward homeless encampments – a phenomenon that has grown all-too prevalent since the pandemic.
Speaking to DailyMail.com Thursday shortly after revealing the accomplishment to Fox & Friends, the veteran mayor confirmed his office recently helped find housing for a homeless individual – whom he claimed to be city’s last.
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Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, 37, made the claim during a televised interview Thursday, in which he addressed California’s worsening crisis – and his city’s success in finding a solution
The situation in Coronado is a far cry from those facing liberal-led cities just miles away, including currently overrun Los Angeles (pictured)
‘Saying yes to help and getting off the streets is the only option,’ Bailey told DailyMail.com Thursday, adding: ‘This can be scaled countywide to end homelessness.’
The city previously reported just one homeless person within the confines if the entire city, according to data from the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness – a number Bailey’s office successfully brought down from 16 seen in 2021 when rates of vagrancy surged all across the country.
But while homelessness has persisted – and worsened – in liberal strongholds across the state, Coronado has surfaced as a stalwart sanctuary for its roughly 20,000 residents amid the ongoing crisis.
Bailey, who during his first year as mayor brought the number of homeless citizens in his mayor to just two, credited his success to his continued enforcement of his no-encampment policy and his office’s insistence on offering homeless residents a solution to their woes – but only for those who want it.
‘Our main concern is twofold,’ Bailey told DailyMail.com Thursday shortly after his bombshell interview.
‘One – ensuring people that need help are made aware that help is available have access to the resources necessary to get back on their feet; and two – maintaining our public spaces so everyone can enjoy them which means keeping them free of trash, human waste, drugs/alcohol, and other obstructions.’
Set on a peninsula that juts out into San Diego Bay, Coronado is known for its plentiful parks, five star resorts, and multimillion-dollar mansions
Hours earlier, the mayor decried other cities and their officials for failing to implement such policies – including county seat San Diego, which has seen a ten percent rise in homelessness since the pandemic.
Nearby cities that fall into San Diego county such as the equally scenic Oceanside and Imperial Beach have seen even more pronounced rises, surpassing even 50 percent, according to data compiled by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
‘The policies that are in place at the regional and statewide level that are tolerating this type of behavior that is personally destructive and also destructive to the surrounding communities are really enabling this situation to increase throughout our entire state, and throughout our entire region,’ said Bailey, speaking to Fox’s Ashley Strohmier.
‘Changing these policies will actually have a major impact,’ he continued.
Coronado is so pricey, some staffers working at the cities hotels commonly commute from across the bay from San Diego to get to work, due to not being able to afford housing closer by
He would then tout to DailyMail.com how Coronado – a city known for its multimillion dollar mansions and pricey beachfront resorts – had the lowest number of homeless per capita in the region.
‘The City of Coronado has the lowest number of homeless per capita in the entire region. As of the last point in time count, that number was one and the individual subsequently got off the streets and got help,’ the mayor said.
Speaking to Strohmier, the politician – whose policies are markedly more moderate than many of his contemporaries – described how his office found success in housing the homeless crisis years ago, and has since never looked back.
‘We make it very clear that we don’t tolerate encampments along our sidewalks, and we don’t tolerate other code violations such as being drunk in public or urinating in public or defecating in public,’ Bailey said.
‘We just simply don’t tolerate these basic code violations. What ends up happening is an individual either chooses to get help or they end up leaving.’
Coronado – a scenic paradise where the average two-bedroom home costs more than $3,000 – has the lowest number of homeless per capita in the entire region
The city leader went on to add that contributing to the ongoing homeless crisis – especially in California – are progressive leaders’ failure to hold willingly homeless citizens accountable for their life choices.
‘The fact of the matter is there, although there are a myriad of reasons that people end up homeless, they eventually only fall into two camps — those that want help and those that do not want help,’ Bailey said.
‘And if those that are refusing to get help… shouldn’t be granted additional the ability to break laws such as tent encampments on the sidewalk or urinating or defecating in public.’
‘We need to be enforcing these policies to ultimately kind of help them get into that other camp that eventually get help,’ added Bailey, who did not specify what ‘reasonable’ services were being offered to get those struggling ‘back on their feet.’
The mayor also neglected to mention the lack of affordable housing in his city, where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is well over $3,000.
The average annual household income in the city – which essentially is to San Diego what Malibu is to LA – is $174,248, more than 75 percent times the national average.
Speaking to Fox and Friends’ Ashley Strohmier Thursday the mayor said the homeless crisis is being fueled by progressive leaders’ failure to hold willingly homeless citizens accountable for their life choices. He decried other cities and their officials for failing to implement such policies – including San Diego, which has seen a ten percent rise in homelessness since 2020
Hailed for its scenic beaches and waterside mansions, the city is far from popular with the working class, and is mostly associated with well-off residents, and serves as a hallowed vacation spot for trendy travelers all across the country
Hailed for its scenic beaches and waterside mansions, the city is far from popular with the working class, and is mostly associated with well-off residents, and serves as a hallowed vacation spot for trendy travelers all across the country.
That said, Coronado is so pricey, that staffers working at the cities several four and five-star hotels commonly commute from across the bay to get to work, due to not being able to afford housing closer by.
Still, the city’s beauty is unmatched – with its plentiful parks and greenery that Bailey’s office has fought to protect.
‘I love this place,’ single San Diego mom Evangelina Preciado – a head housekeeper at the Hotel Del Coronado, one of the top hotels in the country – said of the scenic city where she works.
Across the bay in San Diego, homeless encampments like this one have become a common sight – an occurrence the mayor blamed on the city’s and other woke leaders
‘This is beautiful, it’s quiet, clean, we have the beach. So everything is awesome here.’
Speaking to local outlet to KPBS, she said that as soon as she finishes work, she no longer feels welcome in the city due to the prices.
‘This is like my second home, because I pass more hours on the island than my home,’ Preciado said. ‘But I cannot live here. I just come and work, and I have to go back.’
Preciado’s predicament is emblematic of a much larger issue facing the city in regards to the city’s cost of living, which is on the rise as the city has failed to provide adequate housing to accommodate population and job growth.
Noticing this issue in 2020, state lawmakers drafted a housing plan that required Bailey and his office add capacity for 912 new homes over the next eight years, as residents are forced to compete for an ever-dwindling supply.
The situation grew markedly worse in mid-2020 during the pandemic, when liberal-led cities such as LA (pictured) found themselves overrun with homeless people
More than half the homes would be designated as affordable housing – a fact that has outraged well-off residents of the city.
Over the past year, in public meetings and in written comments, residents have argued that faster growth could harm Coronado’s character, while also increase traffic and blocking the sought-after ocean views.
Residents have also complained that the implementation of affordable housing could see property values plummet and make parking more scarce.
Amid that pressure from residents, Coronado sued the San Diego Association of Governments to lower its housing allocation and lost, before appealing the decision in 2021 only to have the case tossed once again.
At the time, Bailey called the prospective changes – the first time in more than a decade that the city has been asked to address its housing crisis – ‘absurd.’
‘We are essentially trying to comply with an absurd and not sensible state law,’ said Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey at a City Council’s meeting on June 15, 2021.
In the end, city staffers were able to negotiate a housing plan that zones for a much less marked 344 additional homes – a number Bailey said is closer to what Coronado can, and is willing to, handle.
Those cities are still struggling to house these individuals – a tall task considering the fact the Golden State currently accounts for nearly a third of the country’s entire homeless population
‘It’s not based on a pie in the sky number from the state, which had no basis in reality whatsoever, did not take into account our existing land use, size, not take into account available space, our existing infrastructure, our sewage, etc.,’ the mayor said at the time.
It comes as cities like Coronado, which has an abundance of military and tourism jobs, must find a way to house their rapidly growing workforce.
Due to limited space available on the peninsula, if the city cannot grow outward, new, taller and denser apartment buildings would have to be erected in the place of smaller structures. Residents have also expressed fears the changes could worsen the city’s crime rate, which is nearly half the national average.
In the meantime, California is struggling with its separate and fundamentally opposed homeless crisis, allocating $10 billion to quell the rising rates from 2018 to 2012.
The situation grew markedly worse in mid-2020 during the pandemic, when liberal-led cities such as LA, San Diego, and San Francisco found themselves overrun with homeless people.
Those cities are still struggling to house these individuals – a tall task considering the fact the Golden State currently accounts for nearly a third of the country’s entire homeless population.
