A new television spot suggests Mayor Todd Gloria has homelessness on the run. Running in place might be a more apt description, and a charitable one at that. There’s plenty of evidence that San Diego is actually backsliding in its efforts to reduce homelessness, which continues to grow. But you wouldn’t know that from the advertisement produced by an independent committee supporting Gloria’s re-election on Nov. 5 against challenger Larry Turner, a San Diego police officer. The piece relies on selective and dubious statistics to make the case for progress under Gloria, along with pointing to some legitimate, if general, policy advancements. The narrator says “Gloria cracked down on homeless encampments and reduced the number of tents downtown by 82 percent.” That may be true. Downtown has been cleaned up. But the ad doesn’t mention the number of homeless people living along the San Diego River is at a record high, according to Blake Nelson of The San Diego Union-Tribune. Other specific areas don’t have an organization like the San Diego River Park Foundation that takes such tallies. But anecdotal evidence suggests other neighborhoods also have experienced increases, such as Barrio Logan, where mostly asylum seekers were camped in a park until cleared out by the Port of San Diego. This is what critics said would happen when a divided City Council approved a Gloria-backed anti-camping ordinance in June 2023 that has largely been focused on downtown: Homeless people would disperse to other areas, some of which are harder for outreach workers to access. Like the San Diego River. The enforcement of the camping ban is only supposed to take place if there are available shelter beds, which are in short supply. Shelters are regularly filled nearly to capacity. The advertisement then displays the printed statement that under Gloria there has been a “70% increase in homeless shelters.” The mayor has claimed for well over a year the city has had a “70 percent increase in shelter beds.” Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego has done the math twice, once in June 2023 and again this week, and concluded this is false. Huntsberry points out the Gloria administration used creative accounting by starting the bed tally in April 2021, when several shelters were still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than the higher number from just before he took office in December 2020. When those shelters were reopened, the beds were counted along with additional beds made available under Gloria. The Voice determined the real increase is about 32 percent. Just recently, a status update on shelters overseen by the San Diego Housing Commission showed a loss of 71 beds during the 2024 fiscal year. That’s far from a complete picture, however. On the one hand, that’s likely an undercount of lost beds. A large shelter at Golden Hall has not been accepting new homeless people since the summer, because the facility is expected to be shut down in the coming months. Similarly, Father Joe’s Villages’ Paul Mirabile Center has limited its intake as it heads toward transitioning to a detox facility. That has resulted in a combined reduced capacity of about 250 beds. On the flip side, the city has added hundreds of tents at two safe sleeping sites in and around Balboa Park, along with increased safe parking spots where homeless people can sleep in their vehicles. Just this week, the city announced 180 tents were being added to the O Lot site and 50 to the 20th and B Street location, for a total of 760 tents. How all of this gets counted is complex. The federal government, which provides considerable funding for homeless people, does not consider authorized campsites and parking lots as shelters, while the city of San Diego and other jurisdictions do. At the moment, the city says there are about 1,856 shelter beds available. There’s no question homeless services, and mental health and substance abuse counseling, have been increased by the city and county. Many people have been helped. Yet for more than two years, more people have fallen into homelessness for the first time each month than have been lifted out of it, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. Meanwhile, uncertainty surrounds Gloria’s major homelessness initiative: transforming an empty warehouse at the east end of San Diego International Airport into a 1,000-bed homeless facility. The plan has run into City Council skepticism, neighborhood opposition and questions about cost and feasibility. Further concern has been raised about whether the shelter proposed for Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street will sap funds from other programs, including rental assistance and emergency cash grants that help keep people from falling into homelessness. But even if the apparent stalemate is broken on the big shelter proposal, it’s a long-range project and won’t be ready in time to help resolve an immediate problem — the loss of more than 600 shelter beds at various short-term facilities that are due to shut down, some by the end of the year. This has turned what has been a plodding, yearslong crisis into a sudden code red situation. The mayor and council are desperately seeking options — and pleading for help from private property owners — to replace those beds, fast. The campaign advertisement alludes to none of that. Instead, it has images of clean downtown streets and smiling people who seemingly have been helped by Gloria-backed efforts. You almost expect the R.E.M. song “Shiny Happy People” to kick in. It’s important to point out that this is not an ad from the Gloria campaign, even though it includes some of his themes. It’s from a committee called “San Diegans for Fairness Supporting Todd Gloria for Mayor & Stephen Whitburn for Council 2024.” By law, the committee is forbidden to coordinate or communicate with Gloria or his campaign committee. The ad urges voters to “finish the job” on homelessness by re-electing Gloria. “And he’s just getting started,” the narrator adds. That’s an odd thing to say, given reducing homelessness has been the mayor’s top priority for the past four years.