Yesterday, San Diego City Council unexpectedly ousted Councilmember Jennifer Campbell as president and elected Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera as her replacement. Plus, the city of San Diego is once again gauging whether the old Central Library could be repurposed as a homeless shelter. Also, fentanyl overdoses have more than quadrupled in San Diego County since 2018, highlighting the challenge public health officials face. And, the pandemic has been particularly hard on renters and a growing number of California cities are moving to ban landlords from using aggressive practices to push tenants out. Finally, at 67 years old, Godzilla is not ready to retire, if former San Diegan Chris Mowry has anything to say about it.
Fentanyl overdoses in 2020 in San Diego county were more than four times higher than in 2018, and numbers for 2021 so far show the trend continuing. Meanwhile, California has distributed rent relief to less than a third of the 400,000 people who have applied to its assistance program. Plus, this state has arguably some of the strictest gun control in the country, and yet California often fails to take guns away from domestic abusers.