The Win We Want Outside San Diego's Petco Park

With all the Padre fans downtown for Opening Day and the crowds in the Gaslamp and East Village, the atmosphere becomes exciting and the start of the baseball season being the start of busy times for restaurants and bars in the downtown area means good news for tourism and the local economy. 

But one of San Diego’s biggest problems is in full view as well. Just walking around downtown gives you a real good view of it. The homeless problem. People sleeping on sidewalks.

Despite efforts by Mayor Gloria and city leaders to reduce homelessness and despite laws banning encampments, fans. visitors and tourists downtown see lots of people who are homeless.

And it’s a sad thing to see. It’s sad to see so many sad people living on the streets of our city.

We see and hear the reports every week about the need for more shelters. More treatment. More health services. And more solutions to the homeless problem.

A man who was among the strongest advocates and giver of time effort and money to reduce homelessness, was the late Padres owner Peter Seidler.

If he were still here he’d be optimistic about the teams chances of making it to the World Series this year. But he probably would be disappointed that the homeless problem in SD is still such a big problem.

Maybe his spirit that helped create a winning baseball team can inspire our leaders and members of the community, to be motivated to do a lot more to help us reach a victory over the problem of homelessness.

(Photo Getty Images)