It seemed there was nothing Bill Walton wouldn’t do for the city he loved.
His generous philanthropy and valuable time regularly were aimed at everything from helping the less fortunate to medical research.
He thought San Diego was an amazing place and wasn’t bashful about saying so. Given who he was — former NBA star, national television basketball analyst, one-of-a-kind individual — that word spread far and wide.
Instantly recognizable, humble, humorous and typically upbeat, it’s hard to imagine a better ambassador for the region.
The thousands of written and spoken words following his death this week rightfully lauded his concern for and ability to connect with others. Famous and wealthy, Walton regularly worked out at the Mission Valley YMCA.
He didn’t just promote his native region, but ionately sought to protect and enhance its well-being. It was when he felt the latter was threatened that many people saw a side of the ion that was unfamiliar: an angry Bill Walton fulminating about escalating homelessness and what he considered the city’s failure to deal with it.
He lashed out at the city for letting this happen, but focused his ire almost exclusively on the mayor he once ed, Todd Gloria, whom he called on to resign.
Understandably, this mostly received ing references at best in the recent obituaries and commentaries, so huge was Walton’s life and legacy. But it was a jarring turn in San Diego’s political world and beyond. Walton had inserted himself in the middle of the debate over the city’s most pressing problem, and in doing so, San Diego’s favorite son became a polarizing local figure.
Walton’s social and political activism dates back at least to his college days, when he was arrested during an anti-Vietnam War protest. He was criticized in 1975 by the owners of his Portland Trail Blazers after he called for the “rejection of the United States government” and said the FBI was “the enemy.”
Nevertheless, Walton was key to delivering the Trail Blazers their only NBA championship (in 1977), just as he was in winning titles with UCLA and Helix High School.
But the intensity of his rage over homelessness — which burst into the public arena nearly two years ago — seemed to take many people by surprise, including some friends. He railed about multiplying homeless encampments, particularly in and around his Balboa Park-area neighborhood. He spent considerable time talking about how he was harassed by street people frequently and even assaulted, sometimes while riding his bicycle.
That was remarkable. So was this: He turned downbeat about San Diego. He didn’t blame the place or its people at large, but the political leadership.
“Paradise Lost: This is the city of San Diego, a once great city,” Walton said at a news conference, often sounding exasperated. “Sadly, and with a broken heart, I can no longer claim San Diego is the greatest place on Earth.”
“Our neighborhood is under siege,” Walton added. “Everything in our lives is dictated by the homeless.”
The emotion may have morphed into some exaggeration, however.
“Every time I go out on my bike I’m threatened, chased, attacked and assaulted by homeless people,” he said. He also called “our public Balboa Park unusable.”
Before making his criticism public, Walton privately aired his concerns to Gloria in sometimes long emails. His description of the resulting phone conversation with the mayor was stunning.
“It was less than useless,” he said about the conversation. “It was a massive and stupefying exercise in futility. Todd Gloria governs by the changing winds of social media. Todd Gloria, in our conversations, prefaces every conversation with ‘This is not an excuse,’ then he goes on to make yet another excuse.”
Gloria’s office issued a sharp response to the public suggestion that the mayor was sitting on his hands during a crisis, calling Walton’s statements “a tantrum full of self-aggrandizing hyperbole and outright lies.”
Gloria has defended his policies, noting an increase in shelter beds — though there still are not enough — and other programs to help homeless people get off the streets.
“The frustrations that people are expressing are understandable,” Gloria said at one point. “I’m frustrated as well. The difference is, you can’t let that frustration lead to inaction and make that situation worse.”
Peter Seidler, the late Padres owner, spent considerable money and time combating homelessness, particularly through the nonprofit Lucky Duck Foundation. He was a longtime friend of Walton’s, who also was d with the foundation. In this case, Seidler said Walton was off-base, at least in his approach.
“I love the guy,” Seidler said about Walton in the fall of 2022, “but I disagree with him.”
The homelessness crisis in San Diego has been many years in the making. There has been plenty of debate about whether local leaders — and, frankly, the public — are willing to take bolder, more expensive steps needed to make a serious dent in the problem. Gloria came into office pledging to do a better job in addressing homelessness than his predecessor, Kevin Faulconer.
Things got worse.
The pandemic, rising housing costs and mental health and substance abuse issues in recent years have exacerbated the situation. The growth in homeless encampments brought a broader outcry for greater and tougher action — immediately.
Walton faced plenty of blowback, particularly on social media, where he sometimes was depicted as a privileged individual speaking out because now he was being personally affected. Walton may have contributed to that perception by dwelling a lot on his personal experiences.
Still, it wasn’t fair.
First of all, who wouldn’t become more adamant if they believed their family and home were being threatened.
Further, Walton’s track record with the Lucky Duck Foundation and for other organizations — like Father Joe’s Villages — that assist homeless people predate his public feud with Gloria, according to Dan Shea, a Walton friend for 25 years.
“He was very comionate, quietly over the years helping to address homelessness,” Shea said this week.
“I think his anger was misunderstood,” continued Shea, who serves on the Lucky Duck board but said he wasn’t speaking for the organization. “He was angry about the lack of prosecution of criminal activity among the homeless — not that he thought every homeless person was a criminal. . . but government backed away from doing anything.”
In one of his emails to Gloria in 2022, Walton noted that Los Angeles had ed an ordinance banning homeless encampments in certain public places.
Many Democrats had long been resistant to that type of enforcement, preferring a comionate approach in addressing homelessness. But recently Democratic-controlled cities began cracking down.
At Gloria’s behest, a divided San Diego City Council last year adopted an ordinance banning camping in most public places, provided there were shelter beds available. While Walton wanted action like so many others, he was not an outspoken advocate for the law.
Regardless, the first place where police started enforcing the ordinance was near Walton’s home on the edge of Balboa Park.
