Stockton project takes aim at low-income housing shortage

STOCKTON — Peter Ragsdale, who heads the San Joaquin County Housing Authority, was at a meeting last week with others whose working lives are dedicated to solving what can easily seem an insoluble challenge.

“The comment was made,” Ragsdale said Friday, “that sometimes it seems like you’re trying to boil the ocean, which I think is a great analogy.”

But even as Ragsdale shared the analogy while sitting in the Housing Authority’s new north Stockton headquarters, a sliver of progress was being made several miles to the south in the fight against the city’s overwhelming low-income housing shortage.

Interior demolition had begun at the Housing Authority’s dilapidated former headquarters on El Dorado Street two blocks south of the Crosstown Freeway.

A mile away, similar work was ongoing at a separate Housing Authority site on Park Street, just west of Center Street near downtown.

If all goes according to plan, 28 refurbished studio units will be ready by February for occupancy by people struggling with mental illness and in danger of becoming homeless. The number of new units will increase to 37 at the end of 2020, when all of the work is to be complete.

Ragsdale calls it “an opportunity to wrap our arms around this population who we know cause challenges in our community, to get them stably housed.”

Onsite services provided by County Behavioral Health are planned at the El Dorado Street site. Similar services will be offered near to the Park Street location, Ragsdale said.

Plans for the so-called Crossway Residences project first were unveiled last July by Ragsdale and Tony Vartan, the director of county behavioral health. Had all gone as planned, at least part of the project would have been completed by this month.

But the Housing Authority’s move from its El Dorado Street headquarters took many months longer than expected, and work could not begin on those buildings until six weeks ago, when Ragsdale’s agency finally moved out.

“This project is an innovative partnership that brings together services and reuse of an outdated building to house some of the neediest, hardest-to-house members of our community,” said Jon Mendelson, chairman of the board of San Joaquin County’s homelessness Continuum of Care and a commissioner on the Housing Authority board.

“(Crossway Residences) is exactly the type of effort that we need to invest in if we’re going to

“This project is an innovative partnership that brings together services and reuse of an outdated building to house some of the neediest, hardest-to-house members of our community.”

make an impact on homelessness.”

Vartan and Ragsdale said the provision of onsite services is not an accident. Rather, it’s a recognition that simply dropping people with mental-health challenges into housing is not enough to increase the likelihood of success and decrease the possibility of residents winding up out on the streets.

“To have a successful treatment, it is important that we stabilize an individual’s housing component,” Vartan said last year when the project first was announced. “Once we do that ... we’re able to then address the recovery and treatment in a much better way.”

Ragsdale said Friday, “I think we know there’s a relationship between health and housing. And I think this is an opportunity, hopefully as a pilot, to see that this is a model that could work . ... They’ll be coming to a place where there’s a community.”

The 425-square-foot apartments will be “modest,” Ragsdale said, but they will be clean and new, and each will have a bathroom and a kitchenette with appliances provided.

Where furnishings such as beds and furniture will come from is not yet determined, but Ragsdale said he believes the success of projects such as Crossway Residences depends not just on government but also on the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.

“I think government has a role in producing housing and producing support services, but as it relates to permanent supportive housing, I think we all have to start coalescing around the things that can be done,” he said.

Ragsdale also expressed resolve that no one who would belong at Crossway Residences will be turned away because they lack the furnishings to make a home.

“This property will provide a rental subsidy to people that need it based on their income,” Ragsdale said. “We wouldn’t want someone not to get an apartment because they didn’t have money to furnish it.”