Safe sleeping sites to be created in parking lot
After considerable wrangling, the city of San Diego is moving to create tent camps for homeless people on Balboa Park land that is off the beaten path.
Safe sleeping sites, as they are called, will be located in Parking Lot O near the Naval Medical Center and in a city maintenance yard parking lot at 20th and B streets.
The latter is a familiar location because it was used as a temporary tent shelter during the deadly 2016-18 hepatitis A outbreak.
That operation ended when the public health threat waned — but homelessness did not. It became worse. Calls grew to establish so-called “safe villages” and 20th and B seemed like a logical site, but the city initially looked elsewhere.
It’s not widely known, or remembered, but shortly before the hepatitis A outbreak that site was being eyed for a vastly more ambitious project to help transition people out of homelessness.
Homeless advocates and service providers, civic leaders and elected officials contemplated building a more permanent “campus” at the location that would provide various types of housing and shelter for 2,000 to 3,000 people.
According to the 2016 annual point-in-time homeless count, 2,745 people were living without shelter in the city of San Diego.
Under current plans, Parking Lot O could accommodate up to 400 tents, with another 136 at 20th and B. For context, the city has established big tent, barracks-like “bridge shelters” for hundreds of people since the campus concept came and went. Many more people have gone on to permanent housing.
The campus was to include a panoply of services to assist residents with physical and mental health issues, substance abuse, employment searches and
everyday needs such as food and laundry services.
“Even a dog clinic,” said Bob McElroy, CEO of the Alpha Project, a nonprofit that operates shelters and coordinates other services for homeless people.
He was a main player behind the campus project that was being developed under then-Mayor Kevin Faulconer.
Momentum was building and prominent San Diego architect Joseph Wong was brought in to draft renderings of what the campus might look like just before the hepatitis outbreak grew into a major public health threat.
“Kevin was getting us there but the clock ran out on us,” McElroy said in a text message.
There are different interpretations of why it didn’t happen, with fingers pointing in different directions in private.
Locating shelters or housing for homeless people is always politically difficult, even in seemingly out-ofthe-way areas like 20th and B streets. Residents in Golden Hill just above the maintenance yard opposed the temporary tent camp before it opened in 2017, but many came to accept it. McElroy, whose organization was contracted to run the tent site, said some nearby residents even volunteered to help.
The scope of the campus project and the commitment needed to see it through may have been too daunting for some decisionmakers — with no guaranteed outcome.
“That costs a lot of money,” McElroy said. “This is far outside the box of any politician.”
The campus concept is not new, nor has it fallen out of favor with everyone.
For years, East Village resident George Mullen has been pushing plans for Sunbreak Ranch, a shelter with a variety of housing, facilities and services. An artist and investor, Mullen first proposed the idea for an area near Brown Field on Otay Mesa.
Then he suggested the project for federal land near Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. Former NBA star Bill Walton, an outspoken critic of Mayor Todd Gloria
on homelessness issues, signed on to the latest version and drew national attention to the proposal.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to detect if Sunbreak Ranch is gaining much, if any, traction.
McElroy and others put forth that kind of concept for the parking lot at Inspiration Point in Balboa Park, but opposition soon took that location off the table for any homeless shelter use.
The subsequent proposal by Gloria and San Diego City Councilmember Steven Whitburn for Parking Lot O and 20th and B streets has won over some of those who pushed the city away from Inspiration Point.
Gloria, among others, had been cool to creating campsites for homeless people, in part because they’ve had mixed results elsewhere.
Further, critics said those and other temporary shelters diverted resources and focus away from getting homeless people into permanent housing.
But there’s just not enough housing available for all the homeless people. Though many formerly homeless people have been placed in housing or found it on their own, monthly tallies show larger numbers of people falling into homelessness.
And there isn’t enough shelter space to put all of them up temporarily.
Meanwhile, as the homeless population has grown, so has the public demand to get rid of encampments on sidewalks, in parks and other public rights of way.
The federal courts have ruled that local jurisdictions must have beds available in order to take action against people camping illegally. The city is weighing an ordinance proposed by Whitburn
to enforce illegal camping restrictions.
Thus, the city needs additional shelter beds to make that effective, adding incentive for a more triage approach rather than longterm efforts.
A “campus” might seem like a fancy term for a homeless shelter facility, which these days tends to provide, or connect people with, an increasing number of services. But campuses would be more permanent.
In San Antonio, Texas, Haven for Hope, a facility that houses and helps people, has been visited by numerous government officials and journalists from across the country and received some glowing reviews.
It cost more than $100 million to put together, which doesn’t include ongoing operating costs. Much of the money was raised from private sources, including $20 million from billionaire Bill Greehey, former CEO of Valero Energy Corp., a driving force behind getting the idea off the ground.
Enthusiastic as Greehey has been about Haven for Hope, he seemed cautious not to overpromise what it would do.
The campus and other efforts have been credited with keeping the number of homeless people relatively static despite considerable population growth in San Antonio.
“Let me say that the homeless will always be with you,” said Greehey, according to King 5 News in Seattle, Wash. “We’re not going to solve all the homeless problems that exist today.”
That comment is nearly seven years old, but it still holds up.