Shelter plan raises concerns

Sunnyvale residents call proposal inappropriate for their neighborhood

SUNNYVALE — A plan to put a temporary cold-weather homeless shelter on a spit of countyowned land near Central Expressway has riled neighbors who say the modular unit that would house 100 people is unacceptable for their residential area.

The push comes after the 2013 closure of the Sunnyvale Armory, which was about a half-mile away in a higher-density area of homes and apartments near Fair Oaks Park. The site is being converted into subsidized housing for lowincome residents and is expected to open next year. Bob Dolci, the county’s homeless concerns coordinator, said officials looked at more than 60 other potential locations for a new emergency shelter but were unable to secure them.

Dolci said the county has bid on potential sites in the past but is inevitably outbid.

“We’ll find a possible place,” he said, “and boom, it’s gobbled up.”

Moreover, with winter approaching, time is running out. Ky Le, director of the county’s office of supportive housing, said that while the underlying mission is to create permanent housing to end homelessness, the cold-weather shelter program — which has been around in some form for three decades — provides needed respite for a vulnerable population.

“We are under very strict direction to get a shelter up and running by Nov. 30,” he said, “and we are working very hard to do everything possible to make it a reality.”

But the chosen site, bordered by the expressway and Fair Oaks and California avenues, is next to the Victory Village community, a quiet enclave of single-family homes that was built in the 1940s, where on a hot day residents will leave their front doors wide open.

Residents said at a community meeting Monday that there’s already a homeless presence on the streets and at nearby city parks, and with them comes crime and a deteriorating quality of life for neighbors. They also questioned where the homeless would go before the shelter opens at 5 p.m. each evening and after it closes at 8:30 a.m.