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The city-owned World Trade Center building is the proposed site for a permanent homelessness facility. - Photo by Kelly Davis
It’s been almost three months since a San Diego City Council committee delayed voting on a “one-stop” homeless-services center, proposed for the former World Trade Center building at the corner of Sixth Avenue and A Street in Downtown. The committee instead directed the center’s developers, Connections Housing, to do community outreach to address the concerns of nearby businesses.
On July 14, Connections Housing’s proposal goes back to the committee, but despite a long-talked-about need for a permanent facility—as opposed to the city’s temporary winter homeless shelter—what might happen in committee is anything but clear. CityBeat tried to survey the four committee members—Sherri Lightner, Kevin Faulconer, Todd Gloria and Tony Young. Gloria is the lone definite “yes” vote. Young said he needs to meet with representatives from surrounding businesses before he makes up his mind. A spokesperson for Lightner didn’t return a phone message by press time, and a spokesperson for Faulconer, whose district includes Downtown, said there’d be no response to a series of questions.
Intended to replace the city’s temporary winter shelter, Connections Housing’s proposed facility would include intake services on the bottom floors, a health clinic run by Family Health Centers of San Diego and, above, 150 beds for short-term stays and 73 units of supportive housing (apartment-like units that include services like counseling, medical care and job assistance). Despite getting a thumb’s-up from a diverse, well-credentialed selection committee, folks on both sides of the homelessness issue have found fault with the proposal. Advocates for the homeless argue that with its 223 beds, the Connections Housing project doesn’t result in a much-needed increase in shelter space.
Downtown residents and business owners, meanwhile, fear that the facility will act as a magnet, drawing in homeless folks from East Village. Then there’s the question of whether the facility will provide enough beds to impact a legal settlement that forbids police from ticketing homeless people between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. With San Diego’s significant deficit of shelter beds compared with its street-homeless population, the lawsuit that prompted the settlement argues that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to ticket a person for sleeping in public.
The facility’s 223 beds are enough to house everyone living on the street within a quarter-mile radius of the facility but certainly not enough to make a significant dent in all of Downtown, said Joel Roberts, CEO of PATH, an L.A.-based nonprofit that took the lead on the proposal.
“It’s a little bit unfair to link one project to a citywide lawsuit on how they’re addressing people who are homeless, but we do think that building this is a positive development and a positive step towards resolving it,” Roberts said.
As CityBeat’s reported, the issue of the illegal-lodging-ticket settlement’s been a sticking point in discussions about a permanent homeless facility. Exactly how many beds are needed to lift the settlement not only drove early planning meetings but recent ones, as well, especially given that Connections Housing’s proposal was selected over a 500-bed proposal from Father Joe’s Villages after an independent analysis determined that Fr. Joe’s proposal wasn’t financially feasible.
At a recent meeting of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a membership organization representing Downtown businesses interests, David Malcolm, the former embattled port commissioner and Father Joe’s Villages board member, told the audience that a wealthy donor, who preferred to remain anonymous, “had committed to filling any gap” in funding for the homeless-services center as along as the ticket ban was lifted. (Malcolm later said that he’d not yet spoken to the donor and only assumed that would be his position.) Mat Packard, vice president of development for Father Joe’s Villages, said his organization has no plans to ask that its proposal be reconsidered, but he agreed with Malcolm’s premise that a promise to lift the settlement is “significant initiative to try to meet the current need” for beds.
Scott Dreher, one of the attorneys who negotiated the 2007 settlement on behalf of nine homeless plaintiffs, said there is no magic number of beds.
“If it’s not OK to give someone a ticket for sleeping in public when that person has no other place to sleep, even one such person is too many,” he said.
Dreher said he doesn’t favor one proposal over the other but described Connections Housing as “a good project.”
“If you look at it independent of the ticket ban,” he said, “it’s a great project.”
Dreher said he’d talked to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith about doing a sort of gridded approach to nighttime illegal lodging enforcement—if businesses and residents of section of Downtown allow a homeless-services facility to be built in their part of town, the ban can be lifted in that “grid.”
Roberts says that Housing Connections’ plan is to create a model facility that’s easy to replicate.
“If you have 300 people in your neighborhood that are homeless and a program moves in and takes off 200 or 250, politically, people are going to say ‘We want to do this.’”
An earlier version of this story said Housing Connections' project could house everyone living on the street within one mile of the facility's proposed location. One mile is incorrect. According to a Housing Connections street survey, there are 246 unsheltered people living within a quarter mile of the World Trade Center. We regret the error.
Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
On July 14, Connections Housing’s proposal goes back to the committee, but despite a long-talked-about need for a permanent facility—as opposed to the city’s temporary winter homeless shelter—what might happen in committee is anything but clear. CityBeat tried to survey the four committee members—Sherri Lightner, Kevin Faulconer, Todd Gloria and Tony Young. Gloria is the lone definite “yes” vote. Young said he needs to meet with representatives from surrounding businesses before he makes up his mind. A spokesperson for Lightner didn’t return a phone message by press time, and a spokesperson for Faulconer, whose district includes Downtown, said there’d be no response to a series of questions.
Intended to replace the city’s temporary winter shelter, Connections Housing’s proposed facility would include intake services on the bottom floors, a health clinic run by Family Health Centers of San Diego and, above, 150 beds for short-term stays and 73 units of supportive housing (apartment-like units that include services like counseling, medical care and job assistance). Despite getting a thumb’s-up from a diverse, well-credentialed selection committee, folks on both sides of the homelessness issue have found fault with the proposal. Advocates for the homeless argue that with its 223 beds, the Connections Housing project doesn’t result in a much-needed increase in shelter space.
Downtown residents and business owners, meanwhile, fear that the facility will act as a magnet, drawing in homeless folks from East Village. Then there’s the question of whether the facility will provide enough beds to impact a legal settlement that forbids police from ticketing homeless people between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. With San Diego’s significant deficit of shelter beds compared with its street-homeless population, the lawsuit that prompted the settlement argues that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to ticket a person for sleeping in public.
The facility’s 223 beds are enough to house everyone living on the street within a quarter-mile radius of the facility but certainly not enough to make a significant dent in all of Downtown, said Joel Roberts, CEO of PATH, an L.A.-based nonprofit that took the lead on the proposal.
“It’s a little bit unfair to link one project to a citywide lawsuit on how they’re addressing people who are homeless, but we do think that building this is a positive development and a positive step towards resolving it,” Roberts said.
As CityBeat’s reported, the issue of the illegal-lodging-ticket settlement’s been a sticking point in discussions about a permanent homeless facility. Exactly how many beds are needed to lift the settlement not only drove early planning meetings but recent ones, as well, especially given that Connections Housing’s proposal was selected over a 500-bed proposal from Father Joe’s Villages after an independent analysis determined that Fr. Joe’s proposal wasn’t financially feasible.
At a recent meeting of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a membership organization representing Downtown businesses interests, David Malcolm, the former embattled port commissioner and Father Joe’s Villages board member, told the audience that a wealthy donor, who preferred to remain anonymous, “had committed to filling any gap” in funding for the homeless-services center as along as the ticket ban was lifted. (Malcolm later said that he’d not yet spoken to the donor and only assumed that would be his position.) Mat Packard, vice president of development for Father Joe’s Villages, said his organization has no plans to ask that its proposal be reconsidered, but he agreed with Malcolm’s premise that a promise to lift the settlement is “significant initiative to try to meet the current need” for beds.
Scott Dreher, one of the attorneys who negotiated the 2007 settlement on behalf of nine homeless plaintiffs, said there is no magic number of beds.
“If it’s not OK to give someone a ticket for sleeping in public when that person has no other place to sleep, even one such person is too many,” he said.
Dreher said he doesn’t favor one proposal over the other but described Connections Housing as “a good project.”
“If you look at it independent of the ticket ban,” he said, “it’s a great project.”
Dreher said he’d talked to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith about doing a sort of gridded approach to nighttime illegal lodging enforcement—if businesses and residents of section of Downtown allow a homeless-services facility to be built in their part of town, the ban can be lifted in that “grid.”
Roberts says that Housing Connections’ plan is to create a model facility that’s easy to replicate.
“If you have 300 people in your neighborhood that are homeless and a program moves in and takes off 200 or 250, politically, people are going to say ‘We want to do this.’”
An earlier version of this story said Housing Connections' project could house everyone living on the street within one mile of the facility's proposed location. One mile is incorrect. According to a Housing Connections street survey, there are 246 unsheltered people living within a quarter mile of the World Trade Center. We regret the error.
Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
