City is Going Backwards in Providing Shelter for Homeless
Summary of San Diego's Homeless Situation
1. San Diego Homeless Shelter Crisis:
- San Diego is facing the loss of up to 732 homeless shelter beds by early 2025.
- Major closures include Golden Hall (264 beds), Father Joe's Villages (350 beds), and smaller shelters.
- Mayor Todd Gloria's initial plan includes expanding two homeless campsites in Balboa Park.
- The city is actively seeking new shelter sites and working on a proposed mega-shelter campus near the airport.
2. Veterans Village of San Diego (VVSD) License Suspension:
- California suspended VVSD's license for its rehab program following seven deaths in just over two years.
- Over 70 civilian participants were forced to leave the facility with short notice.
- The suspension only affects the substance use disorder treatment program, not veteran-specific programs.
- San Diego County worked to provide shelter or services to most of the affected individuals.
3. Legal Challenge to Proposed Airport-Area Shelter:
- McMillin-NTC, a real estate developer, filed a lawsuit to block San Diego's proposed homeless shelter near the airport.
- The lawsuit argues that a decades-old agreement prohibits homeless services at the H Barracks site.
- The city had planned to open nearly 200 parking spaces for residents to sleep in vehicles, with potential for 600-person tent shelters later.
- The developer claims the shelter would negatively impact existing hotels and a planned new hotel in the area.
4. Ongoing Challenges:
- The city is struggling to find suitable alternatives quickly for the lost shelter beds.
- There are concerns about moving shelter residents to outdoor campsites.
- The proposed mega-shelter (potentially 1,000 beds) is still under negotiation and wouldn't be operational until late 2025 at the earliest.
- Access to shelter beds is already impacted, with 87% of requests not resulting in placement.
5. City's Response:
- San Diego officials are working on additional plans but have not publicly revealed details for replacing most of the lost beds.
- The city released a Request for Information asking local property owners about buildings that could be converted into shelters.
- Mayor Gloria's office maintains that the airport-area shelter plan is both legal and necessary to save lives.
This summary reflects the complex and evolving situation of homeless shelters in San Diego, including bed losses, new proposals, legal challenges, and the city's efforts to address the growing crisis.
How the City’s Responding to the Loss of Hundreds of Shelter Beds | Voice of San Diego
voiceofsandiego.org
By early next year, the city will be down hundreds of homeless shelter beds. City officials have yet to publicly reveal how they will replace most of them within the next few months.
For now, Mayor Todd Gloria is sharing one major piece of the plan the city could execute this fall: expanding two homeless campsites in Balboa Park to accommodate dozens of additional tents.
Gloria said last week the city expects to move at least some residents of its 264-bed brick-and-mortar shelter in the City Hall complex into safe sleeping sites if they don’t find other options first. The Golden Hall shelter may shut down early next month. As of last week, 191 men were staying at the Golden Hall shelter, which stopped welcoming newcomers this summer.
Gloria is adamant Golden Hall residents won’t land back on the street.
“No one will go back to the streets who are currently at Golden Hall,” Gloria said Wednesday. “That is our commitment. We will keep that commitment.”
But part of the city’s initial plan is for at least some Golden Hall residents to move outdoors, a move likely to upset some advocates and some people now staying in Golden Hall.
Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing told Voice of San Diego that other plans are also in the works but declined to elaborate on them.
The city needs to settle on solutions for residents of other shelters slated to close in coming months too. The city and its housing agency are seeking out potential shelter sites, including from city councilmembers and private property owners.
Gloria’s team is also continuing to work on plans for a proposed mega-shelter campus near the airport that the City Council punted on in July. But even if the City Council approved the controversial pitch this month, new shelter beds at the facility wouldn’t come online until late next year.
Meanwhile, impending closures are already impacting homeless residents’ access to shelter.
Here’s what we know about shelter closures and what the city’s doing to try to find new options, including with continued work on the proposed mega-shelter.
What’s Closing and When?
City-funded shelters at Golden Hall and Father Joe’s Villages East Village campus that once collectively sheltered up to 614 homeless residents each night have already stopped welcoming newcomers. The city fire marshal’s permit for Golden Hall, which serves homeless men, is set to expire Oct. 6.
Laing said the mayor’s team sees that date as the deadline to have a solid plan for the move. She didn’t clarify if the administration may ask the fire marshal to allow it to move residents out after that date. Laing said plans will “first be communicated to residents” and that contracts will need to be approved to facilitate what happens next.
Father Joe’s has also said it expects to close its 350-bed Paul Mirabile Center shelter for single men and women by the end of the year to transition the facility into a detox and sober living facility.
Two smaller shelters in East Village and the Midway District that collectively supply 84 beds for women and people with behavioral health challenges are slated to close by January per a July report to the City Council. (The Midway shelter closure could be later based on recently announced delays in the redevelopment process.)
The old Central Library, which temporarily provided 34 beds for homeless women, already stopped serving as a shelter in July.
All told, these closures add up to a loss of 732 shelter beds by early next year.
At some point, a 326-bed Barrio Logan shelter tent for single men and women also must come down to make way for a housing project. Gloria said last week that the project start date has been repeatedly postponed and that he doesn’t expect the city will need to hurry to take down the shelter tent in the near future.
What’s the City Doing to Find New Sites?
The city and its housing agency are scrambling to come up with alternative shelter sites ahead of the closures.
The City Council is set to get a Sept. 24 briefing after directing city staff to present a short-term action plan ahead of the bed losses.
Before that City Council direction, the Housing Commission in late June issued formal requests to identify potential new shelter sites and gauge the capacity of homeless service providers to operate new programs that remain open. As of last month, the agency said it had received six responses though it declined to elaborate on them, citing procurement rules.
The city on Friday also issued its own formal request to property owners and managers who may be interested in offering up potential shelter sites. Responses are due Oct. 7.
Early last month, the city’s point person on homelessness also asked councilmembers and the city’s Office of the Independent Budget Analyst to propose potential shelter sites. The Union-Tribune wrote about their responses.
City spokesperson Matt Hoffman said sites that councilmembers and budget analysts recommended are now “under review” and that city officials will provide details on those sites on Sept. 24.
A top official in the city’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department also recently asked the nonprofit Lucky Duck Foundation, which separately flagged a potential site near the proposed mega-shelter site in a letter to Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, to help connect the city directly with that property owner.
Dan Shea of the Lucky Duck Foundation said he responded Aug. 30 offering to help arrange a meeting this month but didn’t hear back on a meeting date.
Laing told Voice city decided to have the property owner participate in its formal process.
Shea is concerned the process could drag out based on past experience, but said the property owner for now expects to participate.
Where Do Things Stand with the Mayor’s Mega-Shelter Proposal? Could that Help?
Gloria said last week that his team continues to negotiate with the owner of a warehouse at Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street in Middletown they at least initially envisioned could become a 1,000-bed shelter campus for decades to come. Gloria has argued the more permanent shelter location would minimize future headaches about shelter closures.
But even if the city moves forward soon, the mega-shelter won’t quickly solve the city’s shelter woes. Based on the city’s earlier estimates, it will take months of property upgrades and construction to welcome homeless residents once the city takes control of the property. Officials estimated that if the mega-shelter lease was approved in July, the shelter might open in June 2025.
Now it’s unclear when – and whether – the shelter proposal will return to the City Council.
After a slew of questions and concerns raised before and during a July 22 City Council review of a proposed lease, Gloria’s team has been revisiting both potential deal points and its plan for the site with input from the city’s housing agency and the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. At the request of Gloria’s office, some councilmembers also submitted memos sharing feedback and proposed changes to the lease.
Gloria acknowledged there’s still lots of work to do despite his eagerness to move forward. He wouldn’t commit to sending a new lease back to the City Council this month, as originally planned.
“When we can bring a deal that I can stand behind and I believe will get a reasonable consideration by the City Council, we’ll bring it back,” Gloria said.
What if he can’t secure a deal he thinks the City Council can support or if the warehouse owner walks away?
“If the property owner walks away, we’ll make that known to the public and we will turn around and start proposing other solutions,” Gloria said.
What’s the Safe Sleeping Expansion Plan?
The city’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department revealed in July that the city’s two safe sleeping sites at 20th and B Street and the O Lot behind the Navy hospital in Balboa Park could accommodate 192 additional tents this fall. Officials estimated this would cost about $4.2 million.
Laing said city officials now believe the cost of the expansion will be “much less” than that earlier estimate.
It’s not yet clear exactly when the sites could expand and whether the City Council will need to sign off to allow it.
The safe campsites have been controversial among homeless advocates who argue they are substandard shelter options. In their initial months, the safe sleeping also didn’t move the same volume of residents into homes as the city’s traditional city shelters, which reflects differences between the two approaches designed to give homeless San Diegans a refuge from the street.
These dynamics are likely to fuel criticism about at least one piece of the city’s plan to deal with the Golden Hall closure.
How are Shelter Closures Impacting Homeless San Diegans?
For years, the city’s had a shortage of homeless shelter beds. Though Gloria and others have touted the hundreds of beds the city has added in recent years, homeless San Diegans who seek shelter often can’t access it.
Impending closures and decisions to stop welcoming new residents to prepare for them are already reducing access.
In the weeks after the two large Father Joe’s shelters halted intakes and the old library shelter closed, Housing Commission data showed an average of 87 percent of shelter requests through the city’s housing agency didn’t result in someone getting a bed. That’s up from an average of 82 percent of referrals being unsuccessful the first six months of the year.
The situation will only worsen if the city can’t find other options.
California suspends license for Veterans Village of San Diego’s rehab program – NBC 7 San Diego
More than 70 people in a rehabilitation program at Veterans Village of San Diego were forced to leave the facility by Monday afternoon, with just a few days notice. This comes after California officials suspended the rehab program’s license following seven deaths at the facility in just over two years.
The California Department of Health Care Services said in a statement that it had revoked the license and issued a temporary suspension order to Veterans Village of San Diego’s residential substance use disorder treatment program.
“This action follows serious concerns about client safety at VVSD,” the department’s statement reads in part. “Between January 2022 and October 2022, five deaths at VVSD were reported to DHCS, prompting investigations that uncovered multiple health and safety violations.”
DHCS said it entered into a stipulated settlement agreement with VVSD in March 2023, but two additional deaths – in September 2023 and March 2024 – along with further violations “revealed VVSD’s failure to adhere to the agreement, leading to this licensing action.”
Clients were told on Sept. 5 and the suspension took effect Monday. Civilian participants of the treatment program – funded by Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program – said they were told Thursday they had to be out by Monday at 1 p.m.
Veterans Village of San Diego said in a statement that its veteran-specific programs were “fully operational and remain unaffected by the current temporary suspension.”
“We are deeply concerned by the State’s swift and severe decision, especially during a time when homelessness is on the rise, fentanyl misuse is escalating, and economic uncertainty is widespread,” VVSD’s statement reads, in part. “This decision has come as a profound shock to our team, who have consistently worked to meet every request aimed at enhancing the quality of our programs and services. The impact on our staff and the clients we serve is deeply distressing.”
Local
One by one Monday morning, residents brought their belongings outside. Some had suitcases, others garbage bags. A few were headed to other facilities, or to stay with family and friends. Some said they had no plan.
“Basically they’re kicking everybody out to the streets, if you have a place to go or not, as of today,” said Fernando Gamez.
Gamez said he had been staying at the facility on Pacific Highway for three months.
“Things were working out well for me but they just – they pulled the rug out from everybody,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been, like I’m a piece of trash and just shoved out to the f***ing curb to be thrown away."
“They don't give us a direction to go, where to start, like for housing or jobs,” said Gabriel Ruben Mendoza. “So it's kind of confusing as to how to move from here.”
DHCS said San Diego County had a contractual obligation to coordinate care for Medi-Cal members. A county spokesman said representatives of the county were on site throughout the weekend to help find people shelter and services. As of Monday afternoon, the county said 72 of the 74 individuals had been provided shelter or checked themselves out of the facility, and they were working with 17 people to find housing.
Still, some residents said Monday they didn't know what to do, and some were concerned participants may relapse.
“I mean, I don’t know, just the whole process of it, I feel myself kind of in a downward spiral already of emotions, of hope,” Mendoza said.
“We don’t matter to them. That’s quite apparent,” said Gamez.
The suspension applied only to the substance use disorder treatment program, while the facility continued to house veterans.
The Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System said in a statement that of the 141 veterans the VA was funding who were housed at VVSD, 48 had received treatment for substance use disorder. The VA San Diego said its team was onsite to meet with those residing on campus and assisting in providing them choices for service.
The VA San Diego said veterans who received the substance use services can still live at VVSD while being treated by another provider, but they’ve halted any new admissions to the facility.
Lawsuit aims to block San Diego’s proposed homeless shelter by the airport
A real estate developer is suing to block San Diego from creating a shelter by the airport, arguing that a decades-old agreement between the city and federal government prohibits homeless services at the H Barracks site.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in San Diego Superior Court by McMillin-NTC, a limited liability company and an offshoot of Corky McMillin Cos. which remade the local Naval Training Center into the business and cultural hub known as Liberty Station.
McMillin believes plans to use the empty lot as a place for hundreds of homeless people to sleep imperils a new hotel.
“The H-Barracks site cannot be legally used for homeless parking, homeless sheltering, or homeless services,” the lawsuit said. Those additions “will have adverse impacts on the existing hotels on the nearby Liberty Station property and on the third hotel to be built by McMillin in that vicinity.”
The filing throws another roadblock at efforts to expand the city’s overtaxed (and shrinking) shelter system amid growing homelessness.
San Diego leaders had hoped to open nearly 200 parking spaces for residents to sleep in their vehicles by early next year, and the California Coastal Commission, which unanimously approved the project over the summer, further said the city was allowed to later install large tents that together could hold 600 people.
Representatives for San Diego and the commission declined comment, but leaders have previously defended the plan as both legal and a way to save lives.
The controversy
H Barracks, like most shelter proposals, received blowback from the start.
Some opposition came from neighbors concerned with how the project might affect Liberty Station’s shops and schools. One group even formed a nonprofit to fund a potential legal challenge, although Point Loma CARES ultimately decided not to sue on its own, according to CEO Derek Falconer.
The organization will instead symbolically join Friday’s lawsuit by filing a supportive amicus brief.
McMillin’s case partially rests on the Naval Training Center San Diego Reuse Plan, a document drawn up in the 1990s spelling out what the city may do with the one-time military base. Local officials at the time did discuss offering on-site aid to homeless residents but decided to instead direct millions of dollars toward services elsewhere in the city, according to records compiled by the real estate group.
That decision, combined with the fact that shelter isn’t explicitly listed as an option for the land, means San Diego needs more than just the coastal commission’s OK, McMillin’s lawyers say.
City officials disagree. Before the lawsuit was filed, mayoral spokesperson Rachel Laing said she was optimistic the City Council would soon vote on a measure affirming that the original reuse plan allowed for homeless services.
In addition, McMillin says San Diego’s proposal ignores rules set by the California Environmental Quality Act.
That argument could be complicated by a new state law that largely lets shelters sidestep CEQA. The governor signed Senate Bill 1361 over the summer, although the measure doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1.
In an interview, Mark Zebrowski, an attorney for McMillin, said he didn’t believe the legislation derailed any part of their case.
The lawsuit asks a court to at least temporarily block homeless services at H Barracks and for reimbursement of attorney fees, among other requests.
The hotel
The lot has been bare since aging barracks shaped like giant H’s were demolished months ago. While the seven-acre site is scheduled to eventually host part of San Diego’s Pure Water recycling system, that initiative is still years from completion.
The reuse plan does not appear to specifically allow for Pure Water either, although the agreement says the area may hold a Metropolitan Wastewater Lab. Regardless, Friday’s lawsuit does not oppose the Pure Water system.
Next door are a Hampton Inn & Suites and a TownePlace Suites by Marriott, and McMillin hopes to eventually launch a third hotel with 247 rooms, according to a letter Zebrowski wrote to the Coastal Commission. However, he added, “McMillin’s current financial partner is not likely to proceed” if “the H-Barracks Shelter use is approved.”
He declined to identify that potential investor.
While San Diego leaders have said they only want to use the site as a safe parking lot, the odds of installing two 300-person tents could increase if other shelter proposals falter.
Council members previously delayed a decision on a separate plan to install 1,000 beds in an empty Middletown warehouse over concerns that the lease would put the city at legal and financial risk. Laing, the spokesperson for Mayor Todd Gloria, said negotiations were ongoing.
The city released a formal Request for Information Friday asking if any local property owners had buildings that could be converted into shelters.
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