Time Will Expire on City’s Single Adult Seasonal Shelter
Unlike Years Past, Extension Not Anticipated

   SAN DIEGO — The city-funded single adult seasonal shelter located at the corner of 16th and Newton, which has offered clients three months of relief from unusually harsh winter weather, will shut down on Thursday, March 15 at 8 a.m.

   The tent-like sprung structure has sheltered 250 single men and women nightly since December 15 of last year. Clients who remain on the morning of the closing will be served a final breakfast before they begin their search for alternative housing.

   "Since opening we’ve worked closely with our residents, moving many of them to short-term residency at St. Vincent’s and other agencies," says Jack Bolick, the seasonal shelter’s program manager and representative of St. Vincent de Paul Village, the organization contracted by the city to manage the operation.

   Those clients who have yet to find new housing have been given the opportunity, says Bolick.

   "Some of the people who stay here want to return to the streets and haven’t found a reason to turn their lives around yet," he says. "That doesn’t mean its hopeless, what it means is we have an obligation to be ready when they decide it’s time to make a change."

   Bolick used "Greg," a man who was homeless for more than five years in 1998 and utilized bed space at the seasonal shelter in the past, as an example.

   "Over the years, he began to trust us and finally entered St. Vincent’s rehabilitation program. He was stabilized and got a job," Bolick says. "The only time I hear from him now are the occasional letters he sends to update me on his new life, like the time he wrote about the house he bought."

   President of St. Vincent’s, Father Joe Carroll, says a planned expansion of his downtown Village, which would include a year-round emergency shelter for single adults, would bolster the rehabilitation effort by keeping clients in an environment where comprehensive services, such as counseling, chemical dependency classes and job-training programs are available to assist homeless individuals regain their self-sufficiency and self-respect. All of those services are currently offered at the Village, an 855-bed facility in downtown San Diego where families and single adults can stay up to two years.

   "It’s simple: If you gain the trust of your neighbors who happen to be going through a difficult and temporary struggle with homelessness, you run a much better chance of convincing them to enter long-term programs by, first of all, keeping them on site and, secondly, offering everything they may need on that site," Father Joe says. "St. Vincent’s has successfully offered these services for 15 years, but just as San Diego’s population is growing, so does its homeless population and we must expand to meet that need."

   A year-round shelter, says Father Joe, would help St. Vincent’s and the city avoid what has become an annual event in downtown San Diego: sending the homeless back to the streets at the close of the seasonal sprung structure.

   "On March 15, we’ll reluctantly shut our doors," he says. "For nine months we’ll lose contact with clients whom we may not see until next December when we start the seasonal shelter program again. Those nine months could be spent reaching out and rehabilitating them, but instead the time is wasted."

   Before St. Vincent’s can carry out its plans for expansion, says Father Joe, it must first purchase property in an area of downtown – the East Village – where redevelopment is reshaping the landscape and affordable real estate is hard to find.

   The city has allocated funds to keep the seasonal family shelter located on the corner of 12th and Broadway operating through June in anticipation of the opening of a year-round emergency facility for families at the Days Inn on Cortez Hill, says Father Joe. It has not been determined which local agency will manage the project.

   Last year the city provided funding to keep the single adult shelter open through mid-April, but a last-minute extension this year is unlikely, says Bolick.

   Notable statistics from this year’s single adult seasonal shelter program include:

• A total of 1,369 individuals received shelter – 1,088 men and 281 women
• The average length of stay was 8.8 day
• The shelter offered a total of 12,047 bed-nights
• For men, the average educational level was 11.2 years, for women, 11.4 years
• Over the course of the three-month period, 471 clients were transferred into St. Vincent’s short-term residential program; 228 of those clients have either been diagnosed with a mental illness or are physically disabled
• Clients over the age of 50 accounted for 21.86 percent of the total single adult seasonal shelter population.

For more information on the single adult seasonal shelter closing or St. Vincent de Paul Village, contact (619) 525-1608.

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