Family Seasonal Shelter to Close its Doors Tomorrow
Residents Make Most of Temporary Shelter, Find Permanent Housing

   SAN DIEGO — The family seasonal shelter, funded jointly by the City of San Diego and St Vincent de Paul Village, will close its doors tomorrow, May 16 at 10 a.m. after providing five months of emergency respite from the elements.

   The shelter, located in the Harbor View Hospital at 120 Elm Street, opened on December 15, 1999 and provided temporary living accommodations for a total of 226 families who sought relief from the winter weather. Each of those 742 residents stayed an average of 42 days.

   The 250-bed facility was originally scheduled to close April 15, but the San Diego City Council voted to extend its services for an additional 30 days.

   With the closure 24 hours away, many families have already been placed in alternative permanent living accommodations while others have found housing on their own.

   "We do our best to put our residents in a situation where there’s stability," said Tony Sterzinger, shelter supervisor. "It’s great to see that so many people made the most of their time here and moved themselves closer to a position of self-sufficiency."
Staff members from St. Vincent’s have been working with other local agencies to place residents in more suitable long-term housing. With the closure looming, shelter officials are working against a tight rental market and with little resources to find housing for the six remaining families.

   "We’ve been very successful in getting most of our families where they need to be," said Sterzinger, "but despite that, we still have six families — 20 children — who will have nowhere to go at 10 o’clock Tuesday morning."

   Some notable statistics include:

• Average family size was 3.4 individuals
• Parents between the ages of 31 and 50 accounted for 61.25 percent of all adult residents
• Average parental education level was 11 years
• Families cited the following reasons for homelessness:
• 21.9 percent were evicted from their residences
• Job loss affected 10.5 percent of the households
• Domestic violence contributed to 4.6 percent of the intakes

   At its busiest point, during the week of January 17, the shelter was home to 270 individuals, 170 of them being children, who are part of the fastest-growing homeless demographic in San Diego. Overall, the Village sheltered over 400 children nightly, with an average age was 7.6.

   Village officials point to the skyrocketing cost of rent as one of the many reasons families are becoming more susceptible to homelessness. Average county rent on a one-bedroom apartment requires a person earning minimum wage to work 87 hours weekly, according to a recent article published in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

    "I don’t expect the problem to go away anytime soon," says St. Vincent’s President Father Joe Carroll. "We need to put into action a year-round option for those families who stumble upon difficult times. The seasonal shelter, while a necessary relief effort, is like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg."

   Nonetheless, Father Joe is pleased that so many families have benefited from the temporary accommodations and said the City of San Diego provided shelter opportunities that were "the best ever."

   "It’s heartening to see that these families won’t be going directly back on the streets," said Father Joe, "but what we’d ultimately like to see is these parents and their children in permanent housing and earning a livable wage, so they won’t be so susceptible to homelessness."

   Shelter officials will utilize all of their resources throughout the final day in an effort to find accommodations for the remaining families.

   "We’ll continue to search for viable housing alternatives for everyone remaining," said Sterzinger.

   For more information on the family seasonal shelter and its closing, please call (619) 525-1608.

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