By Hutton Marshall 

$50,000 outreach program launched by community leaders

As April began in Hillcrest, so did the neighborhood’s largest homeless outreach effort to date.

For the next year, two-person teams will roam the streets of Hillcrest five days a week, engaging with Hillcrest’s homeless population to offer assistance and a path to stable housing. Amid what many residents say is a rapidly growing problem in the neighborhood, Hillcrest’s Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) comes from a $50,000 joint effort by the Hillcrest Business Association (HBA) and Councilmember Todd Gloria’s office.

Gloria and the HBA chose the Alpha Project, a nonprofit based in Hillcrest, to oversee the program. With experience managing comprehensive homeless outreach programs, homeless shelters and transition housing throughout the region, local leaders say the Alpha Project’s approach will benefit the businesses, the homeless themselves and the community as a whole.

The outreach team is the main thrust of the overall effort. Through it, the Alpha Project will invite Hillcret’s transient population to take part in its housing and rehabilitation programs, the ultimate goal of which are employment, sobriety and stability.

Alpha Project adheres to the “housing first” approach to addressing homelessness, which theorizes that once a person has a stable living situation, it will be much easier to address root causes of homelessness, such as addiction or mental illness.

“It’s easier to work on other parts of your life when you’re not in survivor mode, once you have a roof over your head,” Alpha Project Case Manager Jessielee Coley said.

The second prong of the HOT efforts will educate businesses and residents on another important Alpha Project tenant: Don’t nurture the homeless lifestyle. The nonprofit discourages empathetic practices like giving away spare change. Alpha Project CEO Bob McElroy acknowledged that helping the homeless by withholding short-term help can often seem counterintuitive.

“There’s nothing better than to hand somebody a meal, than to help someone out,” McElroy said. “That’s a spirituality that all people have, whether you’re a believer or not, you’re still a spiritual being.”

But, McElroy said, giving away food and money often enables an addiction, allowing the recipient to continue living a destructive lifestyle without feeling the need to seek treatment.

This outreach effort follows a pilot program last year, funded by another grant from Gloria’s council office that proved a need for this new comprehensive approach to solving homelessness.

During the pilot project’s three-month stint, Alpha Project staff estimated they found housing for over 20 people living on the Hillcrest streets. McElroy estimates there are between 100 – 200 homeless in Hillcrest on any given day. He hopes to drastically cut that number before program ends in a year.

“I hope there wouldn’t be any [homeless after the program], but if we did 50 percent we’d be doing great,” he said.

Gloria and others have seen what he described as an “exodus” of homeless moving out of Downtown and up toward Hillcrest. Many attribute this to increased homeless outreach and monitoring in Downtown, with those resisting treatment moving to surrounding neighborhoods.

“It has gotten more acute,” Ben Nicholls, executive director of the HBA, said of the presence of homeless in Hillcrest. “The people that are here are dodging services Downtown, so we get some of the most troublesome individuals up here … because they’re the ones that don’t want to be treated.”

The HBA contributed $30,000 of the $50,000 for the project. The nonprofit also spends approximately $36,000 annually on a security guard in central Hillcrest.

Amy Gonyeau, the Alpha Project’s chief operating officer, said the liberal, open-armed atmosphere in Hillcrest creates an environment that enables the homeless to avoid treatment of underlying issues.

“We’re way too nice, and we just allow it,” Gonyeau said. “Because you see it when you’re up here, [homeless] people behave. The majority of [locals], the business owners will let them all hang out.”

McElroy spent time living with the homeless community in Balboa Park, and he saw this over-nurturing mentality there too.

“I found out on the recipient side, there’s a lot of enabling around here,” he said. “Have you ever heard of anyone starving to death on the streets of San Diego? No, it doesn’t happen.”

In addition to the outreach program and educational efforts, the program will fund a hotline businesses and residents can call, affording an alternative to calling 9-1-1, which wastes finite police resources and penalizes an already fragile segment of the population. McElroy said anyone wishing to help solve the homeless issue at its core should call.

“I’d really like to build a coalition here, not really just for the transients here, but for a community watch program,” he said. “There aren’t enough cops here — or anywhere, really — and it’s a community policing opportunity for everyone here.”

McElroy said agility is imperative in effective homeless outreach, because often when a homeless person decides they’re ready to be treated, there’s a very small window before they change their minds again. McElroy said having someone present while that small window remains open is critical.

“There’s always that window where something happens — they get the shit beat out of them, they OD, they’re just sick and tired of being sick and tired — and they say ‘man, I don’t want to do this anymore, I’ve gotta get some help.’ If there’s not somebody there, they’ll just say ‘screw it.’”

Thomas, who didn’t provide his last name, had been living on the streets of Hillcrest when an Alpha Project team picked him up on a recent Tuesday morning. Moving into a shelter before transitioning into permanent housing was his ultimate goal, he said, while also pointing out that to get off the streets, one had to resolve to do so in their own mind.

“I’m 47 years old, bro,” Thomas said. “I mean in three more years I don’t want to be here saying ‘damn, there goes half my life on the streets.’”

To McElroy, who’s spent nearly three decades helping the homeless, the transient population should be embraced rather than shoved away. Much of Alpha Project relies on the work of former homeless rehabilitated by their programs. This not only allows for a holistic approach to their efforts, there’s a practical aspect to having formerly homeless doing homeless outreach.

“They’ve overcome it, and now they’ve turned around and used the gifts and talents they’ve acquired and learned to apply that to help someone else,” McElroy said. “We’ve taken the people who’ve been part of the problem, and now they’re part of the solution. It’s a beautiful thing, man.”

—Contact Hutton Marshall at [email protected].