By Pat Sherman
SDUN Assistant Editor

City officials took a crucial step last month toward establishing a permanent shelter to house the chronically homeless in San Diego’s downtown area.

The proposed project, which involves renovating the historic 1928 World Trade Center building on Sixth Avenue, would include temporary and long-term housing for 225 people and on-site social services to help the homeless become more self-sufficient. The center would include a drug and alcohol treatment program, case managers, mental health services, job counseling and a medical clinic run by Family Health Centers of San Diego.

It is a comprehensive approach that – if successful – homeless advocates say they would like to see used in other areas of the city, such as Hillcrest, North Park or Golden Hill.

“We’re hoping that the downtown site serves as a real model that can be replicated throughout the region … showing what a good neighbor and how effective it can be,” said Jeanette Lawrence, director of government and community relations for Family Health Centers, one of the few organizations providing services for the homeless in Uptown, including a mobile medical clinic that serves homeless teens in Hillcrest.

However, if approved by the City Council, the permanent shelter, which would be run by Los Angeles nonprofit PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), wouldn’t be in operation until 2012. It also could result in a loss of nearly 150 beds during winter months if it is used to replace two winter shelters, as the proposal stipulates.

Meanwhile, business owners and residents in Hillcrest say the number of homeless on their streets continues to swell. A point-in-time count the San Diego Regional Task Force conducted on the homeless in January found 294 homeless people in the Uptown district, 182 of which were not residing in a permanent or temporary shelter. Of those, 88 were in Balboa Park, 37 in Golden Hill, 11 in Normal Heights and 46 in Hillcrest and adjacent areas. (The task force counted around 800 homeless in downtown San Diego, where most homeless services are located.)

People such as City Deli co-owner Michael Wright feel the number of homeless in Hillcrest could actually be much higher. Wright said he is constantly on the lookout for homeless people entering his restaurant to linger or wash up in his bathrooms.

“Three weeks ago I had a totally naked man in my bathroom,” Wright said. “The rain has brought out many of those people that were sleeping in the canyons.”

Wright said he has seen the same homeless people on Hillcrest’s streets for more than two decades – many with severe mental health issues.

Business owners have removed benches from in front of their establishments where the homeless would gather, and posted signs asking people not to give money to panhandlers.

“We’re getting used to the fact that homeless people are here,” Wright said. “The solutions are there, but we’re not willing to face those solutions (because) those solutions cost money.”

San Diego Police Sergeant Rick Schnell, a supervisor for the department’s Homeless Outreach Team (HOT), said the count could be low because homeless people in Uptown are often out of view, residing in canyon encampments.

Schnell’s police officer team, Psychiatric Emergency Response Team clinicians and county health and human services specialists are deployed deep into Uptown’s brushy canyons when problems are reported.
Schnell said more than 80 percent of the homeless people he sees in Uptown have severe mental health or substance abuse issues. HOT members offer referrals to treatment facilities and shelters, as well as information on how to apply for food stamps and medical assistance.

They also work with the city attorney’s office when the homeless are sentenced for crimes, such as public intoxication, and offer them the option of entering a residential treatment facility instead of jail.
Though Schnell said he has seen success through the city- and county-funded Serial Inebriate Program, recidivism rates are generally high among the chronically homeless.

“They’re bouncing in and out of treatment programs, and they’re bouncing in and out of shelters,” Schnell said. “It’s questionable whether they’d even go into a permanent place if it was there.”
Schnell noted one homeless man in Uptown who has been walking around without shoes for the past few years. He routinely rejects offers of shoes and other treatment.

“It’s upsetting to see that happen,” Schnell said. “We’ve had guys die on the streets, coming out of the hospitals, refusing treatment.”

Another homeless man Schnell’s team recently interviewed has been living in Hillcrest’s canyons for two years. He comes up for food and to receive prescriptions from a nearby clinic that help keep him mentally stable.

“He’s like, ‘Things are good. It’s quiet. No one’s bothering me. Why would I go somewhere else?’” Schnell said. “There’s nothing you can do. I can’t say, ‘You’ve gotta go or you’re going to jail.’ It’s not against the law just to be homeless.”

Benjamin Nicholls, executive director of the Hillcrest Business Improvement Association, said that, along with parking, homelessness is one of the top two problems with which his agency grapples. To monitor the situation, the association hires a company that uses off-duty law enforcement officers as private security. The patrols attempt to crack down on aggressive panhandling, refer homeless people to services and, at times, beseech them to move on.

“We’re not the police; we’re not the county. It’s not our job to solve homelessness … but we are working to address the issue as best as a business association can,” Nicholls said, noting that the majority of Hillcrest’s homeless congregate along University Avenue east of state Route 163, an area his association doesn’t patrol.

“That’s not to say we don’t have problems at the west end,” Nicholls said. “They go where the generous people are, and Hillcrest people and people who like Hillcrest are very generous people.”

Another reason Nicholls suspects homeless people end up in Hillcrest is that ambulances frequently drop them off at its two medical facilities, the closest hospitals to downtown.

Kristin Reinhardt, a spokesperson for Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest, said Scripps and the nearby UCSD Medical Center are required by federal law to treat anybody arriving in their emergency rooms, regardless of their ability to pay. Reinhardt said 5 percent of the people Scripps treats in its emergency room are homeless.

“They have no other alternative,” Nicholls said. “The only medical treatment they can get is at the emergency room and a lot of them end up here for very simple things.”

Bob McElroy, executive director and chief executive officer of Alpha Project, a nonprofit homeless services agency, said he has seen the homeless population increase dramatically during the protracted economic downturn.

Between 85 and 90 percent of the people Alpha Project serves are considered chronically homeless, meaning they have been homeless for a year or more. A majority of them are disabled seniors and the mentally ill, he said.

“They’re from a generation that worked and made life easy for us … yet there’s no place (for them to live),” McElroy said. “All the truly affordable housing was torn down to make way for redevelopment.”

District 3 Councilmember Todd Gloria acknowledged the increase in the number of homeless people on the streets of Hillcrest, where he said “canyons provide de facto affordable housing and shelter for our homeless.”

Last year, Gloria and Councilmember Marti Emerald held a drive to raise money for the winter homeless shelter run by Alpha Project in San Diego’s East Village. Gloria requested that some additional funds raised through the effort be used to manage the homeless problem in Hillcrest.

Travis Larson, a program manager with Alpha Project, is conducting some of that outreach in Hillcrest and elsewhere.

Larson and caseworkers hand out water, blankets and hygiene kits while working to gain trust and build a rapport with the homeless so they can assess their needs and direct them to services.

“We get phone calls constantly, either from City Council people or business owners,” Larson said. “They don’t want to be mean. They don’t want to call the cops. They’re looking for alternatives to that.”

Larson said most homeless tell them they come to Hillcrest to “hit up the rich.”

“There are more cafés and restaurants and there are people out walking around that have the extra change in their pocket,” he said. “Downtown you walk around the streets and you see homeless everywhere and you’re kind of callused to it.”

There also tends to be less police enforcement in the Uptown area, Larson said.

Herb Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Rescue Mission (which operates a shelter for homeless families in Bankers Hill), said the homeless likely feel safer in Uptown, where there is less crime.

“It’s not that the police aren’t doing their job,” Johnson said. “It’s just the nature of the crowd that’s down there in the East Village. It’s not real safe.”

Gloria said one of the reasons he was so adamant about urging “an aggressive timeline” for the permanent shelter was to gauge whether the model could work in other areas of the city and his council district.

The shelter would be funded in part by $10 million in redevelopment money from the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC). Jeff Graham, CCDC’s director of redevelopment, said if the model is successful, it could be repeated in other areas, though on a smaller scale.

“It’s going to be tough for the neighborhoods to come up with the money to do this,” Graham said. “The reality is that the downtown Centre City Redevelopment Project Area has far more tax increment money than most of the other project areas combined.”