The San Diego City Council's approval Tuesday of a storage facility for homeless individuals came after hours of testimony from residents and business owners furious over its location. Many feared the facility would bring litter and drug use, and said it was dangerously close to a small Catholic elementary school.
Very little discussion took place over another aspect of the storage facility that is vital to its success, and its impact on the neighborhood: its budget.
The San Diego Housing Commission, which selected the facility's nonprofit operator, estimated the storage site would cost about $1.4 million in its first year. All of that money would come from savings from Mayor Kevin Faulconer's "temporary bridge shelter" program, which has come in under budget in its first few months of operations.
Those three industrial tent shelters, however, were controversial because they are being paid for with money taken from the commission's Housing First budget. That budget pays for programs proven most effective at ending homelessness, including new permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing for the newly homeless, rental assistance for the formerly homeless and homelessness prevention and diversion programs.
Faulconer argued last year that the urgency of the city's Hepatitis A outbreak required the city to fund the tent shelters as fast as possible, and that Housing First funds were quickly available. By the time the tents opened in December and January, however, the Hep A outbreak had already begun to wind down thanks largely to a county vaccination campaign. The tent operators also struggled to fill the tent's beds quickly, which is partly why they spent less than what was allocated to them.
Because the tent shelters came in under budget, the mayor and Housing Commission could have decided to give the excess funds back to the Housing First program. Instead, most of the savings are going to the storage facility. Faulconer and several homeless service providers say the storage facility will allow homeless individuals to safely store their belongings while they go to work or search for housing or employment.
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The city's Independent Budget Analyst's Office noted the instability of the storage facility's funding source in a report released Monday.
"Our Office notes concerns that the lack of ongoing funding sources for the Center as well as the Temporary Bridge Shelters creates an ongoing budget problem to resolve each fiscal year that these programs are operational," the report reads. "Ongoing funding sources for both programs are unknown at this time."
Councilman Chris Ward made a handful of amendments to the storage facility contract relating to its budget, asking that he and his council colleagues have the chance to approve or deny any extensions of the contract during their annual budget approval process.
Ward's motion to approve the contract also stated that future funding for the storage facility should not come from permanent supportive housing, and that the Housing Commission present a comprehensive funding plan for the facility's second and third year of operations during the Fiscal Year 2019 budget hearings in May.
Councilwoman Georgette Gomez supported the storage facility plans, but only after getting assurances from mayoral staff that the city would do more to mitigate the impacts of the facility on the neighborhood. Gomez asked for extra street and sidewalk cleaning within a half-mile radius of the site, rather than the original area of within just one block.
Mayoral spokesman Greg Block said in an email that the enhanced sanitation efforts would be absorbed into the operating budget of the Environmental Services Department. That department, like virtually every other department in the city, is facing budget cuts in the coming fiscal year that starts July 1.
It was not immediately clear what impact the additional clean-up around the storage facility would have on the department's budget or clean-up efforts elsewhere in the city. Block said the budget for Environmental Services was still being determined.
