Efforts have been ramped up to track data related to outreach for the city of San Diego's three temporary tent shelters, housing officials said Monday.
Since April 2, shelter workers have kept data on the location of outreach services offered and whether services were accepted. San Diego Housing Commission employees also are developing a mapping system to monitor new and existing homelessness hot spots within the city's nine geographic districts in order to guide further planning, Lisa Jones of the Housing Commission told the City Council's Select Committee on Homelessness.
Outreach data will be included in a June report.
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There are 18 outreach workers spread between the three bridge shelters, which resemble large tents.
The last of the shelters opened in the East Village in early January.
"These bridge shelters are giving hundreds of homeless folks who want to turn their lives around the opportunity to do so," Mayor Kevin Faulconer said in January. "This new shelter is a safe place for families and women who had nowhere else to go. It will provide the stability they need as they work toward finding a home to call their own."
The shelters provide storage, showers, bathrooms, laundry services, alcohol and substance abuse counseling and mental health services, according to the mayor's office.
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One shelter geared toward veterans and another aimed at helping families and their children include special services for those populations.
Each resident is assigned a case manager and housing navigator who develops a plan to get them permanently housed. City officials were pressured to act last year by an outbreak of hepatitis A that killed 20 people and sickened hundreds — about two-thirds of whom were either homeless, users of illegal drugs or both.
