San Diego’s Golden Hall homeless shelter will close in the near future, and new locations will have to be found to house hundreds of people experiencing homelessness.
The upcoming closure is putting some of the shelter's residents, like Kevin Graves, on edge. He’s been there for six months.
“It's a travesty,” Graves said. “You have numerous homeless people here in San Diego, yet they still justify closing a place that has reached out to a lot of people and helped a lot of people.”
The city-owned shelter has been operating under a temporary permit in the venue for roughly four years and is run by Father Joe’s Villages.
“It'll be transitioning over the next number of months. We have over 500 beds there, and the majority of those beds are on the first level for single men,” said Father Joe’s Deacon Jim Vargas. “We have over 300 beds for single men there, and then on the second level we have beds for families and beds for transitional-aged youth.”
Vargas said the timing of the closure is challenging because homelessness is the worst he’s ever seen in San Diego.
In a statement to KPBS, city spokesperson Dave Rolland said, “There is no hard move-out date. The families on the second floor will move into the new family shelter in Barrio Logan, which is expected to open later this spring.”
Rolland said that the city is still looking for shelter options for the adult men and transitional-aged youth. He emphasized that “they will continue to be sheltered in Golden Hall until suitable options are found. No one will be sent out to the streets.”
Vargas said one population at Golden Hall will be particularly challenging to rehouse. “When it comes to the single men, it may be multiple locations because we're talking about over 300 individuals,” Vargas said.
The timeline for moving out is still murky and the lack of details are frustrating some of the Golden Hall residents.
“The promises are great but we've heard them, and it's kind of disheartening,” Graves said. “When that statement was made you could probably feel the silence here and the gasp of despair.”
Vargas said no one has moved out of Golden Hall just yet, but the closure gives the city an opportunity to expand other types of shelter and housing options.
“There are individuals out there on the streets who don't necessarily want to go into congregate settings, but they do want off the streets,” he said. “So it gives us the opportunity to meet them where they are and be able to come up with solutions like safe villages.”
The city said continuing to operate Golden Hall as a permanent shelter would require many expensive improvements to the building.
Golden Hall could wind up becoming part of a large redevelopment plan called the Civic Core Revitalization project which looks to upgrade six blocks of buildings in downtown San Diego.
