San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria's proposal for a 1,000-bed homeless shelter sandwiched between the San Diego airport and the Interstate 5 freeway will soon get its first public hearing before the San Diego City Council.
The council has already met four times in closed session to discuss the details — specifically, the lease of a 65,000-square foot warehouse at Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street, as well as spending public money to make the property habitable.
California's open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, allows the council to negotiate real estate transactions behind closed doors before taking a final vote in open session.
The announcement of an open-session debate over the plan was made in a joint statement released late Monday by Gloria and City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera.
"For months, the city has negotiated aggressively on behalf of taxpayers in order to lower costs and bring about more favorable deal terms based off the feedback from the public and City Council," the statement said. "The Mayor will be requesting a public hearing … of the proposed Kettner and Vine homeless shelter, and the Council President has committed to efficiently processing that request."
Once a deal has been finalized, it must be vetted by the City Attorney's Office and the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst before coming to the council for a vote — a process that is likely to take several weeks.
Gloria has argued the shelter is necessary to get more people experiencing homelessness off the streets, into shelter and on the path to permanent housing. The city's shelter system operates at capacity most days, meaning most people living on the streets have no place else to go. Several homeless shelters are also scheduled to close this year, leaving the city with even fewer beds than it has today.
Officials and volunteers in January counted more than 10,600 people experiencing homelessness in San Diego County, most of them living without shelter. That represents an 18.2% increase from the previous year's count.
But despite the need for more shelter beds, critics have questioned the price tag of Gloria's proposal and whether taxpayers would be getting a fair deal — particularly in the wake of the city's disastrous deal to purchase the high-rise office tower at 101 Ash St.
The precise terms of the proposed lease have not been made public, but Voice of San Diego reported last month that the property owner had at one point offered a 30-year lease charging $2.15 per square foot, with rates going up 4% annually, as well as a $3.5 million contribution for tenant improvements.
The city estimates it will take about 18 months to renovate the bathrooms to add showers, install a commercial kitchen, upgrade the HVAC system and make other improvements. Operating the shelter would cost roughly $30 million per year, according to the mayor's office, and its capacity would have to be gradually scaled up to 1,000 beds over time.
While most of the council has remained tight-lipped about the lease negotiations, disagreements bubbled to the surface during the council's deliberations over the 2025/26 fiscal year budget.
At a meeting on June 7, Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, a staunch supporter of Gloria's shelter plan, spoke directly to Council President Elo-Rivera and Councilmember Kent Lee, who chairs the budget committee, calling on them to either support the mayor's plan or present a shelter plan of their own.
"Chair Lee, Council President Elo-Rivera, if you have locations in your council districts where we can stand up a homeless shelter now, then I am with you," Whitburn said. "We have a location. If you have a better location, fine. If not, let us provide the shelter here (at Kettner and Vine)."
The open-session debate has yet to be added to a council agenda.
