San Diego's Fourth 'Bridge' Shelter Set To Open In November

Speaker 1: 00:00 San Diego city council is moving forward on homeless issues. This week after approving an ambitious community action plan on homelessness, the council gave the okay for the alpha project to run a new fourth bridge shelter at 17th and Imperial Avenue in downtown San Diego. The new tent, we'll add 150 beds to San Diego's homeless resources and we'll focus on providing services to underserved populations within the homeless community. And joining me is Bob McElroy president and CEO of alpha project. And Bob, welcome back to the show. Speaker 2: 00:34 Thanks for having me, Marie. Speaker 1: 00:36 It wasn't in the initial plan to have a fourth bridge shelter in the city. Can you remind us how that came about? Speaker 2: 00:42 Wow. Well, actually it was, you know, after our last council meeting for funding for continuation of the existing shelters that the city, uh, recommended that the family shelter run by Sam. And so the Paul would stay at the civic center. And so now we have an extra tent, uh, that they operated on 16th. And so the city suggested or move to create this for shelter on 17th and Imperial. Speaker 1: 01:08 One of the reasons that homeless families are still at golden hall is because there were concerns about their safety at at 17th and Imperial is alpha project taking up any additional safety precautions for this location? Speaker 2: 01:21 We are, we're providing enhanced transportation for our people. We would all, you know, the city is doing, you know, sidewalk improvements and crossing improvements and stuff, but we transport motive most of our folks to and from appointments. So we should be able to mitigate that. Speaker 1: 01:35 Let me get your overall impression about the city's new homeless plan. I said is ambitious. What do you think about it? Speaker 2: 01:42 Well, we were an active participant in the creation of the plan. Lot of our input and I appreciated the group and it uh, you know, put this thing together. They were very comprehensive in their effort. They talked to everyone from homeless people to citizens, residents, businesses, politicians, providers, all of us and got our input and it's, you know, it's been months and months and months working on this thing. So, yeah, we're pretty happy with, I think it's, it covers the gambit of what we need to do here in San Diego. Speaker 1: 02:07 Well, instead of putting all resources focused on temporary shelters or on permanent shelters, the city's new homeless plan aims it putting together a number of different elements. How do you see this additional bridge shelter fitting in with the city's plans? Speaker 2: 02:24 Burns. Supportive housing is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the entire puzzle. Um, and it takes decades and billions to build this, the inventory that does not exist today. So there's gotta be a place for someone, for folks on the street to have a choice between homelessness or, you know, dealing with the consequences of the streets. And that's where the bridge shelters, you know, step in there where we've got Rob wraparound services there. People can wait there and get healthy and, and all the interactive services there. Mental health services, health services, educational services. They're there on site and job services while they wait for that housing that may or may not come. Speaker 1: 02:59 Now, what population is this new bridge shelter going to serve? Speaker 2: 03:02 We'll still be doing single adults, but we want also want to, you know, do some outreach to a at risk youth, the 18 to 24 year olds, the populations. We see quite a bit of young kids, you know, on the streets that are, uh, aging out of foster care in most circumstances. You know, and I've always had a burden for these kids. They're the, we don't want them to become the next generation of homeless men and women. And so we're, we're gonna provide an intervention for that and see if we can get these kids on a track and, uh, you know, to be successful. Speaker 1: 03:34 How about people with physical and mental disabilities? Is this new bridge shelter aimed at that population as well? Speaker 2: 03:40 Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what we're doing a, you know, with these shelter we have right now for 324 folks on 16th and Newton the most infirmed, the most at risk or priority population. But we're also going to provide some comprehensive mental health services here for those folks that are out there now that nobody really talks about the 10 to 15% of the population just so mentally ill. There's no fit for them. There are no institutions, there's no assisted living facilities. Our institutions for the severely mentally ill, our jails and prisons and that certainly doesn't work. So we've partnered with some other agencies and also the County for some comprehensive mental health services for some of those folks in that population. Speaker 1: 04:23 Now these shelters are called bridge shelters because they're supposed to take people from the streets and get them connected with permanent housing. That's the goal. How's that working out at the other shelter out alpha project operates? Speaker 2: 04:37 Well, we're close to placing over 400 people. I think we're at three three 93 to three 94 right now. But here, here's the thing, right? You know, San Diego has, you know, a big, it's 4.3% vacancy rate from affordable up. There is a zero vacancy rate for low income housing. You know, we have affordable does not equate to our population. Our population is low income, 30% AMI and can afford maybe four or five $600 a month. We can't live in Sandy find any place to live in San Diego for four or five $600 a month. There is no place to move people to, that sounds great on paper, but in reality it's tremendously challenging to try and find law income units that are appropriate for our people. Speaker 1: 05:24 So do you see basically shelters being more or less permanent way of life here in San Diego? If, if we don't have permanent housing to house people in? Speaker 2: 05:33 Well, until we build it, and that's going to be the case. And you know, we, we had, we had all the, just last Friday we had the whole delegation of the County of LA come down, everybody, every council office come down and see what we're doing. And they're planning to do 42 bridge shelters inL a in the next two years. So as I said it, the consequences, and I said this when the city drank the Koolaid, the housing first Kool-Aid years ago, when they said, we're not gonna do shelters anymore, we're just going to go no housing first. It's all going to be housing. And I said, it's going to be a disaster. And what happened, we had 20 people dying here in San Diego, San Diego from Hep a and the numbers skyrocketed on the streets because there was no choice for people to be homeless. There was no place for them to go. Speaker 1: 06:13 Now, the action plan that was approved by the city aims of getting half the city's homeless population off the street and into shelter within three years. Now we've seen a lot of these goals for the homeless just sort of fizzle out. They're not there. Impossible. What's your take on whether or not that timeline can be achieved this time around? Speaker 2: 06:33 Well, we're way I've been to every city that's been impacted from Seattle to LA, to San Francisco, Sacramento, all in between Portland. We're so far ahead of those cities. I mean, they're right. They haven't even gotten started yet. We're so far ahead of them in our efforts here. You know, I think we can achieve that. I think the, the foot's going to be still continually applied to the pedal of the metal or whatever you call. Uh, I've talked to every council member and the mayor certainly motivated, uh, providers are certainly motivated. County's getting motivated, they're going to participate also. So if we do this thing together, we can be a shining star for cities all across the United States as we already are. Speaker 1: 07:10 Now that the contract has been approved, what's next for alpha project and getting this fourth bridge shelter up and running? Speaker 2: 07:17 Well, it was some for the grace of God, we'll get this thing started and a couple of weeks. Um, it's, it's being put up fairly quickly and we're already interviewing. Uh, we're out there looking for the folks that are the most infirmed. Uh, we're trying to do preregistration for folks. We're hiring of staff. Um, we're building all the infrastructure. So, you know, first and November is not, uh, a pipe drain. We'll start with, we do a soft opening and maybe get 40 50 people at a time and do it incrementally. But, uh, we should be up and running here fairly quickly. Speaker 1: 07:46 And I've been speaking with Bob McElroy, he's president and CEO of alpha project. Bob. Thank you. Speaker 2: 07:52 Definitely not right. Speaker 3: 07:58 [inaudible].