San Diego City Council members on Tuesday agreed to spend another $1 million on three large tents that serve as bridge shelters for homeless people.

Meeting as the city’s Housing Authority, council members voted 8-1, with David Alvarez dissenting, to increase funding for the three shelters to $13.9 million in the 2018-19 fiscal year budget.

Most of the funding increase will be for staffing changes that city officials hope will move more homeless people from the tents and into housing.

The tents hold about 700 people and opened about nine months ago as bridge shelters, meaning they were intended to be a bridge from the street to a home.


Alvarez had voted against funding the shelters in November, saying he opposed the city’s use of money that could have been used for affordable housing, and raised similar arguments against the shelters Tuesday.

Councilwoman Georgette Gómez said she supported the funding increase, this time.

“I won’t support any other requests for expansions,” she said. “We need to stop doing a piecemeal approach.”

Homeless advocate Michael McConnell, the only person to speak against the funding during public testimony, said the shelters have had a dismal performance of moving people into housing and questioned whether the money could have been better used.


“We’re looking at $1,400 a dollars a month per person or, for a family of five, $7,000,” he said.

Several others, including service providers that run the shelters and homeless people who had stayed in the tents, urged council members to increase the funding.

Also speaking in favor of the shelters were Dan Shea, a chain restaurant operator and partner at Paradigm Investment Group, LLC, and San Diego Padres Managing Partner Peter Seidler.

The two philanthropists had been the first to propose using the large tents known as Sprung structures as temporary shelters in the city.


“When we started this endeavor two years ago, we were told, ‘Don’t do anything because it doesn’t help anybody,’” Shea said. “We said, ‘It helps those people on the street.’ And then they said, ‘Nobody cares,’ and we’ve proven that to be incorrect with the people we’ve assembled in the private sector to come forward and help.”

The tents opened about nine months ago and are run by three nonprofits that focus on different populations.

The Alpha Project operates a 325-bed tent downtown for homeless adults, Father Joe’s Villages operates a 150-bed tent downtown for families and single women, and Veterans Village of San Diego operates a 200-bed tent for veterans in the Midway District.

When funding to open the tents was approved in January, the council set a goal that 65 percent of people leaving the shelters after 30 days would move into permanent housing.


A report in June found only about 12 percent have moved into housing.

Under recommendations from Focus Solutions, a third-party evaluator hired by the city to study the shelter program, the goal has been lowered from 65 percent to 30 percent.

Lisa Jones, senior vice president of homeless housing innovations at the San Diego Housing Commission, told council members that the 65 percent goal was set with the expectation that many of the people coming in would already be matched with social workers connecting them with housing, she said.

Only 122 of the nearly 700 people in the tents actually were that far along, she said.


The new goal of 30 percent should be easier to reach because a successful exit now will include people leaving for various forms of longer-term housing rather than just permanent housing, Jones said.

Longer-term housing includes safe-haven programs, long-term residential treatment facilities, independent care facilities, long-term nursing care, foster care and transitional housing, she said.

If the 90 people who left for longer-term housing were counted along with the 242 who found permanent housing, the three tents would have a success rate of 28 percent, Jones said.

While the shelters have fallen short of the original goal, Mayor Kevin Faulconer told council members that they have provided a safe environment for hundreds of people who otherwise would be on the street.


“We all agree that getting those folks into permanent housing is the goal, but we simply don’t have enough affordable housing available,” he said. “While we wait for those units to be built, these shelters are helping people, caring for them and treating them with respect and dignity as human beings every day.”

Jones said the staffing changes, also a recommendation from Focus Strategies, could help people in the shelters find housing faster by matching them with a variety of housing solutions.

The changes replace housing navigators, who had focused on finding permanent housing, with “housing specialists” and case managers. In all, the three shelters will have 14 additional full-time workers, including two new security guards at the Veterans Village San Diego’s shelter.


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