San Diego police expect to pay $2 million in overtime to officers patrolling the neighborhood around the storage center for homeless people that opened in Sherman Heights earlier this year.

The budget projection, which was included in a quarterly monitoring report released last month, pushes the total program expense past $3.7 million this year. Including the patrols, it means costs associated with the 500 storage bins amount to $600 per bin per month -- more than a studio apartment in many single-room occupancy hotels.

Police officials say the money is a good investment of public funds that meets the terms of the City Council resolution earlier this year that allowed the facility.

They also say residents in the Sherman Heights community are grateful for the added security, which generally includes four extra officers and a sergeant patrolling the neighborhood within a half-mile of the facility after their regular shifts.


“The council directed that the police department increase their presence in that area because the citizens were concerned that the storage facility was going to draw more homeless people into their community,” Assistant Chief Paul Connelly said.

Connelly said the extra patrols have paid off since the storage facility opened, with fewer cases of open drug or alcohol use and fewer reports of people urinating or defecating in public within a half mile of the center.

“We’re not protecting the 500 bins,” he said. “We are basically making sure the community concerns are not realized.”


Critics say the spending is a misguided approach to managing homelessness in San Diego.

“It’s $3 million for 500 bins for people to store their property,” said Michael McConnell, an advocate for homeless people and issues affecting them. “If people think that’s a good use of our resources, then OK. But that doesn’t get people out of homelessness.

“And if you go through the area, there are still plenty of homeless people there,” he said.

A studio apartment at the Golden West Hotel in downtown San Diego rents for $550 per month, a counter clerk said Friday.


The transition storage center opened in June after the council agreed to provide additional space for homeless people to store their belongings. It is operated by San Diego nonprofit Mental Health Systems inside a warehouse at 20th Street and Commercial Avenue.

Safeguarding their possessions is a key concern for people trying to find a job, attend caseworker meetings or meet other responsibilities, advocates say.

The Sherman Heights facility was slow to fill, with just 110 enrollments in June, but reported full enrollment in the most recent San Diego Housing Commission monthly data.

The city budgeted $1.7 million to operate the facility through the budget that year ends on June 30, 2019. It has a one-year operating agreement with Mental Health Systems, with two one-year renewal options.


According to housing commission records, Mental Health Systems has nine full-time workers running the center, including a project manager at $70,000 a year and supervisors, outreach workers and inventory specialists paid between $41,000 and $58,000 a year.

Four other Mental Health Systems employees work part-time to manage the facility, with salaries and benefits totaling $602,000 a year. The nonprofit operator also pays private security some $83,000 a year to guard the facility.

McConnell said the money could be better invested preventing homelessness.

“I’m all for providing storage for homeless people, but I’m not in favor of this incredible waste and inefficiency that the Mayor’s Office seems to have an affinity for,” he said. “Just throwing money up in the air and saying it’s for homeless people does not mean you’re doing good work on homelessness.”


Greg Block, a spokesman for Mayor Kevin Faulconer, said the mayor is committed to making sure that neighborhoods that accept homeless services are safer and cleaner than before the facilities open.

“Finding locations for homeless services can be a challenge,” Block wrote in an email. “The Sherman Heights neighborhood is a terrific example of that commitment.”

Community leaders welcome the extra police patrols, despite the added costs.

Lannon Turowski, a Sherman Heights homeowner and member of the newly constituted Homeless Storage Neighborhood Advisory Committee, said his initial concerns about the center have not materialized -- and he credits police for the result.


“This isn’t downtown,” he said. “This is a neighborhood, where our kids walk to school. We were very fearful that we weren’t going to get the help.”

Turowski, a contractor who has lived in Sherman Heights for nearly a decade, said he was worried that the city is putting most of its homeless services in the area just across the freeway from his community.

“It’s all being centralized in one spot,” he said. “You’ve got to spread this out.”

The $2 million for extra police patrols through Sherman Heights is part of a department-wide overtime estimate of $33.9 million, according to the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst. That’s $9.3 million more than was set aside for San Diego Police Department overtime all year.


The spending projection will be included in a mid-year budget review subject to council approval in 2019.

jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald