SANTA CRUZ >> Facing likely hurdles ranging from limited availability and high cost to capacity restrictions and neighbor opposition, the Santa Cruz City Council agreed to explore setting up a homeless shelter in the California National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park.

Santa Cruz City Councilwoman Sandy Brown, who made a motion on Tuesday to focus city workers’ efforts on the site, as recommended by city officials, described the armory building as the “least-worst option at the moment.” The site is meant to serve as a staging ground for a portion of the city’s unsheltered homeless population, while the city works with neighboring municipalities to create a permanent new homeless shelter.

The armory, owned by the state, had served as the city’s emergency winter shelter site, operated by the Homeless Services Center in recent years, from the late 1980s until April 2016. For the past two winters, however, about 100 emergency winter shelter beds have been split between the Salvation Army in Santa Cruz and the Veterans of Foreign War’s hall in Live Oak.

Brown asked city officials how they planned to transition from River Street Camp conditions, where more than 50 people are camped on a city-owned lot at 1220 River St. with individual or doubled-up tents, to a more dorm-like atmosphere inside the armory.

Assistant City Manager Tina Shull, leading the City Manager’s Office staff in seeking emergency shelter options, said ideas such as dividers, hanging sheets and even tents indoors had been discussed.

“The National Guard Armory building held about 100 just on sleeping mats. So, I think if we’re putting tents in there or demarcating space, it might to be less. But we also might want to think about using the outside, as well,” Shull said. “I think some of the other sites could provide maybe more space, but this has a built-in shelter roof over their head.”

The council directed city staff to return within six months to determine if the city will continue to use the armory, but officials said they would be coming back sooner than that in order to formalize the interim site or suggest an alternative.

The armory was one of four potential shelter sites proposed for council discussion Tuesday, and inadvertently omitted from an earlier Sentinel report. In the agenda item’s staff report, the armory site was said to have barriers that “were found to be sufficiently high to prompt staff to survey locally-controlled properties” instead.

Ed Silvera, a member of the trail-maintenance Friends of DeLaveaga group, shared worries that shelter users sleeping outdoors could pose safety risks to for the park.

“As you know, we’ve had some pretty major fires recently up in DeLaveaga. It’s a serious concern,” Silvera said. “We do not support the National Guard for numerous reasons.”

Cherie Petersen, displaced last week when the last winter shelter site, at the Salvation Army, shuttered for the year, urged the council to move quickly in finding shelter opportunities — wherever they are. River Street Camp has a waiting list about the same size as its current capacity, likely escalating when the winter shelters closed, said Shull.

“There’s a lot of women like me that really need you,” Petersen said. “We can’t wait a year and a half for you to figure things out. We need you to help now.”

Those other sites included empty unincorporated Santa Cruz County land, owned by the city, on Dimeo Lane — next to the city landfill and recycling center; sloping land alongside the Santa Cruz County Emeline Complex, where health and human services are housed; and in Pogonip, in open park space next to the former polo clubhouse.

Emeline Avenue neighborhood residents flooded the city with letters opposing a shelter site due to safety concerns, while Dimeo Lane-area neighbors turned out together at Tuesday’s meeting to list the property’s many perceived faults as a homeless shelter ranging from high winds and landfill odors to lack of cellular signals and mountain lions.

Homeless issues advocate Paul Lee, a founder for what is now known as the Homeless Services Center and the Homeless Garden Project, said he believed the Pogonip’s planning documents contemplated setting up a campsite — though for recreational rather than emergency shelter uses — and said he would attempt to garner assistance in readying a site there through connections to the California Conservation Corps. Several speakers associated with Costanoa Commons, jointly purchased land destined to serve as a working farm and affordable housing for those with developmental disabilities, said their presence on Golf Club Drive, near Pogonip, was not properly raised by city reports as a red flag for the site.