I am writing in response to the New Times’ March 7 article: “Grover Beach could have its first affordable housing project.” I am closely following the proposed homeless project at Hillside Church, only a half mile from our elementary school and a few doors down from my parents’ home. The plan (which is dependent on a $4.8 million HEAP grant) has good intentions and plans for services that our homeless truly need, but is it in the right location?
This is an untested model for our county—combining the following all on the same property and in the middle of a residential neighborhood: a warming shelter, transitional housing (44 beds), and adults from the ages of 18 to 24 with a “jail-to-community” program.
The intent of the warming shelter is to provide a place to sleep overnight during the coldest nights of the year, or when there is a 50 percent chance of rain in the forecast. All homeless over the age of 18 are welcome. Sobriety is not a requirement, and no background checks are done. At our last neighborhood meeting, a parole officer shared that he has sex offender parolees who have stayed there. These overnight guests won’t show up on Megan’s Law, and when they leave the facility, they are in a school walking zone. How is this protecting our children?
Please understand my heart. I fully support the need for warming shelters, but I do not back a solution that places the shelter within walking distance of three schools, especially when guests may be paroled sex offenders. Since the warming center opened about two years ago (without neighbors’ knowledge, on an administrative approval), neighbors have regularly found used needles, broken glass, alcohol, and human feces in the bushes along the same route where kids are walking to and from school.
I ask our civic leaders why they have overlooked their own general plan? Emergency shelters are defined in the development code as “facilities for the temporary overnight shelter of indigents operated by a public or nonprofit.” The city has adopted an emergency shelter overlay to allow emergency shelters/warming centers to be permitted by right in certain areas of the city.
A drive through the overlay area on March 24 quickly located five appropriately sized parcels for sale. Instead of using the city’s existing “emergency shelter overlay” zone, which is within walking distance from where many homeless currently congregate and camp, this Hillside Church proposal seeks to rezone this quiet neighborhood from residential to commercial. Currently, warming center buses are bringing the homeless from all over the Five Cities into the church neighborhood.
Also notable under Grover Beach’s general plan in the housing constraints section of the housing element, it states, “Nearby residential neighborhoods must be adequately buffered from potential impacts of the proposed shelter.” Where is the buffer? It is surrounded by children and seniors.
Let’s ask project stakeholders to find a way to divide this ambitious, vital project so it accomplishes three essential goals: provides services to help those who need them most; keeps residential neighborhoods safe; and protects People’s Self-Help Housing’s proposal for a family-oriented, low-income housing project at the Hillside Church location.
This solution would better serve our homeless and under-served populations while looking out for two of our other vulnerable populations: children and seniors.
We all have a heart to help. We, as a community, want solutions that can change lives. We are at our best together. Let’s find solutions that are safe and effective for our homeless. Δ
Becky Mosgofian writes with concern from Arroyo Grande. Send comments through the editor at clanham@newtimesslo.com or write a letter for publication and send it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 7, 2019.
These are the usual NIMBY arguments that have exacerbated the homeless problem and led to the county becoming the #5 least affordable place to live in the US.
Trying to sneak this project into a neighborhood of seniors and children and three schools, without any of them having a voice in the decision, is not anyone’s idea of a democratic process! I don’t even live near this area and I can see how unfair to the neighborhood this is!
To attempt to place this kind of project in an R-1 zone, a low density zone with an elementary school and senior living in the area does not make sense. Neither does it make sense that this project will include family-oriented low income housing that would place children in close proximity with sex offender parolees. The safety risks this project represents for all involved cannot be ignored.
Ra237 if you dont have the courage to sign your name keep your opinions to yourself. People make sacrifices for years to be able to live in a neighborhood like this. It is wrong for the city to just disregard all neighbors and foist this shelter on is. Some of us have lived here 30 years or more and it hasnt been easy. Its expensice to live here. What right does the city have to destroy what we all have tried to build her for decades?
Renee Kovach
Let’s get over ourselves – we all need to embrace homelessness as a reality and support good solutions that local non-profits are willing to offer to our communities.
Grover Beach community leaders – Please empower those willing to develop greater homeless support in Grover Beach. Deferring this solution will likely result in a more costly and maybe unobtainable future project.
I suggest you go read Kyle Berlin’s opinion in the tribune. The warming shelter already exists, so all you are adding is transitional housing with the support services you want.
I worked for the Good Samaritan if you think that’s a safe refuge you’re kidding yourself. Place is crazy and designed to make money off of people’s problems if there are no people with problems they would lose grant money and that will never happen with management like that in charge. They see everybody from their staff struggle to survive on the minimum wage that they pay them. And they take home whatever they want that’s donated to the facility for the homeless they call it getting first dibs, and get paid an unreasonable amount of money per hour, plus yearly bonuses for assisting with the different grants. All we need out there and some integrity people who mean what they say and say what they mean, people with integrity and compassion.