For a year and a half, San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum Manager Diane Marchetti said, she tried to be patient and understanding. In March 2021, the city of SLO established a safe parking site for the unhoused in a city lot adjoining the museum and other businesses near the Amtrak station.
“We really did try to be tolerant,” Marchetti told New Times, “mainly because we knew it was an emergency. It was COVID. They [the city] needed to do something. We just thought, well, it’s temporary.”
The museum held its tongue about complaining, but Marchetti said volunteers and visitors regularly felt impacts from the program. They came across, and often cleaned up, “human waste, trash, and drug paraphernalia” and at times experienced verbal harassment, she said.
“Nobody who ever volunteered to work at the museum thought they’d be cleaning up human waste, sharps, and whatever else,” she said.
So, last month, Marchetti felt blindsided when the museum and its neighbors received a letter from the city notifying them of upcoming plans to make that parking lot a permanent safe parking program site at a Sept. 14 Planning Commission meeting.
“Now our tolerance is working against us,” Marchetti wrote in a public comment letter to the city ahead of the meeting. “[It] should not, in any way, be taken as some sort of approval. It is not!”
Numerous letters flowed into City Hall from other nearby businesses, property owners, and even the SLO Council of Governments, a public transportation agency, raising issues with the continued use of the lot for the program.
In response, city officials delayed the hearing in lieu of further discussions with stakeholders.
Homeless advocates, meanwhile, cautioned the city against revoking a resource that’s provided nearly 2,000 nights of safe parking for its unhoused residents—most of whom are behaving discreetly and responsibly.
“The majority of folks who are in this program are actually following the rules and just want a place to sleep at night without being harassed,” said Jack Lahey, director of homeless services at CAPSLO (Community Action Partnership of SLO County), which operates the safe parking site. “It sometimes turns into ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ when it comes to social services.”
Ups, downs, reboots
SLO’s overnight parking program at Railroad Square is unique in the county.
Unlike the 40 Prado homeless shelter or the county’s safe parking area on Oklahoma Avenue, participants at Railroad Square can stay in the 35-space lot with few requirements, strings attached, or questions asked.
Participants simply check in with a CAPSLO staff member at 7 p.m. and are asked to leave at 7 a.m. the next morning.
“It’s much lower barrier,” Lahey said. “That’s why Railroad [Square] works: It’s people who are kind of service-disengaged, and now they’re becoming a little more comfortable with services because there’s not this threat of enrollment [in case management] looming.”
After a slow start, where the site averaged just 0.3 registered parkers per night during its first six months, Lahey said the parking lot is much busier—and safer—now, thanks to a program “reboot” in November 2021.
At that time, the city and CAPSLO added signage, stenciled parking spaces, barriers, and better staffing. Since then, it’s averaged 11.5 cars per night, and in July, it hit a monthly high of 19 cars per night.
“It keeps going up,” Lahey said.
But before the reboot, the program struggled due to the lack of structure and oversight, Lahey acknowledged. The lot became a magnet for problems.
“It got really out of control,” he said. “There were a few unsafe situations that happened there. Somebody got arrested. It was not great.”
The changes made last November had a positive impact, and more residents felt safe to park there, he said.
“There was a big shift because everybody knows it’s a program now, and there’s more of a feeling of safety and a feeling like this is truly a place I can park and not be harassed,” Lahey said.
Today, a regular community of parkers utilizes the program, with a resident “site captain” keeping watch and serving as a contact for CAPSLO. While Lahey said the captain is media shy and not available to interview, another resident, Stephen Jarrett, spoke during the Sept. 14 Planning Commission meeting about his experience staying there.
“I applaud the city for creating a safe space. … There were probably seven to 10 single women that I know very much appreciate having that space,” Jarrett said. “I have never felt personally threatened or seen any actions that would cause me concern or fear, but I absolutely understand the [neighbors’] concern for safety.”
Spillover effect
According to Marchetti, it’s not so much the residents of the program that cause problems, but the activity that “spills over” during the daytime around the broader parking area that wraps around to the Amtrak station.
“The so-called ‘safe’ area has attracted many more residents than those who legally use the facility,” Marchetti said, “with the result that the entire southern end of the parking lot has become a chaotic homeless encampment right in the middle of businesses.”
The letters that neighboring businesses and property owners—from Miner’s Ace Hardware, to Del Monte Café, to the owner of a commercial building—sent to the city shared anecdotes attesting to increases in petty theft, trash, and disturbing conduct since the lot was established.
“Two weeks ago at Del Monte Café, we had a guest from across the street sitting inside the café waving around a hypodermic needle … [and] before that, another guest yelling inside my door ‘fu— you fu— everyone,'” longtime restaurant owner Debra Collins wrote in a Sept. 14 letter to the city. “A few days ago, my customers sitting in a corner booth watched a young man with his pants down pooping in the bushes. … This is not what I want for our city, my family, my neighbors, and my business.”
Whether the city, CAPSLO, and the neighbors can come to an agreeable solution for the program remains to be seen. Marchetti contends that absent 24/7 security in the area, the site is unmanageable, and she can’t support it.
The city currently provides $65,000 per year to CAPSLO to operate the site—enough resources for the nonprofit to staff it for three hours each day during check-in and checkout, Lahey said.
Teresa McClish, housing policy and programs manager for the city, told New Times that city officials are talking with neighbors and CAPSLO about possible changes to the program.
“The goal here is to talk to the neighborhood and by Oct. 1, we want to make sure to remedy the existing concerns with operations,” McClish said.
From the city’s perspective, SLO is trying to balance its obligations to local businesses and property owners with its promise to offer more resources for the unhoused community.
“We have policies that say we should be doing things like this,” McClish said. “Now, is it in a perfect location? Is there a perfect location? I’m not sure there is one. We’re working hard to implement the policy. And the neighbors, they’re going to make it a better program by speaking up.” Δ
Assistant Editor Peter Johnson can be reached at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 9, 2022.
Call me crazy, but I dont understand how the homeless with addiction/mental health problems are better off wandering the streets than in a facility/jail where theyd have 3 meals/day, a roof over their heads, showers and spend time in relative safety. The State is saving $$$$$ and placing the burden on the backs of local communities. Local government decisions are continuously hampered by State regulations of do nothing. Im losing my patience! People voted for the government in SAC! What do you expect?