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>> PEGGY PICO: About 3,000 people in San Diego and 10,000 county wide are homeless.
Former mayor Filner promised to tackle that problem to keep the city's only two shelters
open year round but it turns out there is not enough money in the budget to keep the
city's shelters open past April. Here with the details are San Diego housing
commission president, Rick gentry and Bob McElroy.
Rick, what did mayor Filner miss? >> Well, it was based on a conversation internally and the
number was projected annually and put it in the budget
>> PEGGY PICO: What was how much short? >> It was a number initially we figured it
was about $800,000 short. The housing commission saw the number and
we went before city council during the budget hearing in June and indicated it simply wasn't
enough money and that we would need to check into it and get back to them.
>> PEGGY PICO: Did he forget an administrative cost, electricity?
Where did this gap come from? >> I think the gap was he looked at the direct
services but did not take into account the administrative, maintenance and operational
costs which you know if you operate the shelters but you don't know if you don't operate the
shelters. >> PEGGY PICO: How about additional funding?
How much will we need to get through the rest of the year if we wanted to keep it open and
how much for future budget? >> What the housing commission did was to
do a due diligence properly and talk with the operators of the Alpha project and veterans'
villages, take into account deferred and routine maintenance and administrative costs and the
budget is over a million dollars short. >> PEGGY PICO: And we need a million dollars
every year to do this? >> Additionally to every year on top of what
has been budgeted and the council indicated to us that they would look into either supplementing
or we would need to operate the shelter less than the full year
>> PEGGY PICO: Let's talk about the impact of this, Bob, the Alpha project, the tent
in Barrio Logan, remind us of the purpose and how many people in San Diego this operation
serves. >>> 14 programs, seven different cities from
Chula Vista to Oakland, family housing, seniors housing, downtown housing, the largest state
license in the county and in Vista so we have facilities all over the place and most people
see us, though, because every year for 15 to 20 years it was the city of San Diego's
winter shelter program. >> PEGGY PICO: How many there?
>> 200 beds year round. >> PEGGY PICO: Why would you like to see it
open? >> Personally because it's the right thing
to do, we see people getting well there every day.
It's the only shelter for women, 65 women there every day, we network with the San Diego
police department, the only place their teams can bring people, these people's primary care
physician is the emergency room, inside the shelter we have family health centers and
case managers there it's a safe, nurturing environment where people can detox from the
streets, women can feel safe for maybe the first time in their lives and start the transition
process. >> PEGGY PICO: It's a launching
>> It costs far more to do nothing than it does to do something if we can't find $1 million
it's going to cost the tax payers 10 times that much with these people out on the streets.
>> PEGGY PICO: Assuming no money comes in before April what can citizens do?
>> There are people in this town with walk around money.
We put in $400,000 to run the winter shelter just in the Christmas span of four months
and we're willing to but in money too but we can't run the whole operation.
All of the providers put our own money in and I think we need to get the community involved
even if you don't have the burden for the homeless, they're not relevant to you, they
still affect you, the reason you can't have more parks, libraries, cops, because over
$200 million are spent chasing around people downtown that are just sick
>> PEGGY PICO: What are the other options to fund this program as we can see it seems
integral to a lot of other programs. >>> I think it's important to note that the
term "homeless" it's a term that covers a lot of different iteration and causes and
there is a need for a lot of different approaches to deal with it.
The housing commission is putting in several millions of dollars in activities mainly by
utilizing our voucher program to help people and the ultimate answer is there is a great
need for more permanent housing for these folks.
>> PEGGY PICO: Thank you so much for this update.
>>> Thank you.