More than two years ago, Mayor Todd Gloria and other local leaders stood outside a downtown motel and cheered the opening of the city’s first-ever dedicated shelter for homeless seniors.
Two years later, that shelter is closed.
The city and provider Serving Seniors quietly ramped down the shelter recently after the city decided needed building repairs made the program too costly to sustain. Now the 34-room motel is vacant, and the city will spend about $77,000 a month on rent until its lease ends on June 30.
Both the city and Serving Seniors CEO Paul Downey, who has long rallied for senior-focused homeless services as the number of unsheltered seniors has spiked, say they are disappointed to end what both described as a successful partnership.
The Seniors Landing program, which unlike other city-funded shelters focused on temporarily housing only homeless residents who had a housing voucher or subsidy when they moved in, served as a bridge to permanent housing for most who stayed there the past two years.
Serving Seniors reports that at least 82 percent of the 217 homeless seniors who exited the Little Italy hotel moved into permanent homes and 14 of the 16 who had been in the program when it ramped down moved into housing or temporarily into other shelters. Downey said two seniors recently opted to return to the street despite the offer of other options.
Those largely successful outcomes – which outperform other shelters in the region – came despite a series of building issues. Among them: circuits that blew if more than one senior tried to use a microwave at the same time and leaking pipes under the building’s foundation that took multiple units offline for weeks at a time on multiple instances.
On Jan. 31, after another leak forced Serving Seniors to close off multiple motel rooms, leaders of the nonprofit and the city’s homelessness department met. Downey expected they’d be discussing Serving Seniors’ proposed remediation plans. Instead, Downey said, city officials said they were shutting down the program and wouldn’t renew the motel lease when it ended in June. In late February, the city formally notified Serving Seniors that it would end its city shelter contract in 30 days.
In a statement, city spokesperson Matt Hoffman said the city and Serving Seniors mutually decided to end the program early out of concern for “the wellbeing of program participants and additional costs.”
“The city and our providers understand the disruptive impact continual repairs and mitigation efforts can have on individuals as they work to end their homelessness,” Hoffman wrote.
Asked if the city should have more deeply vetted the motel to avoid this outcome, Hoffman said the city followed “standard protocols” to evaluate the property before opening the shelter in 2022 and noted the city only pursued a year-to-year lease for the property.
“While this process helps assess conditions and identify necessary improvements, as with any property, unforeseen issues can still arise despite thorough review,” Hoffman wrote. “Over time, Serving Seniors and the city incurred unforeseen maintenance issues and continuous costs for repairs.”
Hotel Investment Group CEO Darshan Patel, whose company portfolio includes the Little Italy motel and who signed the 2022 city lease, did not immediately return messages from Voice of San Diego this week.
Now that Serving Seniors is moving out, Hoffman said the city will reassign security workers to keep the vacant property safe without additional costs.
The city says it has reallocated funds it expected to spend on the Seniors Landing lease and its contract with Serving Seniors to support a new Catholic Charities shelter for women and children downtown, including single women over 55.
The Housing Commission has also said it expects to dedicate at least 30 beds in the apartments at its new shelter at Veterans Village of San Diego for seniors.
Downey said Serving Seniors didn’t fight the city’s decision to close its shelter but said he wishes there were more dedicated options for homeless seniors, including at Seniors Landing. He noted that the Serving Seniors shelter accommodated older San Diegans who often needed mobility assistance and other supportive services that aren’t provided at other shelters. Those needs can make the most vulnerable homeless seniors ill suited – and even ineligible – to move into other shelters. Seniors Landing was the region’s only shelter solely focused on seniors.
“It’s hard to quibble with the decision [to close Seniors Landing] from the standpoint of the ongoing maintenance cost but it was a successful program, and in my view, needs to be continued somewhere,” Downey said.
Julie Porter, 67, who spent years on the street and living in an RV before moving into housing in 2017, agrees.
Porter, now a vocal advocate for homeless seniors, said non-congregate shelters focused solely on people over 55 provide the environment, services and support that seniors need.
“I believe it’s absolutely necessary,” Porter said. “We deserve it.”
Downey said Serving Seniors is already on the hunt for motel properties where it could apply the bridge housing model that helped transition homeless seniors directly from the street.
Hoffman said the city also “continues to explore all opportunities” to open new shelters and “looks forward to potential opportunities” to work with Serving Seniors again in the future.
For now, Downey can’t help but reflect on the now-vacant motel rooms and what could have been.
“We have a model that works,” Downey said. “The people I’m concerned about are the seniors that ideally would be sleeping there tonight that are not.”
34 beds in a city with 1.4 million people. ‘reallocate funds’. this is like a rump joke or something?
Toad has an exceptional knack in finding these huge unsustainable dilapidated money pits, to continuously flush millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money down the drain, never coming close to any kind of permanent & sustainable project.
As with the water and storm drain mismanagement, it is an epic and and horrifically comical level of “progressive” (communist) government incompetence.
The city is paying rent and was also on the hook for building maintenance? What? Who would agree to a lease like that? Is the landlord yet another Gloria supporter getting paid?
Daniel Smiechowski is challenging Mayor Todd Gloria for re-election, after previously running in 2018 and 2022 to represent City Council District 2.
To help inform voters, the San Diego Union-Tribune asked all the candidates a series of the same questions about their priorities, positions and campaigns. Their emailed answers have been lightly edited for clarity.
Why are you running, and what makes you the best candidate?
I am running to change the direction of city government from one owned by the developers to one beholden to the citizens of San Diego. I am motivated by the idea that the noblest motive is to serve. It is my desire to bring new solutions to recurring problems. When I am elected, I will implement long-term solutions that will allow me to serve as mayor and retire from public service knowing that my service made a difference.
I am the best candidate because I have spent my life advocating for the citizens of San Diego; I am not a career politician. I have no desire to continue in public office after I have been elected mayor. For those reasons I will make decisions that will not further my political career but will be what I consider to be in the best interests of my fellow citizens.
What are the top 3 issues facing the city?
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1. Reducing the cost of housing in San Diego.
2. Solving the homeless problem.
3. Reducing the expense of running our government.
What are the first 3 things you would do in office if elected?
The highest priority in my administration is to stop all projects that involve the sale of city-owned land. I would lease city land, using the Port District model of stewardship in administering the use of our land. All rezones would be approved with the developer selling the rezoned land to the city.
I would institute a 10% pay cut of all salaries in city government that exceed $150,000. I would put into effect a hiring freeze on all positions where the base salary is $150,000 or more. I would eliminate and consolidate departments that have high overhead. I would use the savings to hire more employees who provide service, not supervision.
All new hires in the city government would be enrolled in Social Security. I would liquidate the current pension program by not covering any more employees. Eventually the city will pay off the multibillion-dollar debt that keeps growing.
Do you support a 1-cent general city sales tax increase, and/or a half-cent county sales tax increase that would fund transportation? Why or why not?
The way to control government spending is to control expenses not raise taxes. If the city had adopted a policy of leasing their land when the Port District started it, the city would be just like the Port District relying only on lease payments not taxes.
Fiscal responsibility starts with a mayor who will cut salaries and pensions. San Diego is required by law to balance its budget. Instead of selling our land to balance the budget, lets reduce the cost of government. Raising taxes only increases expenses by encouraging new costs.
What should the city do to combat its housing crisis?
The price of housing doubles every 10 years because the value of the land increases.
The solution to both problems is to stop selling city-owned land and lease it like the Port District.
I will build a low-income high-rise apartment complex on leased city-owned land. I will require that the units have four private bedrooms, two full baths and a kitchen. The lease payments will be predicated on a percentage of the gross rents over 60 years. The winning bid will have purchased the right to use the land at less than 25% of the cost of a comparable project. At the end of the 60 years the land comes back to San Diego and we can do it again.
This will provide a comparable sale for a leasehold estate. It will demonstrate the feasibility of building low-income housing that pays for itself without using government subsidies.
How should public safety and civil liberties be balanced when it comes to homelessness enforcement, behavioral health policy and police surveillance?
Public safety and civil liberties cannot be thought of as a scale in and out of balance. This is an illusion created to confuse the voters as to the core problems we face in San Diego.
There is no comparison when addressing unfair laws that criminalize poverty and poor healthy policies that fail to address the core issue of healthcare.
Police surveillance has nothing to do with poor health policies and the homeless.
The solution to these problems is leadership that has a desire to address each of these issues as separate problems with unique solutions.
Recent flooding has brought new attention to failures of city infrastructure, and how the effects of climate change can disproportionately impact poorer neighborhoods and communities of color. How should the city combat this?
A short-term solution is to educate and involve the citizens of San Diego to take responsibility for their own streets and drains. A neighborhood watch program that cleans the sewer grates of leaves and debris before the streets floods reduces the load on our city employees.
The real problem is poorer neighborhoods do not have large campaign donors who can influence politicians when they prioritize spending on infrastructure. The older pump stations are located in the poorer neighborhoods. Giving priority to their replacement instead of the more affluent areas of town would be the tide that raises all boats equally.
San Diego faces a big budget crunch, along with a nearly $5 billion infrastructure funding shortfall. Where would you propose cutting, where should more revenue be sought, and what else should the city do?
The major cost to our budget is personnel salaries and benefits. Reduce the salaries of the mayor and all elected city officials and cut their staff. Institute a hiring freeze on all positions that have a base salary of $150,000 or more.
Pensions are a cost that will bankrupt the city unless we stop it now. It is a privilege not a career to work for the government in a leadership capacity. Put all new hired employees on Social Security. Let those positions that pay more than allowed for coverage by Social Security take care of their own retirement.
Originally Published: February 20, 2024 at 3:30 PM PST
Just stop already!
Show your fat face! Identify your cowardly name! Explain your idiocy!
SPAMkowski.
Hey! Cowards like you son never seem to quit! I wonder why? LOL
Why don’t we quit? Because COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM must always be opposed, SPAMkowski.
I applied for many jobs at City.
Paul Downey salary ? $291,000 according to charity watch
Why couldn’t the city use this as a bargaining point to get a much better deal on a lease in the future if repairs are done to this motel?
Another Todd black hole? The city needs to stop all real estate deals. Todd has lost too many times.
Or should I say the taxpayers, Todd’s buddies have done alright. Midway Rising the next giveaway.
VOSD didnt cause any of the city’s problems, it just reports on them. When calling the city communist, you obviously dont know the definition of communism. If you did, you would realize that the city’s politicians are trrue capitalists. Only capitalists could be so corrupt. That being said, your use of the term communist does indeed make you a troll.
The sad part is, we all agree on the issues that exist in this city. What we do not agree with is the treatment. But regardless, left or right of the political spectrum, it is easy to see that the Mayor’s office and every office that touches real estate in this city is ridculously corrupt. You have to ask yourself, if DA Stephan isnt investigating this issue in the City of San Diego, what exactly is she doing in her office?