Rise in Homeless Families Strains San Diego Aid

SAN DIEGO —  It was a jolt: an unexpected announcement by one of the city’s most acclaimed citizens. A bit of shock therapy for the body politic, perhaps.

At the very least, it drove home an unpleasant fact of life: Even in boom times, there are growing numbers of homeless families in San Diego desperately searching each night for shelter.

The jolt came last week when Catholic Msgr. Joseph Carroll, lionized for years by presidents and politicians for his social service programs, announced that, for the first time, he would have to begin turning away homeless families.

It was the latest version of a nationwide trend: the fastest growing portion of the homeless population are single parents and their young children, and there are not enough private or public resources to help them all.

“It’s happening in Chicago, Des Moines, Los Angeles, everywhere, even sunny San Diego,” said R. Dean Wright, a sociologist and homelessness expert at Drake University. “Families are the new face of homelessness in America.”

In Los Angeles, homeless advocates held a meeting six months ago in the face of an “explosion” of homeless families on downtown streets, said Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness.

From that meeting came an additional 250-bed shelter for women with children at the downtown Union Rescue Mission. Still, the growing demand among families far exceeds the capacity of shelters, Erlenbusch said.

By some accounts, 40% of the nation’s homeless are families, up from 30% a decade ago. Explanations abound: welfare reform, high rents, low vacancy rates, the shift to a low-wage service economy and cutbacks in housing subsidies.

In a fax to the media, Carroll announced that, starting immediately, his St. Vincent de Paul shelter, the city’s largest, was at twice its capacity and had no more space for homeless families.

“It’s a decision we had hoped we wouldn’t have to make,” Carroll said in an interview. “We’re burned out; we can’t do it all. That’s the bottom line.”

Almost immediately, reporters from six local television stations came running to St. Vincent’s to interview the telegenic pastor, with print reporters only a step behind.

The next morning, as the news settled in, the phones at St. Vincent’s buzzed with calls from San Diegans eager to provide shelter for homeless families. Unfortunately, the pastor said, that is not a viable plan because of the possibility of problems for either the host families or their homeless guests.

Two City Council members--both seeking higher office--then held a news conference at St. Vincent’s to vow immediate action to increase the capacity of the city’s own winter shelter program for families. The shelter is in an abandoned hospital in another section of downtown and is also run by Carroll.

“I’ve been saying the misery train is going to roll into San Diego big time this winter and now it has,” said Councilman Juan Vargas, a candidate for the Assembly.

The council will meet in emergency session today to consider expanding the city’s winter shelter program and possibly starting a year-round shelter for families, to complement St. Vincent de Paul and other privately run shelters.

The day after Carroll’s announcement, several smaller shelters agreed to take the overflow from St. Vincent’s as a interim measure.

The Bronx-born priest, known locally as Father Joe, has never been shy about pleading for donations of food or money, wheedling corporate support, or speaking his mind when he thinks City Hall or some other political entity is unresponsive to the needs of the poor.

But never before had he made such a dire pronouncement--not for his shelter program, his AIDS program, his school, his health clinic, his 24-hour Alcoholics Anonymous effort, his feeding program, or any of the services at St. Vincent’s in the rundown eastern portion of downtown.

The night of the announcement, a half-dozen families--probably 25 people--were turned away from St. Vincent’s. Among the last to get in were Katherine Howard, 44, and her son Marquez, 11, who could no longer afford their $665-a-month apartment when Katherine’s disability benefits were reduced.

“Even in San Diego, people have got to realize that other people need help,” she said.

Luz Nevarer, 35, and her seven children ages 4 to 13, had arrived at St. Vincent’s just days earlier and been accepted for shelter. The overcrowding added to her worry.

“I worry what will happen to us if we don’t get to stay,” she said in Spanish. “Night is so dangerous on the streets for the children.”

In recent years the City Council blocked Carroll’s attempts to secure some of the land and buildings at the abandoned Naval Training Center in Point Loma. The redevelopment agency, preferring to see the neighborhood gentrify into hotels and shopping, thwarted his attempt to expand St. Vincent’s.

It would be grossly unfair to say that only Carroll is dedicated to helping the homeless in San Diego. A coalition of private and public officials has worked assiduously to cobble together resources to provide overnight shelter.

Indeed, even as the TV cameras were flocking to St. Vincent’s, there was money left in a county government program to provide vouchers for families to stay in a handful of motels. Carroll retorts that the county hotline shuts down at 5 p.m., while homeless people continue to arrive at St. Vincent’s all night.

Much has been made nationally of the public’s “compassion collapse,” and the syndrome is not foreign to San Diego.

Even in an area where million-dollar tract homes are selling briskly, and some of the nation’s hottest companies are located, charitable giving to St. Vincent’s declined by 10% last year. This despite the largest-ever TV advertising campaign during the Christmas season.

“We have a generation that is not very generous,” said Laurie Black, president of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a private group working with St. Vincent’s and other homeless advocates.

Mayor Susan Golding did not mention the homeless in her upbeat State of the City address two weeks ago. And until last week’s resultant media furor, the issue was a nonstarter in the race among 12 candidates to succeed the termed-out Golding.

When the homeless issue did arrive, it was raised not by any of the six leading candidates--five Republicans, one Democrat--but by perennial also-ran Loch David Crane, a magician whose flowing white mane and beard make him a dead ringer for Buffalo Bill.

At a candidates forum in La Jolla, Crane passed the hat, a floppy purple one, to gather donations for St. Vincent’s after putting in the first $50 himself. From the candidates and several hundred of the city’s most affluent citizens, the take was $290.

Although the immediate crisis may have eased, Carroll predicts that the number of families seeking shelter will increase exponentially in San Diego and elsewhere as the deadlines come and go for various states to cut back welfare. In April, the city’s winter shelter, now at 200% of capacity, is scheduled to close.

San Diego has to learn that tourists are not the only ones who are attracted to San Diego by those fun-in-the-sun television commercials the Convention and Visitors Bureau places in cold-weather regions across the country, Carroll said.

“Guess what? Poor people watch television too,” he said. “Being homeless in San Diego looks a lot better than being homeless in Chicago when it snows.”