The city of San Diego is soliciting operators to continue its “safe parking” program for homeless people who live in their vehicles and to expand it to a new lot planned for the former H Barracks site across the boat channel from Point Loma’s Liberty Station.
The request for proposals, or RFP, announced Oct. 23 asks prospective operators to respond with bids by Monday, Nov. 25. The bid website lists 22 prospective bidders.
The San Diego safe parking program currently has four locations on city-owned lots with a total capacity of about 220 vehicles. They are designated for people living out of their vehicles to park overnight, with services available to help them move toward permanent housing.
The program currently is operated by the nonprofit Jewish Family Service of San Diego, which is listed as one of the prospective bidders on the RFP. Jewish Family Service also operates two other lots in Encinitas and Vista.
“Safe parking serves a high percentage of people experiencing homelessness for the first time — often people with steady jobs or seniors on fixed income who fell on hard times and need a little help to get back on their feet,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement. “This program has proved instrumental in giving these folks the to stabilize and avoid chronic homelessness, and my istration will continue to invest in this vital option as we simultaneously work to address our housing shortage and make rent more affordable.”
The 7-acre H Barracks site planned for the newest safe parking lot is across North Harbor Drive from Spanish Landing, near San Diego International Airport. It contained eight two-story former Navy buildings shaped like giant “H’s” before they were torn down earlier this year.
The property is about a mile walk east of the restaurants, shops, homes, schools and park space at Liberty Station, which has made proposals to place homeless people there controversial.
The H Barracks parking lot, which is planned to open next year, is to include about 190 spaces, security and lighting, restrooms, housing resource providers, mental health services, job training, a pet relief area and more, according to the city. The plan was approved by the California Coastal Commission in July.
The city also has been looking for a place to put a new shelter providing temporary housing for hundreds of homeless people, and the H Barracks property was considered late last year and earlier this year.
That brought protests from a group of Point Loma-area residents called Point Loma CARES and others. The city instead chose to go with the safe parking plan for the site.
But that brought a lawsuit in September from developer McMillin-NTC, which argued that “the H-Barracks site cannot be legally used for homeless parking, homeless sheltering or homeless services” and that those additions “will have adverse impacts on the existing hotels on the nearby Liberty Station property and on the third hotel to be built by McMillin in that vicinity.”
The shelter possibility isn’t dead. The parking lot permit includes the potential for “two sprung structures onsite” to shelter hundreds more people, the city says.
That’s a contingency in case the City Council does not approve Gloria’s proposal for a 1,000-bed shelter in an empty warehouse in San Diego’s Middletown area.
If the contingency plan is pursued, “it would include the full scope of onsite services and resources to help individuals transition off the streets and into permanent housing,” according to the city.
The H Barracks site has been promised in five years for use by San Diego’s multibillion-dollar Pure Water recycling system.
