Shelter for Homeless Within Health Codes

The City of Angels Mission, the object of complaints about dangerous and unsanitary conditions, has passed a county health inspection but is still under orders to move because its operators have failed to obtain the necessary city permits.

Roger Taylor, assistant director of the City of San Diego Building Inspection Department, said mission operators and their landlord, Seymour Reichbart, were notified Nov. 18 that the shelter for the homeless was illegally occupying the building at 12th Avenue and Broadway. They had failed to obtain a city building permit, which would be needed to bring the building up to city code requirements for a shelter, Taylor said.

Although the mission was ordered out of the building, Taylor said there would probably be no move to force immediate removal.

“To avoid problems, they should move somewhere else as soon as possible,” he said. “But they could not do much about conditions there without kicking people out on the street. We are not interested in having people spend a cold night on the street unless there were an immediate threat to the lives of the residents.”

Under an agreement worked out by the mission and Reichbart, the shelter is scheduled to vacate the building by Dec. 31. Taylor said that it would not be “unreasonable” for the shelter to remain in the building until that date.

Reichbart, who plans to use the building as a community service center for the poor, said he had spent Monday getting the requisite forms for a building permit but said, “Right now I’m glad it is open. It’s a lousy night.”

The building permit is the second permit that city officials say the shelter lacks. Mission operators were also informed by the city’s Planning Department that they needed a conditional-use permit because of the change in the way the former office building was being used.

Some members of the social service establishment have charged that the shelter is “dangerous” because its directors and staff are inexperienced.

The county health department investigated the shelter Friday after receiving complaints about unsanitary living conditions.

Ray Redmond, assistant chief of the health department’s urban planning department, said the inspection didn’t turn up any violation of county health codes.

“We sent out a supervising sanitarian to review the situation--to find out if it was as gross as it was reported to be, and we were informed that it appeared clean,” Redmond said. “The food service question was only a staff lunchroom. It appeared to us that it was satisfactory.”