Site in Balboa Park : Old Hospital Sought as Home for the Homeless

Backed by half a dozen of San Diego’s homeless, Douglas Graham appeared before the City Council Monday to appeal for more shelters and jobs for local street people.

Graham proposed converting the old Balboa Naval Hospital into a shelter and using $1 million from the city’s hotel tax fund to create jobs for the homeless.

“We’re looking for a hand up, not a handout,” Graham said before he faced the council, which ultimately referred his proposal to the city manager for study.

About 35 acres of buildings and land at the old hospital will revert to city ownership in mid-1988, when the Navy completes construction on its new medical facility.

But George Loveland, the city’s parks director, said using the old hospital as a shelter for the homeless is prohibited under current city ordinances. The council has already decided that the old hospital is to be dedicated park property, and that designation prohibits using the structure for housing, Loveland said. To remove the old hospital property from park land would require a two-thirds vote of the electorate, he said.

Before the meeting Monday with the council, Graham’s small group of protesters passed up an opportunity for civil disobedience when two undercover police officers refused to admit them to City Hall unless they discarded their homemade cardboard signs.

The undercover officers were assigned to City Hall because police expected a crowd of about 500 homeless people, Capt. Jim Malloy said.

Although only 18 showed up at the front doors, the officers were still concerned that the group would become “unruly,” he said.

“With that thought in mind, this one officer, who has been around for a while, remembered what he thought was an ordinance from Vietnam protest days that prohibited signs in council chambers,” Malloy said. “He did, in fact, advise this group that they would not be able to take those placards inside.” Six left their signs behind and followed Graham into the council chambers on the 12th floor.

Checking later with the city attorney’s office, however, police discovered there is no such prohibition. The officers, Malloy said, were “mistaken.”

There are an estimated 3,000 homeless on San Diego streets, and authorities say only one in four finds shelter each night.