Center for Homeless Called ‘Two-Edged Sword’

The dawn of each day in downtown San Diego brings with it the sight of hundreds of homeless people taking to the streets, some in search of food or a handout, some looking for a spot--a vacant lot, a doorway, a bench--to spend the hours until nightfall. The next morning, the dreary cycle begins anew.

Robert Jadlow sees the daily rhythm of the bedraggled and beleaguered and is sympathetic--up to a point. He already leases a 60-unit apartment house to St. Vincent de Paul Center, which uses it to house homeless families and other street people not thought to be hard-core.

But he is frustrated by the likelihood that a new program for the homeless is going to be built across the street from his proposed $9-million development of 123 apartments, neighborhood stores and offices.

He appealed to the city Planning Commission and lost when it unanimously approved a special conditional-use permit for the program. He now is appealing to the City Council, which has scheduled a hearing on the matter for May 12. But even he says it’s likely he will lose there, too, as his district councilwoman, Celia Ballesteros, supports the new program, which is being proposed by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, whose chairwoman is Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

“It’s a two-edged sword,” he said in a telephone interview Monday. “I realize the situation of the homeless and the need to do something . . . but then there’s the fact of the city wanting to encourage developers to the inner city and increase private uses without a subsidy. Instead of help, I get things thrown in my face like this.”

Focus of Anger

The focus of Jadlow’s ire is the proposed San Diego Day Center. The facility--to be financed through a combination of city and county funds, plus private contributions--is to be built on 17th Street between J and K streets.

This triangle of land is actually a Caltrans right-of-way; 25,000 square feet of ice plant and two palm and three eucalyptus trees bordered by a freeway on-ramp and off-ramp and doused in noise from adjacent Interstate 5.

The location--known as Centre City East--is about as far from downtown as one can get and still be downtown.

It is here that the task force wants to build a $300,000 facility that would give homeless men an alternative to the streets and a place to pass the time during the day. It would provide them with showers, a locker room, a laundry room, bathrooms, a mail and message center, barber services and pay telephones. It wouldn’t, however, provide them with a place to sleep or with meals.

Its purpose is not lofty. What it is, say its supporters, is a step up from daily survival. Its hoped-for effect is to take the homeless who wander downtown streets--and who constitute a problem to businessmen in downtown’s revitalized core--and give them a place to hang out, rest and relax during the day.

“This is supposed to be an alternative to the streets that is safe . . . that gives people a place to go as opposed to being in front of Robinson’s all day,” said Frank Landerville, director of the homeless task force. “We’re not there to change their life around . . . but some services (such as social service programs) will be there if they want them.”

For Landerville, the 17th Street location is nearly ideal. It is away from the city’s burgeoning redevelopment area, it is large enough to provide both an indoor facility and an enclosed outdoor yard, and it is within several blocks of many other programs geared to the homeless, such as free meal services and shelters, which will increase dramatically this summer when the new nearby St. Vincent de Paul homeless center opens.

Controlled Place

“The purpose of the day center is to reduce the conflicts between the nomadic homeless population and the downtown business community,” says a letter sent by Rinus Baak, chairman of the day center committee and an official with the Chamber of Commerce, to the city Planning Commission.

“The day center will provide a supervised and controlled place for the homeless to spend the daytime hours. It will provide them an alternative to their normal moving about through the Centre City area and creating potentially unpleasant circumstances,” Baak said in his letter.

Landerville says simply: “The fact is the day center has to be somewhere.”

He says the task force--as required by the conditional use permit--will strive to design the facility and operate it in such a manner that traditional problems that have dogged some other projects for the homeless--such as long lines, loitering, and drunk and disorderly transients--are minimized. Part of the design is being handled by the Centre City Development Corp., the agency in charge of downtown redevelopment and the main public force behind the construction of Horton Plaza.

Both the site of the project and its purpose are anything but ideal to Jadlow. He is concerned about the day center decreasing his property’s value, scaring appraisers and lenders away from approving loans for his complex. He worries that his neighborhood will become an institutionalized dumping ground for the rest of downtown.

Jadlow already has building permits for his project--which consists of two complexes one block apart, but both across the street from the proposed day center--and is now attempting to negotiate financing.

“Lenders are very, very stringent, especially the local ones. They say they don’t redline, but in effect that’s what they are doing,” Jadlow said. “They see the lines (of homeless) that go around the block when they are standing in line for meals and the other hard-core homeless. They (lenders) say they can’t give you the loan because of the neighborhood, and you know what they are talking about.” He said he is seeking a loan from an out-of-state lender.

He is also concerned that it will be difficult to find commercial tenants for his buildings once they find out that the day center is across the street.

Demolished Buildings

Jadlow said he had so many problems with transients breaking into his buildings that he chose to demolish them, leaving them as empty lots on which he intends to build his new project--one three-story building and another five stories tall. He estimates that there are 10 to 12 facilities within several blocks of the proposed day center and his project that cater to the homeless, the unemployed or those with drug-abuse and alcohol problems.

“All this has occurred since 1980 . . . it’s now a policy and it doesn’t look like I can do much about it,” he said.

In a letter to the Planning Commission, Jadlow said, “These people should be located in the central core where they came from and where most tend to congregate.”

Ballesteros, the councilwoman who represents downtown, said, “I represent his position” but that she supports the day center. “He’s going to be developing and we are going to be developing a center . . . we can work together to make the uses more compatible,” she said.

“What’s important is that we’re not going to create more problems,” Ballesteros said. “The land is there, there’s very little around it, it appears to be appropriate.”