Father Joe’s Haven to Provide a Touch of Home for Homeless
It is a shelter in name only. Rising from a warehouse district on the eastern fringes of downtown, its modern, stucco bell-tower visible for blocks, the new three-story peach-colored St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center for the homeless seems better suited to be a mission-style palacio or a cathedral.
And that’s before you get inside the 404-bed center, where there are high-ceilinged rooms, top-of-the-line furnishings, a medical clinic, offices, a chapel, a day care center, a school, computers, a dining room that converts to a basketball court, a kitchen that will serve 2,000 meals each day, an underground parking garage and a 15,000-square-foot courtyard with pillars and a fountain.
The center, which opens Sept. 8, is so far removed from the battered basements and converted warehouses that have traditionally taken in the nation’s homeless that it must be considered more home than shelter.
‘Like Somebody Cares’
“Surroundings are important,” said Mary Case, who will direct the center. “When they walk in here, they will feel worthwhile again, like somebody cares about them again.”
“This recognizes . . . that the first thing someone needs when they’re out on the street in the worst of times in their lives is dignity,” said Frank Landerville, project director for the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. “This begins to restore dignity.”
With the opening of the $11-million center at 1501 Imperial Ave., San Diego moves to the fore of a select group of cities with model homeless shelters, where comfortable accommodations are combined with social services and counseling in an effort to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness--instead of merely providing three hot meals and a cot.
Only Denver, Dallas and Washington can claim homeless shelters of such size and scope, according to the New York-based National Coalition on the Homeless. Denver’s shelter, which is smaller and was built more quickly than the St. Vincent de Paul center, is based on the one here.
“There is nothing in the United States that precedes this in addressing the number and the scope of social problems that they’re trying to address,” said Barry Crane, staff attorney for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, which owns the center. “It’s a unique social experiment as far as I’m concerned.”
Father Joe Carroll, who built the center without a dime of government money, likes to call the concept “one-stop shopping for the homeless.”
Three Separate Wings
When all its rooms are open and its offices filled, the shelter will include separate wings for single men, single women and families.
Single people will live as many as six to a room and families will be four members to a room. Some family rooms can be connected by opening a door between them to allow larger families to stay together.
Stays at the center are divided into three kinds: emergencies of one to three days, interim stays of one week, two weeks or 30 days, and long-term stays of 90 to 120 days or more. Case is currently applying for federal funds that would allow some people to live at St. Vincent de Paul for as long as 18 months.
But the shelter is not for anyone who is homeless. The chronic drifter, the alcoholic, the drug user and the mentally ill currently are not wanted. St. Vincent de Paul is designed for the “situationally homeless,” people temporarily down on their luck with a sincere desire to change. Case promises that she will turn down the wrong kinds of people even if she has empty beds.
“If you start putting the mentally ill homeless in with this population, everybody feels like they’re in a psych ward,” Case said. “It’s not fair to the people we’re serving. It’s not fair to the mentally ill.”
Screening in Advance
Even to get in on an emergency basis, homeless people must be screened by a social service agency to determine whether they are suitable for the center. To stay, they must be looking for work and other kinds of help with the aid of one of the 67 county human service agencies that will work with the center’s residents.
Carroll promises that “there is no free ride. If you decide, ‘I was tired today, I didn’t feel like looking for a job,’ you’re out in the street. You’ve got to know you’re on the bottom and we’re your last chance. If you don’t want to help yourself, you’re out.”
The center will offer every kind of service from such mundane essentials as free washing machines and mailboxes to videotaped lessons on how to dress for a job interview. The facility will house a day-care center, a school and a medical clinic with a pharmacy. Though the clinic will have a staff of five, Case is hoping for additional volunteer medical and nursing help.
Offices have been set aside for officials from the county Department of Social Services and the Veterans Administration, though agreements have not yet been reached with those agencies to place workers on site.
The large industrial kitchen will serve nearly 2,000 meals a day--breakfast, lunch and dinner to residents and lunch to some of the city’s estimated 5,000 homeless residents. Street people will line up in an enclosed hallway, so that they do not fill the streets and draw complaints from neighbors.
And while they are waiting, they can shower in bathrooms purposely positioned near the waiting area, or receive a haircut from a barber who will be on site. Bathrooms have specially designed sinks where parents can bathe infants.
A day center will soon be in operation for those people that St. Vincent de Paul will not house. Street people will be able to spend at least part of their day indoors, without being rousted from place to place by police.
Although the centralization of services and the large number of beds makes the shelter expensive, homeless advocates maintain that the concept is less costly than duplicating services in smaller, scattered shelters. For the homeless, it is also much more efficient than making them traverse the city and repeatedly line up at various agencies.
Highlighting security at the facility is a $300,000 computerized system that includes 40 monitoring cameras and photoelectric sensors guarding the roof and second-floor windows. Rooms are locked with computerized cards like those now used in some hotels, instead of keys that can be passed around. Security guards will be on the premises for at least the first three months; in the long run, the center will be staffed by 47 staff members and 500 volunteers.
San Diego Police Capt. Ken Moller, who heads the division in which the center is located, said that he does not anticipate new crime problems inside the shelter, but fears that street people congregating outside the building will bring complaints from neighbors.
Merchants around the San Diego Life Ministries’ shelter at 1150 J St. frequently complain of assaults, people sleeping on sidewalks, indecent exposure and street people defecating in doorways, he said.
Mitch Snyder, the Washington activist who successfully battled the federal government for a homeless shelter there, says a well-built homeless center provides its own security.
“If you put people in a place fit for trash and vermin, they’re going to act like trash and vermin,” he said. “If you put people in a place that says to them ‘we want you,’ ” they treat it well.
Familiar with such complaints, Carroll notes the care taken to bring people inside the shelter. In addition to the enclosed hallway, street people will be able to congregate in the courtyard. He promised to work with neighbors to maintain good relations. “I’m part of the neighborhood,” he said. “I’m responsible for that.”
No goal seems beyond the reach of Carroll, who revels in the self-created image of “the hustler priest,” and who virtually single-handedly raised more than $10 million to finance this Taj Mahal for the homeless.
“We created an image called the hustler priest,” said the 46-year-old South Bronx native. “A hustler is a guy who sees a problem, finds a solution, and gets the job done. But most important of all, he gets someone else to pay for it.”
Carroll is a “combination of Ernie Hahn and P.T. Barnum,” Landerville said. “He has built a structure that rivals Horton Plaza in terms of its impact on this community. And if you meet him, you’d better be prepared to take your checkbook out of your pocket. And he knows which pocket it’s in.”
Raised in a poor family, Carroll began his hustling as a child. At the age of 8, he was earning almost as much as his father delivering meat for butchers and working in grocery stores, he said. Later he liked to go to bowling alleys, limp on an injured ankle and throw gutter balls until he suckered someone into a money game. Then the bum ankle healed and the gutter balls became strikes, he said.
Still later, he fixed appliances, worked as a bank teller and loaded trucks in a post office before being ordained at the relatively old age--at least for priests--of 33.
When Carroll began the task of raising money for the shelter, the price tag was set at $6.5 million. It swelled to about $11 million as the facility was expanded, an earthquake fault had to be examined and oil in the groundwater sparked an explosion, creating delays and additional costs.
No one could anticipate the $3 million contribution that earned Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald’s empire founder Ray Kroc, a spot in the center’s name. But Carroll maintains that he was always certain he would meet his fund-raising goal without government funds. It was easier to sleep at night, though, with Bishop Leo Maher promising to loan the money needed to cover any shortfall.
But the bishop became jittery at times. “He used to ask, ‘Where is the money going to come from?’ ” Carroll remembered. With the hustler priest reaching deep for contributors, it came from 12,000 donors in all.
The Copley Foundation gave $250,000. Developer Hahn gave $200,000. The Kresge Foundation in Michigan has promised to give the final $350,000. Automobile dealer Bob Baker gave $150,000. Countless smaller donations poured in from individuals.
But Carroll isn’t stopping there. A huge dinner held on Friday to honor donors cost another $150 per plate. This week, Carroll is selling off a night’s stay in the shelter at $500 per person. During Labor Day weekend, Baker is donating $100 for every car he sells. As of last week, Carroll was less than $1 million short of his $11-million goal.
Though Carroll hopes to start building a $10-million endowment for the center, funds for its operating budget, estimated at more than $1.5 million annually, also will come largely from donations. The hustler priest is not concerned.
“The building itself will draw money,” he said. “People will see we’re doing it well, it’s a success, and we’re doing it right. People like to be attached to winners.
“We’ll raise it as we go along. We built this place on prayer. What do you want me to tell you?”
