Fast Action in Oceanside on Shelter

A recent proposal to establish a temporary shelter for homeless families in Oceanside met with the kind of community resistance that commonly greets most services for the poor.

The testimony at a planning commission public hearing was about equally divided between proponents and opponents, with strong emotion on both sides.

Most of the opposition came from the Quail Ridge and San Luis Homes communities, neighbors of the property where 15 trailers would be placed for three years to provide emergency shelter for families with children.

There was little new in the content of the complaints: concern over property values and crime, and pejorative comments about “low lifes.”

But there was an ironic twist: Five years ago, the Quail Ridge development received the same greeting when it was proposed. Neighbors were sure that the community of primarily moderate-income, first-time buyers would harm their property values.

Now, Quail Ridge residents were objecting to a homeless-family shelter on the same grounds.

Maybe this irony persuaded the Oceanside Planning Commission. Maybe, the vitriol in the opponents’ comments backfired and had a reverse effect on the commission.

In either event, the commission voted unanimously to approve a permit for the shelter, a step considered critical to winning a $200,000 federal grant. The shelter also received the blessing of the city’s Historic Preservation Advisory Commission, even though the temporary shelter would not conform with the design standards of the historic San Luis Rey Mission District. Commissioners on both bodies made moving speeches in support of their votes.

The strong public support was mirrored by the efforts of the behind-the-scene organizers, in particular Oceanside’s housing chief, Richard Goodman.

The whole process was accomplished in record time. Between March 23 when the state opened the grant-application process and April 17, the deadline for the applications, the city had to process the permit application, get an architect to draw up site plans, hold a public hearing and get community agencies to draw up plans for the mental-health, food and job-training services the shelter would offer.

The effort shows what a community can do if it pulls together toward a common goal.

Brian Sullivan, a planning commissioner, principal of Oceanside High School and Oceanside native, summed it up well: Oceanside wants “to pass along to its children a heritage of community . . . to be a city that tends to all of its residents.”