Carlsbad Council Backs Effort to Establish Temporary Migrant Shelter

The Carlsbad City Council voted unanimously Thursday to support a local group’s effort to establish a temporary emergency shelter for homeless migrant workers.

The vote followed a presentation by Kathleen Wellman of the 50-member group Caring Residents of Carlsbad, which is seeking grants to establish and manage the shelter in conjunction with the nonprofit Catholic Charities of San Diego.

“This is a temporary shelter, and we’re hoping we’ll have two full years of use,” Wellman, a Carlsbad attorney, told the council.

The special meeting was called to meet an application deadline of today for state funds and a Monday deadline for federal funds. Organizers of the project, which has a budget of $634,000 for two years, hope to receive $396,000 from the grants and the rest from monetary and other donations from the community.

The shelter would house 50 homeless men, practically all of them migrant workers, Wellman said in a letter to City Manager Ray Patchett.

The men would be allowed to stay for up to 60 days, during which time paid staff and volunteers would help them find permanent shelter and jobs and further “their integration into our community,” the letter says. People living at the shelter would have to be in the country legally.

The Paul Ecke family agreed to accommodate the proposed shelter “on an emergency, short-term basis,” family counsel Chris Calkins said at the meeting.

The 10-acre site offered by the Eckes is at Palomar Airport and Hidden Valley roads, and the offer is contingent upon the project receiving the state and federal grants. Calkins said the land is now farmed, “but it’s not significant.”

“It’s a good piece of property by the road and is suitable for housing,” Wellman said after the meeting, adding that the Eckes offered the property Tuesday.

Mayor Bud Lewis said after the meeting that the vote does not signal a change in city policy toward the migrant issue or housing of the homeless, but rather supports a private group’s effort to address the issue of migrant homeless in the city.

“Certainly we will assist” the group, he said. “But, when you talk about hard bucks, and lots of bucks, we’re going to have to discuss it.”

Wellman had gone before the Carlsbad Unified School District on Wednesday to request use of district land as a site for the shelter, but received a lukewarm reception. The school board agreed to discuss the proposal formally at its May 9 meeting.