Council Casts the Right Vote for Homeless Teen Shelter

NIMBY is a book with many different titles. The plot is always the same: Not in my back yard.

But each version has slightly different characters, with their own reasons on why their opposition is more than NIMBY.

In the most recent local version, downtown residents and the Centre City Development Corp. tried to persuade the San Diego City Council not to approve a shelter for 30 homeless teen-agers that will be temporarily situated in the residential part of downtown’s redevelopment area.

The story lines: A shelter would not be compatible with efforts to encourage people to move downtown; allowing an old office-warehouse to be a shelter for up to four years would delay redeveloping this block of State Street.

CCDC even presented photographs of people waiting in food lines, to show the council how good intentions can go awry.

But this shelter is not about food lines.

It is a two-year residential program for a neglected part of the homeless population.

It will have a school, job training and counseling. There will be curfews, a security guard and ample staff.

Much of the credit for developing the program and securing a $2.1-million federal grant to pay for it goes to Father Joe Carroll, who has become synonymous with successful homeless programs locally and nationally.

He knows how to work the establishment and work with it. He’s made it hard to say no to Father Joe.

Fortunately for the 400 to 500 homeless teen-agers in San Diego, the City Council didn’t.