Can-Do Spirit Opens New Shelters

Two shelters for the homeless have opened in downtown San Diego in recent weeks. Both are proof of what can be accomplished by public-private cooperation, with some ingenuity and enough perseverance.

First the ingenuity: When the YWCA shelter for women closed last year, San Diego Postmaster Margaret Sellers came up with a bold response: Convert the unused mezzanine at the downtown post office, the former mail-sorting room complete with showers left over from when the E Street facility was San Diego’s main post office.

After a little paint, plumbing, furniture, an outside entrance, some planning to keep shelter and postal operations separate--and the requisite but frustrating dash of bureaucracy--the 50-bed Rachel’s Night Shelter opened last month. The shelter is run by Catholic Charities with funding from the city and private donors. Sellers, who had envisioned the shelter five years earlier, and Catholic Charities showed what can be done with creativity and minimal expense.

Finishing the Neil Good Day Center for homeless men took a lot more perseverance--six years’ worth--primarily because of problems working out a lease with the California Department of Transportation, which owns the land at 17th and K streets, and concerns of nearby property owners.

The city redevelopment agency--eager to get homeless men off the streets and reduce conflicts among street people, merchants and downtown workers--and the Regional Task Force for the Homeless deserve credit for hanging in there.

The perseverance may have come from enlightened self-interest, as much as compassion. But the center will provide a much-needed alternative to the streets each day for about 200 men.