CALIFORNIA: Redlands Homeless Housing Pushed
Councilman gets lukewarm response
By LEONOR VIVANCO, Staff Writer
The San Bernadino County Sun
Originally published January 18, 2005
REDLANDS - As it tries to get $2 million in funding to buy and rehab a motel into transitional housing for homeless families, the Redlands Charitable Resource Coalition is taking steps to help families in the city get back on their feet.
"What they need is a stable surrounding where they can get assistance, counsel, budgeting guidance, perhaps some job training and begin to get themselves stabilized and back into their own houses," said Councilman Gary George, who is leading the coalition.
George brought up the transitional housing project at Tuesday afternoon's City Council meeting and submitted a draft budget, house rules and application forms for potential residents to be accepted into the First Step Transitional Housing Program.
The information was submitted to answer council members' questions from a November presentation.
On Tuesday, he was looking for more guidance from the council on how to help the project move forward so it eventually can be supported. The council gave lukewarm encouragement and asked for more details on the budget, operations, management and clientele.
"I think we're moving at glacial speed and the need is moving at freeway speed," George said.
The coalition plans to seek $1 million from the Redlands Redevelopment Agency's low-income housing fund and another $1 million from the federal government so the group can buy the Budget Inn Motel on north of Interstate 10 and turn it into a 40-unit housing facility.
Mayor Pro Tem Gilberto Gil adamantly said he would not support such a facility on the city's north side. George was open to considering other sites. The motel site was identified because the owner was willing to sell the property, he said.
The facility would give 30 homeless families a place to live for 45 to 60 days and offer programs to help the families make the transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency, George said.
"This is to help families who until a short time ago were members of the community living in their own housing," he said.
This type of program would have helped Redlands resident Liz Canteo, George said. She found herself homeless Jan. 2 when her Christmas tree caught on fire and her home was destroyed.
"Everything that I had worked so hard for was gone," said Canteo, an accountant and single mother of two children.
"This temporary housing will help me now just to get back on my feet," she said.
George sees the project not as a short- or long-term solution but more of an intermediate step.
Mayor Susan Peppler was worried the facility would be a destination point for families not from Redlands.
"My biggest concern is that we fail to serve those who we started out to want to serve or need to serve the working poor and the mothers with children who have fallen on hard times," she said.
"It's going to bring folks from all over the San Bernardino County to Redlands," Gil said of the project.
But George said, "If we opened tomorrow, we would be full of Redlands' people as soon as we completed the screening process."
The San Bernardino County 2003 Homeless Census and Survey showed at least 347 homeless people in Redlands in 2002. The city had the third highest homeless population in the county, behind San Bernardino and Barstow.
The estimated daily number of homeless residents in San Bernardino County in 2002 was at least 5,270.
The figures were based on a daily count of street and sheltered homeless. However, many groups were probably undercounted, including those who live in cars, converted garages and other structures, the census and survey said.
The greatest cause of homelessness reported by survey respondents was unemployment. Those surveyed said the five types of homeless services the county needs most are job training and placement programs, more affordable housing, more homeless service centers, more emergency shelters and more transitional housing facilities.
About 30 transitional housing facilities throughout the county provided a total of 1,051 beds, according to an inventory in the census. But only 34percent of the beds were for families.
(For a follow-up article on the fate of Redlands' proposed transitional housing facility, please click here.)