One day early last year, in a high-rise near the North Bay, around a dozen people gathered in a conference room.
The space belonged to the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a nonprofit that formed decades ago to boost the local economy, and it featured a floor-to-ceiling skyline photo that was sometimes used to impress potential investors. But the occupants that day were the group’s homeless outreach workers, and their attention was focused on the opposite wall.
Staffers had hung a series of Post-Its detailing the roadblocks they faced. As Josh Coyne, one of the partnership’s vice presidents, looked over the notes, one idea stood out: What if they had their own shelter?
“Oh, God, really?” Coyne remembered thinking. “I wasn’t sure we could totally pull that off.”
He asked the room if they were serious. An actual cheer went up, he said.
More than a year later, the organization is now co-running O Lot, San Diego’s second safe sleeping site. The decision to oversee tents holding more than 100 people is both a significant change for the organization and part of a nationwide trend of business groups broadening their definition of economic development.
Owners in Hillcrest are weighing a new tax to pay for security and outreach patrols and East County leaders have met repeatedly about encampments. In North County, concerns about sidewalk tents have gone hand in hand with worries that a lack of affordable housing is making it harder to recruit employees, said Chris Thorne, CEO of the North San Diego Business Chamber.
Homelessness “has to be a business conversation,” he said.
The International Downtown Association has tracked a number of similar cases around the country, from Reno to Tuscon to San Jose.
In the nation’s capital, the Downtown DC Business Improvement District runs a drop-in day center offering showers, laundry and other assistance, while the Downtown Cleveland Alliance helped establish a pop-up mental health clinic after business owners reported increased confrontations with homeless people.
“We want downtown to be welcoming for everyone,” said Ed Eckart, a senior vice president with the Ohio alliance.
While some organizations have long connected people on the street with services, business groups taking a leadership role on the homelessness front was newer, David Downey, president and CEO of the international association, wrote in an email.
In Hillcrest, businesses within a few blocks of the iconic sign already pay a tax that covers an on-call security service. But after a growing number of owners outside that area asked to join, there’s now a formal request before the San Diego City Council to expand what’s called a maintenance assessment district.
If city leaders approve a vote, property owners in Hillcrest will likely decide early next year whether they want to spend more on security guards who can patrol the streets.
That money could also be used to hire outreach workers, which would be especially helpful when the area’s two hospitals discharge homeless people with nowhere to go, said Ben Nicholls, executive director of the Hillcrest Business Association.
He hopes for a vote before a separate proposal adds more 20- and 30-story buildings to the area. “We’re going to need these services when Hillcrest’s population doubles,” Nicholls said.
Further south, the Downtown Partnership had lobbied for a place where people could legally camp before leaders discussed taking one over.
A trip last year to Denver, a city that had already adopted a similar approach, helped coalesce support around safe sleeping sites. San Diego Councilmember Stephen Whitburn was also present, and he’s since pushed for erecting tents in designated lots while simultaneously promoting the city’s camping ban.
The partnership signed a contract worth up to $1.2 million in late October. The agreement lasts 12 months and can be extended for four additional years, records show.
When asked what convinced San Diego officials that the partnership was the right group for the job, spokesperson Nicole Darling cited the nonprofit’s extensive outreach work. The organization has also previously contracted with the city for a program that reconnects homeless people with relatives and conducts regular counts of those living on downtown streets.
The sleeping site can hold a total of 400 tents. The partnership will oversee 136, and while each tent can sleep two, their area will hold a maximum of around 150 people, according to Coyne, the vice president.
He said about 50 individuals are already on a list to move in. As soon as the partnership finishes hiring eight full-time staffers, leaders hope to admit its first residents next week. (The site’s other operator, the nonprofit Dreams for Change, has already opened its side.)
Betsy Brennan, the partnership’s president and CEO, has said running a shelter is a key part of their mission even if it wasn’t originally on her radar.
When Brennan took over several years ago, she thought the job would focus on “economic development and culture vitality,” she said at a public forum last month.
And now?
“I probably spend 25 percent of my time on that,” Brennan told the crowd, “and 75 percent of my time on housing and homelessness — but it’s so important for all of us.”
