Keep It Open, Homeless Shelter Supporters Say

Supporters of a homeless shelter in Temecula filled City Hall to urge the council to help it stay open.

A scheduled vote on a plan to care for Temecula’s homeless triggered the outpouring of support Tuesday.

The is running in Fusion Church at 29385 Rancho California Rd. The city ordered the shelter to close last month, but it defied the orders.

Now, the fines are adding up, but the heads of the shelter .

More than 60 people signed up to talk to the City Council before they voted on the plan, which calls for the city to offer 200 units of affordable housing over the next three years, said Planning Director Patrick Richardson.

The plan was needed to take care of the homeless not only now, but the distant future, said Councilmember Chuck Washington.

“Just putting a roof over somebody’s head for the night is not addressing the long-term issue,” he said.

Defiance and fines

Project TOUCH, an effort headed by Murrieta resident Anne Unmacht and nonprofit organization God’s Fan Club, got permits to run a when the winter storms hit late last year.

With the rainy season over, their permission expired, but the shelter is still running.

The city sent code enforcement to cite the organization twice, once for $50 and once for $150, Richardson said.

On Monday, the city stepped the fines up to $1,000 a day, but the organization has a grace period of 30 days. If it closes in that time, it will pay no fines.

The shelter should have resolved this problem before it got to the point of getting fined, said Councilmember Mike Naggar. “If it was dealt with in the beginning in March, it wouldn’t be a crisis now.”

The shelter must close because the church was not built for this purpose, said Peter Thorson, the city’s attorney. “There are not adequate bathroom facilities. There are not adequate kitchen facilities,” he said. “There could be a fire, there could be all sorts of things going wrong.”

Retrofitting the church would cost around $300,000, he said.

Touching lives

The shelter does a lot of good for people, some of the told the council at the meeting.

Allen Byrd had a house and worked in the construction industry. Then, the economy tanked, and he lost his job and his home.

He, his wife and his two children lives in their truck for three months before discovering the shelter, he recalled. Now, his family lives in a halfway house the organization runs in Menifee.

“Thanks to Project TOUCH, I have a home. I have a job, and I’m starting to get back on my feet again,” Byrd said.

Some were outraged the organization was being fined. “It saddens me that Anne (Unmacht) has been treated the way she has,” said Andrea Ireland, an employee of Rancho Community Church.

The city’s plan

Ignoring the city’s laws is the wrong approach to helping the homeless, Naggar said. “Everybody in this room wants to help the homeless, but we have to do it in accordance with the law.”

The city plans to find a place for a shelter within two or three miles of the western part of the city near other affordable housing areas because the community is very “walkable.”

People who are low-income may not have the same kind of transportation,” Richardson said.

Some concerns

The shelter will serve the region because establishing one to serve just Temecula is “really not cost effective,” Richardson said.

The city has 162 homeless residents, which is three percent of Riverside County’s homeless population, according to a.

Some residents worry about how much building a shelter will cost taxpayers.

“There appear to be measurable and seemingly staggering costs,” said Brett Kelly, a Temecula resident.

Caring for the homeless is mostly the responsibility of charities, Richardson said. “We believe it’s up to the private sector, the faith-based organizations to provide these services,” he said.

Some city officials also worried that establishing a homeless shelter in the city might draw homeless people from other areas of the county. “What we’re trying to avoid here is the stigma of having a homeless shelter,” Richardson said.

With no local homeless shelter, the city will be exporting its needy residents into other communities, said Patrick Schmidt, a spokesperson for Project TOUCH. “We said we don’t want to import the homeless, but we’re willing to export them.”

A possible solution

A solution to the homeless shelter may help the city in more ways than one, said Councilmember Maryann Edwards. The county could shelter Temecula’s homeless population for now, and then the city could use redevelopment agency funds to build “very low-income” housing.

Law mandates the city use some redevelopment agency funds to provide housing for low-income residents.

That way, the homeless would have a shelter now, the homeless would have a shelter in the future and the city will be able to fulfill some of its requirements to provide low-income housing.

“I see a win-win-win here,” he said.