SUNNYVALE — After numerous contentious community meetings on where to put a needed temporary winter homeless shelter, city officials now are mulling a site that was considered for such use decades ago at the former Onizuka Air Force Station.
City officials suggested the 4.6-acre Onizuka site as a better alternative to a Santa Clara County proposal to put a nighttime shelter for 100 people on a one-acre parcel abutted by the Central Expressway and Victory Village, a 1940s-era housing tract. Residents there called it an inappropriate location due to limited access, and also complained about quality-of-life problems from an ongoing homeless presence that carries over from when the Sunnyvale Armory operated as a winter shelter nearby.
Both the county and Sunnyvale received scores of letters in protest, and public speakers returned to a pair of meetings on Tuesday to voice concerns. The county opted on Tuesday to punt the touchy neighborhood issue to Sunnyvale after leaders from that city offered the Onizuka site as a last-minute alternative.
It’s not a new proposal. Bob Dolci, the county’s homeless concerns coordinator, said it was being looked at as a site for a shelter decades ago, before the Sunnyvale Armory was selected and used for 22 years.
And Sunnyvale City Manager Deanna Santana said she informed the county of Onizuka’s viability a year ago, and since then county had done follow-up inquiries and taken a tour. She said it wasn’t clear why it fell off the map prior to the alternative site getting selected.
“There’s been a lot of confusion with the Onizuka site, most recently over whether it is feasible or not,” she said. “Depending on the county staff member you ask, there are different conclusions on whether it was offered or viable.”
Councilman David Whittum called it “a great site.”
“It’s well situated on seven bus lines and near a light rail station,” he said. “There aren’t any pedestrian conflicts in terms of reaching the station.”
Homeless advocates said it would also be an ideal site for some of the other long-term solutions that the county’s Homeless Task Force is studying, such as legal camping or a site for micro-housing.
County supervisors agreed to hold off on the smaller Central Expressway venue on the condition that the City Council take decisive action on the Onizuka site.
“Not ‘maybe’ or ‘we will study it and come back,'” said Supervisor Joe Simitian at the meeting. “If they will say they are prepared to move forward in this direction and prepared to expedite it through local planning, that gets us to a good result.”
While Sunnyvale officials could not officially make a motion on pursuing the site at its Tuesday meeting due to open-meeting-law restrictions, they voted unanimously to hold a special meeting on the site Tuesday.
“I took that as a very encouraging sign,” Simitian said Wednesday.
It wasn’t without reservations. Mayor Jim Griffith didn’t like a county requirement to keep the site in place for a maximum of three years when the city doesn’t know what it ultimately wants to do with the land.
“That’s a decision we certainly should make,” he said, “before we start giving it out to somebody else.”
Griffith also said an initiative slated for the November 2016 ballot could complicate what the city does with the parcel.
The Public Lands for Public Use Act would impose restrictions on sales or lease of city-owned land that is currently used for the public’s benefit — usually a park, pool, library or community center. Assistant City Manager Kent Stephens said the land currently has no such use, but that designation could change if used as a homeless shelter.
Since the Sunnyvale Armory facility closed in 2013, county officials have been trying to secure a winter overnight shelter for the homeless in the northwestern part of the county.
Simitian told the City Council that he believes a facility can still be readied before the traditional winter shelter opening day of Nov. 30.
“If we work really hard and you work really hard over the next 90 days, and we act in good faith and you act in good faith, we can get to yes on this,” he said. “But we are running out of time.”
Contact Eric Kurhi at 408-920-5852. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi.
