SUNNYVALE — Four months after starting a search for a new emergency cold-weather shelter to replace the 125-bed Sunnyvale armory, officials and nonprofit groups alike have come up empty-handed. And with three months until the traditional kickoff of the freezing season, some of those officials are starting to sweat.
“What I would say at this point is that we have to have a sense of urgency about the effort,” said Supervisor Joe Simitian, who represents the North County area that was left without a shelter when plans moved forward to convert the armory into low-income housing. “Remember, we had that shelter in place for decades.”
The fruitless shelter search follows a winter in which four homeless men froze to death in the county, underscoring the plight of those left behind by Silicon Valley’s surging fortunes and amplifying demands to help the chronically homeless.
“Obviously too many people died on the streets last year,” said Greg Pensinger, program manager for the Sunnyvale chapter of the Downtown Street Team nonprofit that seeks to get homeless people back in the workplace. “I think if it wasn’t for the armory, many more would have passed as well.”
On Tuesday, Simitian and his colleagues directed Santa Clara County staff to continue their efforts to find a suitable commercial or industrial site in Sunnyvale, Mountain View or Palo Alto, as well as go ahead with a “Plan B.” That includes upping the number of beds at existing programs such as Hotel de Zink, which could shelter an extra 18 men at various churches; and Project We Hope in East Palo Alto, which could take in an extra 10. They also agreed to fund a voucher program to temporarily put homeless folks up in motels.
But everybody’s still hoping to find a single large-scale site that could bring 78 folks in from the cold. They have come close a few times: The Sunnyvale Community Center was being looked at before officials in that city deemed it an inappropriate use, and a rental property got snapped up just days before they moved on it.
“It has been a long process, and it is pretty daunting,” said Clair Wagner of HomeFirst, one of the county’s partner agencies. “Real estate is so expensive. We’ve been working side by side with the county and have a lot of community volunteers scouring the area. There are a lot of champions of a shelter in Sunnyvale.”
Sunnyvale’s Maude Avenue armory was one of three shelters in the county that, combined with the Boccardo Reception Center in San Jose and the National Guard Armory in Gilroy, provided warm beds, meals and hot showers for 275 of the county’s estimated 7,600 homeless.
Wagner said there are advantages to having large, central facilities such as the vacated Sunnyvale site.
“People had one place to go,” she said. “It was on transportation routes, and was well known, it made communication easier for volunteers and service providers.”
Pensinger said a destination like the armory is crucial.
“It’s a base,” Pensinger said. “If the forecast is for cold or rain, they can get indoors to someplace dry and warm.”
Last year, dropping temperatures quickly turned lethal when four homeless men were found dead of hypothermia-related causes over eight days that started on Thanksgiving. That spurred shelters to go into crisis mode, setting up hundreds of additional beds.
During that snap, teams hit the streets to find homeless people trying to cope with the cold on their own, providing information on where to go and warm blankets to those attempting to shelter in place.
“And that would still happen,” Wagner said. “Last year was a great test of emergency response for everyone in the area. The effort was unprecedented. In the whole landscape of things, the way it is now, there has never been better coordination between government agencies, nonprofits and all the service providers.”
Also on Tuesday, the county entered a partnership with housing nonprofit Abode Services related to an ongoing goal of stabilizing the chronically homeless population, which aligns with the county’s “Housing First” model of finding permanent solutions.
Simitian said that while solving the problem of homelessness is a challenging long-term strategy, until it’s accomplished they’re still going to need short-term solutions.
“We’re going to have real needs on a daily basis, for real folks who need a place to put their heads down at night,” he said.
Contact Eric Kurhi at 408-920-5852. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi.