Yesterday I ran the story of the closure of San Diego’s only emergency shelterprograms that was scheduled for today at noon. I was mighty pissed about it at the time, but pissed don’t feed the bulldog. It’s one thing to get angry – it’s another thing to do something about it. Bob (McElroy, founder and founder and president of Alpha Project) was angry, too, and he did something about it.
After extending an offer to the City to continue to operate the shelter at Alpha Project’s expense…McElroy heard third-hand from a city bureaucrat that “if it’s raining I guess you can stay open but we’re not paying for it.”
But with the door thus cracked, Bob shoved his big foot in it. He went on the air this morning on KUSI and announced that the shelter will not be closing today as planned. He has pledged to keep the shelter operating at a net cost of $2,400 per day (that’s $12 a head for shelter, meals, restrooms, showers, treatment, counseling, housing placement assistance and myriad other wrap-around services) until the city forces him to close.
There is no telling how long a reprieve Bob’s act of heroism will buy for the 203 people (who slept at the shelter last night) – five of whom are pregnant women, nearly half of whom are over 50 years of age, another half of whom are severely ill and/or permanently disabled. The trend in our fair city is to focus on progress at the price of humanity. Many of the shelter’s residents would not be there in the first place had downtown redevelopment not meant the destruction of more than 400 units of low-cost SRO housing without replacement. The story of how much the city saves by not having those same senior citizens and amputees on the sidewalks collecting illegal lodging tickets from San Diego’s finest is lost on the mainstream media. Still hope for the homeless? Read it all here. (Photo: senior hardluck woman panhandling today along Robinson Avenue in Hillcrest.)
