Monterey supervisors ok shelter crisis declaration

Monterey County supervisors are declaring a shelter crisis, which is designed to give homeless families access to a safe shelter or location to park their vehicles as shelter.

According to the 2017 Point in Time Homeless Census survey, some 400 people were found living in their cars in Monterey County. The declaration could help the county’s safe parking program in Marina move forward.

“The Board of Supervisors declared a shelter crisis and one of the big things that comes when you declare a shelter crisis under the government code is it allows the priority of establishing shelter opportunities for people to take precedence over certain local and state statutes, ordinances and regulations,” said Elliott Robinson, director for the Department of Social Services. “So basically makes it easier to locate shelter services and helps prevent some of the push back that communities can give from establishing shelters.”

The location of the safe parking program is at the county-owned coastal office on First Avenue in Marina. Marina city leaders have voiced concerns about that location. Safety was considered a top priority. There were also concerns that police and fire resources would have to respond to calls in that part of the city, which is at the southern portion, away from the center of Marina. It could make response times longer.

Mayor Bruce Delgado is also concerned there’s only room for 15 spots, when there have been upwards of 80 rv’s and vehicles parked along Lapis Road.

“Where do the other 85 go, and where we think they’re going to go is the outskirts of this new safe parking area, which is going to be where there are residential, shopping centers, and places like that,” Delgado said.

Delgado also said he doesn’t want his city to be the only one with a large safe parking program, that programs like this should be equally distributed throughout the county. However, the county believes it’s a viable location.

“Our duty as local government is to try and take care of our most vulnerable residents and we hope we can try this as a pilot program and in the future if there is some preferred areas or better areas, we could expand this safe parking program, we look forward to doing that,” Supervisor Luis Alejo said.

The project director of the Marina Community Partners said his organization supports a safe parking program but not at that location and has volunteered to help find another location.

Right now the safe parking program on First Avenue could open around December 15.