Chula Vista’s new bridge shelter opened this week, providing housing and food to homeless people in San Diego County’s second-largest city.
The Chula Vista Village at Otay, as it is formally named, accepted its first residents Tuesday into the freestanding, 64-square-foot rooms that offered them — perhaps for the first in a long time — curtains and a lockable door. It is located on 27th Street adjacent to the Otay Valley Regional Park in the city’s southwest region.
“They’re very excited to be here and very grateful about this new housing opportunity,” said Andy Valdez, a manager with City Net, the nonprofit hired by the city to run its year-round shelter.
Under gray skies Wednesday, one resident who did not want to give his name strolled down the aisles between the shelter units with his dog on a leash. He arrived at the shelter Tuesday and was still processing the realization that he had a roof over his head, he said.
The man is one of an unknown number of residents staying at the 65-unit bridge shelter. City staff refused to say how many people were being housed at the site.
Mayor John McCann said the city is rolling out operations in a “phased approach.”
“This is an important project and we want to make sure that we get it right,” he said.
Occupying more units will depend on factors such as whether a homeless individual accepts a bed offer from the city’s Homeless Outreach Team. Access to the shelter is by referral only and those who reside within Chula Vista receive priority.
“We’ll probably have clients that say, ‘Yeah, we want to come,’ and we’ll go take a look and they may leave,” HOT coordinator Hugo Cardenas said last week. “It may not happen the first , maybe 20 s and maybe seven years later. It’s just going to be based on an individual and their needs. We can’t force them into it.”
But when a person does stay at the Village, the goal is to help them transition from homelessness to permanent housing over the course of 90 days. Individuals are assigned a case manager to start the process, which could include getting an ID and guidance on self-sufficiency.
City Net officials told the City Council last year they have helped more than 3,000 people do just that. From March 2020 through April 2021, they assisted 41 people who were staying at a 56-bed village shelter in Riverside to gain permanent housing.
“That’s what we want to see, more people in housing,” said Felix Magsino, a nearby resident who drove by the shelter Monday. “I see a lot of veteran homeless people and I think it’s good that the government is finally doing this.”
Chula Vista and its neighboring communities are homeless shelter deserts.
The Village is the only government-run bridge shelter in South County, which has an estimated 380 homeless persons or about 9 percent of the county’s total homeless population, according to the 2022 point-in-time count. Of that figure, 206 lived in Chula Vista. The actual figure is likely much higher, officials have said.
Chula Vista-based nonprofit SBCS, formerly South Bay Community Services, is the only other organization that offers emergency beds in the south region.
It offers about 85 beds for homeless families with children fleeing domestic violence, 94 beds for transition-age youth and nine mobile homes used for homeless housing, said nonprofit spokesperson Mindy Wright.
The San Diego Rescue Mission expects to open a 164-bed shelter in National City next year and Imperial Beach is negotiating with Chula Vista to have access to units at the Village.
