The prevailing view in local government now is that a large-scale warehouse model with wrap-around services is a long-term answer to homelessness.

But not everyone agrees with that one-size-fits-all approach. Some with lived experience of being homeless, or those representing the unsheltered, disagree with the mega-shelter concept.

One recent mega-shelter proposal, backed by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and others, is to create a homeless shelter, dubbed Hope @ Vine, with up to 1,000 beds in a 65,000-square-foot commercial building at Kettner Boulevard in Middletown. That proposal encountered strident public opposition at a recent City Council hearing and further consideration of a long-term lease for the proposed site was postponed until after the Council’s August summer recess.

Some homeless providers and advocates insist the impersonal warehouse model is D.O.A. due to numerous unavoidable obstacles including the difficulty of finding suitable sites, the high cost of re-purposing buildings, and public opposition to building large shelters in or near residential neighborhoods.

San Diego Community Newspaper Group spoke to two homeless advocates, Ann E. Menasche, and Scott H. Silverman, who don’t believe large-scale homeless shelters are the answer in the short- or long-term to resolving the homeless crisis.

A longtime civil rights attorney representing the disabled, the unhoused, people of color, low-income families, women, lesbians, and other marginalized groups, Menasche has been arguing in favor of more humanitarian, and less institutional models, for combating homelessness. She has led complex litigation, including a class action challenging the City’s homeless policies regarding people sheltering in vehicles.

“Sweeping people off the sidewalks like they’re trash is not the solution because we have an affordable housing crisis: nobody can afford to live here anymore,” said Menasche adding, “Half the people struggle to pay rent. It’s a disaster unfolding in front of our eyes.”

Instead of dealing with the housing emergency, Menasche contends that “we want to criminalize people who are victims. Why house people in megashelters, when you could house people in subsidized rental housing at market rates?”

An addiction and homeless expert, counselor, author, and the founder of Confidential Recovery and the Veterans Navigation Center, Scott H. Silverman (above) has nearly four decades of experience helping individuals and veterans struggling with homelessness and addiction. He has made a career out of helping unsheltered people and those with substance abuse issues achieve complete recovery with support post-treatment.

Silverman contends impersonal one-size-fits-all models like the mega-shelters being proposed now won’t work. He believes more personalized, customized models for dealing with the unsheltered are a better fit and have a better chance of rescuing people from a downward spiral on the streets.

“We need a place for people to live who don’t want to go to shelters because they are too large,” Silverman said adding megashelters won’t work, partly because the unsheltered population is just too diverse. “The homeless population has single males, veterans, those suffering from substance abuse, mothers with children, etc.,” he pointed out. “We need to customize care for all these different types. You can’t just throw them all together.”

Silverman is convinced the “housing first” model of homeless treatment, as presently construed, is doomed to failure because, he said, “You can’t just put someone in an apartment and say, ‘OK, live it up.’ They need support with a myriad of services. At the end of the day, they (homeless) need that person-to-person contact.”

So what’s the answer?

“The housing crisis needs to be dealt with at all levels of government,” argues Menasche. “We need to put money into government and public housing. Society, and government, need to invest in people. This is an emergency. We need national rent control. Then we need a housing program that’s not for profit.

“Putting money into housing includes subsidizing people’s private rentals rather than creating these monstrous megashelters that have shamefully poor conditions,” continued Menasche adding the homeless situation “is only going to get worse unless some real changes are made that don’t involve scapegoating victims like elderly and disabled people. We need to find solutions that are cost-effective and address people’s mental health.

“We have to have someone in charge, like a homeless czar, to take a leadership role in working closely with all sides,” counseled Silverman about what needs to be done organizationally to thwart homelessness. “We need to have (homeless) intervention programs like the Homeless Outreach Teams (HOT) the police use. We need to find places for people to go where they can feel safe. If we don’t manage the problem – it’s going to manage us.

“The homeless issue is everywhere, not just at the beach anymore,” continued Silverman. “The bottom line is we have to change our thinking. People have to open their minds and hearts. Drugs are being sold everywhere (out on the streets). We can’t just keep arresting the same people over and over and taking the ‘frequent fliers’ over and over again to emergency departments. You need to build a relationship with a person using an intervention model. You need to make sure you understand what it takes to create system change which will provide a continuum of care.”