A new Shelter is good for all of us

The county and the community have a moral obligation to care for people who are destitute and homeless.

• Unhoused people have been waiting too long for a better facility—five years since the bond passed and it will be another five until this project is projected to be completed—and they should not be force to wait longer while additional sites are considered.

• The shelter should be placed in a location that is best for those who are homeless: near public transit, accessible to jobs, health care and other services.

• All potential sites in this area have neighbors. Experience shows that shelters aren’t a detriment to neighborhoods.

• A county homeless shelter is for the good of the whole community. While immediate neighbors should have their concerns addressed, they are not empowered to reject a shelter if there is no better site.

  For people who are chronically homeless because of age or disability, the new shelter would offer 20 tiny efficiencies with social services. The county needs hundred more units of this type of housing.

Our goal is to achieve the best site possible for a shelter, and Beacon Hill is the best site proposed.

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