Santa Ana, California, developers convert industrial spaces into homeless shelters

Two property developers in California, brothers Ryan and Jeremy Ogulnick, are converting large industrial spaces into shelters for homeless people. Their first shelter took just under a month to create in the Orange County city of Santa Ana, which helped the city respond to its homeless crisis. The brothers then repeated the process in the nearby cities of Anaheim and Fullerton, converting properties into shelters within a matter of months. Ryan Ogulnick says he could build 50 such shelters across Southern California if the money were available. Rather than leasing the spaces to private companies, the brothers rent them to a city or to homeless services providers.

The shelters have given a fresh start to people like Roland Flores, 48, who was living with his grandmother as her caretaker when he lost the home after she died. He now lives at the Fullerton shelter. During his nine-month stay, he has been able to seek medical treatment and obtain his birth certificate and Social Security card. “They’re giving me the tools that I need,” Flores said of the shelter’s workers. The nonprofit Illumination Foundation operates the Fullerton shelter, offering support services including healthcare, mental health counseling, and drug abuse counseling. Welcoming a stranger with a place to stay is a simple picture of hospitality (Matthew 25:35).

The financial details of the project were also reported. Vineyards Development, Ryan Ogulnick’s company, invested $9.2 million to rebuild the new Santa Ana Carnegie Shelter over a period of nine months. The company will rent the shelter to the Illumination Foundation and the city for $44,000 a month when it opens next week. The Ogulnicks turned a former engineering company in an industrial area into the 150-bed Fullerton Navigation Center. To reduce complaints from neighbors, that shelter bans residents from walking in and out, keeping them out of public view. Shelter vehicle drivers take residents in and out through a side gate.

Critics have raised concerns that emergency shelters are only a short-term solution. Affordable housing is limited, and housing costs continue to rise. Some critics worry that Orange County officials are content with a solution that does not lead to permanent housing. Lawyer Brooke Weitzman, co-founder of ELDR Center, a law office that represents people who are homeless, older, or disabled, said, “It’s very clear that the strategy being used right now in Orange County is more about appearances than solutions.” Eve Garrow, a homelessness policy expert and activist at the ACLU of Southern California, said, “Instead of building actual…affordable housing, what they’ve done is throw up mass shelters.”

Some of the figures in the report provide context. A study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that last year the United States was about 7 million units short of enough affordable housing. The homeless population in Los Angeles County is estimated at 66,000. Orange County, just south of Los Angeles County, has a homeless population of about 7,000. The latest complete count, in 2019, found that nearly 60 percent of the homeless population was unsheltered. Shelters have increased in number since a 2018 federal appeals court ruling banned police from arresting people on the streets if a community lacks enough shelter beds.

Orange County Homeless Management Information System data show that emergency shelter beds in the county increased 159 percent from 2015 to 2021. Over the same period, permanent supportive housing, which provides housing along with social services, grew by just 13 percent. Paul Leon, president and CEO of the Illumination Foundation, agrees that more housing is needed. He said many people are unprepared to go immediately from the street to being responsible for a home. He said most people with support move from the streets into homes of their own, while some who do not may go to jail or return to the streets. Weitzman has concerns about Ogulnick’s claims regarding the speed and cost-effectiveness of mass shelters, and she said the best solution to homelessness has always been housing.

Source: Read the original report