North County Report: The Brother Benno’s Dilemma 

For the past few months, I’ve been following a story in Oceanside: A nonprofit soup kitchen has been the subject of complaints from neighboring businesses, and despite the organization’s efforts, it doesn’t seem to be getting better. 

The complaints are about a group of homeless people that refuses to leave the industrial park that Brother Benno’s is located in. Business owners say the group litters, sleeps overnight in doorways and vandalizes nearby businesses. 

To appease the business owners, the city of Oceanside stepped in and created new conditions that Brother Benno’s had to implement. But some of those conditions are costly, and in an effort to satisfy the business owners, the city might inadvertently end up forcing the nonprofit out. 

It’s an example of how cities continue to grapple with the need to support homeless people and service providers while also trying to listen to and satisfy the needs of their housed residents. 

As I’ve been watching this story unfold, a lot of questions came to mind about the nonprofit’s obligation to its neighbors and the city of Oceanside, and similarly, what responsibility these business owners and Oceanside have to Brother Benno’s. 

First, some background: Brother Benno’s started in 1983 as a soup kitchen in downtown Oceanside. In 1991, the organization moved to its current location – a warehouse in the Oceanside Industrial Park surrounded by dozens of other businesses.  

Ben Meyer, essential services manager at Brother Benno’s, said the tension between the nonprofit and its neighboring businesses isn’t new. 

The organization left its downtown spot in 1990 largely due to the opposition and complaints from neighboring residents and businesses that said they were attracting too many homeless people to the area. 

“There’s an article from the early 90s, and if you just changed the dates and the names, it would be the same exact story,” Meyer said. “It’s just kind of always been like that.” 

More than 30 years later, not much has changed. 

The nonprofit’s leaders say it’s a small group of about 10 to 12 homeless people that are causing issues, and these individuals have been banned from receiving services at Brother Benno’s, but they refuse to leave the area. 

The Oceanside Planning Commission has discussed the situation at three meetings this year. At one of those meetings, commissioners considered eliminating Brother Benno’s sack lunch service, one of the organization’s key services. That was met with strong criticism from the community and didn’t move forward.  

The business owners have also started a petition that urges Oceanside officials to make Brother Benno’s leave the industrial park and find a new location. It’s garnered about 800 signatures. 

That option is not on the table quite yet, but Oceanside is requiring Brother Benno’s to take significant steps to help the situation, steps that could eventually prove to be too much for the nonprofit. 

The conditions: A couple of months ago, the Oceanside Planning Commission created new conditions for Brother Benno’s. Most significantly, the nonprofit would have to hire security guards and a sanitation worker to patrol the business park. 

Brother Benno’s is now paying $175,000 annually for two security guards to patrol the neighborhood from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. five days a week, Meyer said. It also pays about $50,000 annually for the sanitation worker.  

You may be wondering how the city can mandate a nonprofit organization to fund and provide security and sanitation for an entire industrial park. Oceanside Assistant City Manager Michael Gossman said it all comes down to zoning.  

Brother Benno’s operates with a Conditional Use Permit, which is a discretionary permit that can be granted by the city to allow a business to operate on a particular property. 

It gives the city a lot of discretion in terms of what it can require from Brother Bennos, Gossman said. 

But $215,000 is a big chunk of change, and leaders of Brother Benno’s aren’t sure how long they’ll be able to afford it. 

“That’s a lot of money,” Executive Director Paul McNamara said. “We’re a nonprofit that largely depends on donations, so I don’t know if that’s going to be sustainable in the long term.” 

Brother Benno’s has a yearly operations cost of about $6 million, McNamara said in an email. 

The nonprofit has asked the city and the other businesses if they can help pay for the security guards, but Gossman said, the city can’t pay for security on what is mostly private property. The other businesses have so far declined to chip in. 

I asked Gossman if the city is allowed to make Brother Benno’s fully fund security guards that do work, not just on and around their own property, but on other people’s private property – an entire industrial park that has more than 30 buildings to be exact. 

“Yes,” Gossman said in an email. 

And then there’s the Oceanside Police Department. Police Capt. Taurino Valdovinos said during a Sept. 11 Planning Commission meeting that the department’s homeless outreach team has offered services multiple times to this group of homeless people in question. They usually decline, and some that have accepted, have been kicked out of housing programs.  

The security guards can’t force these people to leave a property, and the police don’t seem to want to do anything about low-level offenses like loitering or trespassing, Meyer said.  

“We’ll have to wait and see if this private security is even going to make a difference because if we get to the end of this and we find that we’re spending almost $200,000 a year and it’s not even doing anything, then we might as well go back to the drawing board,” he added. 

Brother Benno’s serves breakfast and weekend brunch to an average of about 216 people daily. It also provides sack lunches, hygiene supplies, free clothes and shoes, on-site shower services, on-site medical and dental care, case management and rent and utility assistance.  

In Other News

• ICYMI: Vista’s City Council wants to fast track the opening of a new homeless shelter after learning that that its homeless residents aren’t getting into shelters because of limited shelter capacity. (Voice of San Diego)  
• Oceanside expects to collect about $20 million from Measure X in fiscal 2023-24. Measure X is the half-cent sales tax that Oceanside voters approved Nov. 6, 2018. That money will go toward a new city park, expanded after-school programs and homelessness prevention efforts. (Union-Tribune) 
• A new geotechnical report analyzing the safety of Seaside Ridge, a proposed housing project in Del Mar, is increasing scrutiny over the project. The report found that numerous factors could lead to bluff failure and suggested changes to some elements of the project. The report is not a third-party review, but presents the firm’s opinions, the geotechnical engineering firm said. (Coast News) Background: Seaside Ridge is a proposed affordable housing project that would be located on an ocean bluff site near Del Mar’s Dog Beach. City officials are against it, but the developer is trying to use state housing laws to override the city’s wishes. Read more about the project here. (Voice of San Diego)