Father Joe’s Village’s Paul Mirabile Center has for years sheltered up to 350 homeless San Diegans each night. Now, the nonprofit is preparing to step away from the city shelter contract it has held for the East Village facility for nearly a decade and instead offer detox and sober living beds backed by private donors.
The shift is expected to simultaneously supply 45 sorely needed detox beds for patients with Medi-Cal insurance who now can rarely access those services on demand and reduce the roster of city-funded shelter beds. Father Joe’s does, however, expect to provide at least 250 shelter beds in what it’s dubbing a new sober and recovery shelter for homeless San Diegans.
If Father Joe’s can pull together private funding and state approvals needed to open the detox facility as swiftly as it hopes, it could increase the region’s share of detox beds serving Medi-Cal patients by 58 percent by sometime next year – and even more dramatically increase resources in the city.
The region now has only 78 county-contracted withdrawal management beds where Medi-Cal patients can be monitored and receive additional support, typically for seven to 14 days. Only two are in the city of San Diego, home to about half of the county’s fentanyl overdose deaths in recent years.
Deacon Jim Vargas, Father Joe’s CEO, wrote in a statement that his nonprofit is eager to serve homeless San Diegans struggling with addiction and noted its existing medical clinic and services such as substance use counseling and medication-assisted treatment make it well-suited to fill a regional gap.
“Sadly, in 2023, more than 300 unhoused individuals died from a fatal overdose,” Vargas wrote. “This trend is disheartening and, as a provider, we must do everything we can to address this crisis.”
To facilitate its shift, Father Joe’s plans to stop welcoming new clients at the Paul Mirabile Center on July 1 and shut down its city-funded shelter program by the end of the year. The nonprofit says it plans to try to maintain as many shelter beds as it can on the third floor of the facility, which now has 270 beds.
But Father Joe’s envisions those beds now being supported by donors and focused on homeless San Diegans who want to stay in a sober environment. It’s not yet clear whether they will be plugged into the city’s shelter referral system.
The loss of city-funded shelter beds at Father Joe’s St. Vincent de Paul campus plus four other expected shelter closures could leave the city with 732 fewer city-controlled beds by the end of the year if it can’t find replacement sites. By mid-2025, the city could have just 772 shelter beds due to another expected closure – down from its current count of 1,830 – unless it can find new options. City officials say they’re on the hunt for them.
Father Joe’s move puts further pressure on a pledge earlier this year by Mayor Todd Gloria to deliver at least 1,000 new city-backed shelter beds by early 2025. Gloria has in recent months been rallying behind a controversial plan to ink a long-term lease to open what would become the city’s largest-ever homeless shelter at a vacant warehouse in Middletown.
Gloria spokesperson Rachel Laing said the mayor’s team learned of Father Joe’s shelter conversion plans on Feb. 28, several weeks after his State of the City pledge. She argued the situation points to the need for more permanent shelter beds the administration is pushing.
“The unforeseen change at (Paul Mirabile Center) underscores the need to have a permanent site controlled by the city and operated under its direction,” Laing wrote in an email.
The Paul Mirabile Center shelter closure will come around the same time as the closure of Father Joe’s 264-bed shelter at Golden Hall, a program that the city has said it hopes it can move to another location by the end of the year. The existing permit for the site expires in early October.
Those closures and moves to halt intakes will also put more pressure on a shelter system that now isn’t meeting demand.
A recent Voice of San Diego analysis of Housing Commission data showed 81 percent of homeless San Diegans’ requests for shelter in April and May went unanswered. Most who sought a bed via the Housing Commission’s intake system didn’t get one.
Casey Snell, the housing agency’s interim senior vice president of Homelessness Housing Innovations, wrote in a statement that her agency and the city’s homelessness department are jointly focused on finding new shelter sites to try to replace the beds they’ll be losing.
She said the Housing Commission, which oversees most city shelter contracts, expects to soon release a formal callout to identify potential options.
Snell said Father Joe’s notified the Housing Commission of its plans in late April and that her agency has since been focused on ensuring existing shelter clients can transition to other shelter programs as needed, including potentially Father Joe’s new shelter program.
Vargas said Father Joe’s is also committed to working with the city and housing agency during the process.
It’s not immediately clear whether Father Joe’s sober living beds will be part of the city’s coordinated intake system, which means they would still be accessible to city-funded outreach workers seeking to move their clients from the street to shelters.
Snell told Voice that the Housing Commission expects to eventually discuss this possibility with the nonprofit.
I am housed here, where will go? Because of this place I am clean and sober. However I am a 64 year old cancer patient with a very small income. Housing is hopeless.
Yes, the housing market in San Diego, and CA is hopeless even for people making 6 figure salaries. That being said, I’d probably look for a place to live where my social security will go further. I mean if people with high paying jobs can barely afford to live here and many are moving to other states, why do you think anyone has a right to live in one of the most expensive cities in the country? The problems were mostly caused by government, so government certainly isn’t going to fix it anytime soon.
I find it ironic that they’re opening a detox center there with the needle exchange half a block away.