San Diego CA December 30 2019

It didn’t take long before the security person making his rounds outside Father Joe’s Villages encountered a confrontation.

“Excuse me, sir, please don’t block the emergency exit,” Father Joe’s director of facilities and security Oscar Arce said to a man huddled against door on 16th Street a block south of Imperial Avenue in downtown San Diego.

“Who are you, (expletive) security or what?” the man said.

Arce doesn’t wear a uniform but keeping the peace outside of Father Joe’s buildings is part of his job. Sensing the man was agitated and uncooperative, he made a quiet call for backup. Within a minute, three Father Joe’s security personnel, in uniform, arrived.

Without saying a word, the man in the doorway picked up his things and left.

Deacon Jim Vargas, president and CEO of Father Joe’s Village, had joined Arce on the recent morning patrol and said the incident illustrated the nonprofit’s approach of de-escalating potential problems.

But the outcome wasn’t ideal.

“He’s not doing well,” Vargas said.

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As a provider of shelter and services for homeless people, Vargas said Father Joe’s does not want to see a person walk away from help.

“Next time Oscar encounters this guy, maybe he’ll be in a better state of mind and he’ll remember that Oscar wasn’t belligerent with him,” Vargas said. “Maybe he’ll be willing to come in and accept services or come in and have lunch.”

Vargas said Father Joe’s patrols its property to be a good neighbor, but he’s also aware that the effort can result in moving a concentration of homeless people a block away.

“This is challenging,” he said. “We know there are hundreds of people still on the street. We as a community have to continue to work on that. Just pushing people from one area to the other isn’t the answer.”

Like other service providers in downtown San Diego, Father Joe’s has security outside as well as inside its building. Each do patrols differently, but all also say they want to be good neighbors and treat homeless people they encounter with compassion.

Arce or others in the 25-member security team patrol from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. around Father Joe’s buildings along Commercial Street and Imperial Avenue between 14th and 17th streets. Cameras inside and outside keep a watch on the area 24/7.

The Alpha Project doesn’t have a security team, but covers a larger area with a golf cart driven by a supervisor every hour from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The route covers streets between the nonprofit’s tented bridge shelter at 1501 Newton Ave. and a second shelter about a half mile away at 17th and Commercial streets.

PATH Connections Housing at 1250 Sixth Ave. contracts with a security company to patrol 45 minutes every hour from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The patrol covers just one block along Sixth Avenue and A Street as part of its conditional use permit.

The San Diego Rescue Mission hires a security team to patrol five blocks around its building at 120 Elm St. from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. as part of a settlement agreement with neighbors that had sued to prevent its opening.

Edvin Liku, vice president of operations at the Rescue Mission, said the security team is partly funded by area businesses, and they ask people to not sleep in doorways or private property.

The nonprofits that patrol in the daytime say they politely ask people not to loiter on their property. People usually comply, they say, but police occasionally are called when someone becomes confrontational.

Alpha Project employee Ernie Garibay asks a man to move along after finding him sleeping across the street from a school near the nonprofit’s bridge shelter. Garibay patrols the neighborhood near the Newton Avenue shelter every half hour.

Moments after his encounter with the man in the Father Joe’s doorway, Arce explained why he kept his cool.

“It’d be easy for me to just give in and get upset myself, but that person is not at his best,” he said. “That’s not going to help in the situation. What we want to do is be as compassionate as possible and provide them with resources.”

At the Alpha Project, supervisor Carlos “Pee Wee” Juarez patrols the neighborhood in a golf cart five days a week.

“Sometimes we find strays and we have to get them out of there,” he said, referring to Alpha Project clients he sometimes spots loitering on neighborhood streets.

In those cases, he said he will tell the people to either go back to the shelter or consider going up the road to Chicano Park so they’re away from businesses.

During one recent patrol, he spotted a man in an alley with a shopping cart, resting in front of a driveway. Juarez pulled his cart up and asked the man if he was OK and if would like to go to the shelter entrance for some snacks or water.

“That’s how I get them to move,” Juarez said.

While the Alpha Project’s contract with the city requires the organization to provide security in and around the shelter, Cafe Virtuoso owner Laurie Britton said the patrols started from a discussion she had with some of the nonprofit’s personnel following the shelter’s opening two years ago.

“When I met with them, I said, ‘Look, you’ve got your tent now, but the sidewalks are still blocked,” she said. “Where did we get anything out of this?’ They said, ‘You’re right, what would you like to see?’”

Britton said the streets near the shelter have significantly improved since the patrols began, and she is more likely to call the Alpha Project rather than police if there is an issue with a homeless person.

“The thing I like about Alpha Project is, if there really is a problem, they have people in their program who know how to talk to people who are living on the street,” she said. “When I call them, they’re pretty good at helping.”

At Father Joe’s, Vargas said the patrols keep people from loitering in front of their property and helps make connections with people who need help, but they also have a down side in pushing people to other areas.

That’s particularly obviously on Commercial Street, where sidewalks on the north side next to Father’s Joe’s are clear, while the south side often has about a dozen people.

“We take pride in our area,” Vargas said. “I think every property owner needs to do the same. I know that’s frustrating and also expensive. It’s a part of our budget, but money that has to be spent.”

Much of the property surrounding the nonprofit is industrial, but business near PATH Connections Housing include office buildings, shops and eateries that sometimes have encounters with homeless people.

PATH Security Manager Brandon Woods said he and others on patrol politely ask people to not loiter and suggest other places where they can find food or services.

Ernie Garibay of The Alpha Project, seen on patrol behind the wheel of a golf cart, holds a piece of pipe he used to pick up a syringe that a homeless man he was talking to threw away. He brought it back to the shelter to safely discard.

With so many homeless people in the area, however, he said some neighboring businesses have questioned whether the housing program is conducting the patrols it is required to do.

“There was a period when one of our neighbors didn’t believe us,” he said, adding that he had to show patrol logs and minute-by-minute surveillance video to one skeptic.

Others sometimes suspect people are loitering in front of the building when they actually may be tenants waiting for a ride or friends waiting for a tenant to come down, Woods said.

A block to the north on Sixth Avenue, Qwik Mart owner Freddy Tozy said he believes security patrols at PATH drive homeless people to his block.

“Our security pushes them back,” he said with a shrug. “But there’s homeless everywhere.”

Tozy said he believes many of the people he sees on his block choose to be homeless, but most do not cause problems. He appreciates having security for the times they are needed, such as when panhandlers are bothering his customers.

A block to the south, Coffee “N” Talk cafe owner Dost Kittini said he believes security patrols at PATH do result in people coming around his and other shops on Sixth Avenue, but he never hears anyone complain about it.

His bigger complaints may be with the security company hired to patrol his block. Kittini said when he’s called them about a homeless person causing a problem, they talk to the person but do little else.

“I could have done that,” he said.

PATH Regional Director Jonathan Castillo said PATH security will cross the street to calm a confrontation, but do not go beyond their route to talk to people who appear to be loitering.

Homeless people often congregate on the sidewalk across Sixth Avenue at the office building that is home of The San Diego Union-Tribune, WeWork and other businesses.

Castillo said he gets calls from security personnel in the building at 600 B Street if a guard there suspects people loitering outside are Connections Housing tenants. If the people are tenants, Castillo said, PATH security will ask them to return to their rooms rather than loiter at the building, but otherwise won’t confront anyone beyond their patrol area.

Woods said patrol teams ask people loitering in front of Connections Housing to please move somewhere else. If they don’t comply and aren’t causing a disturbance, he said there’s not much else security teams can do but keep asking them to move along.

On a rainy morning two days before Christmas, Castillo and Woods walked a patrol together and found a couple huddled under a tarp just around the corner from Connections Housing.

“The reason I’m here is we have to keep this area clear,” Woods said to the man and woman. “Have you tried to get services?”

After a brief discussion, Woods left and returned with a brochure of where the couple could find food and other assistance. He also told them that in a few hours, Connections Housing would be opening its inclement weather shelter on a first-come, first-served basis, and they were advised to return.

In the meantime, they had to move along.

“When we tell people they can’t loiter outside the building, we don’t instruct them where to go,” Castillo said, adding that he recognizes a need for more services in the area.

“If they’re not a client or resident of PATH, we ask them to leave,” he said. “But if they are people experiencing homelessness, the challenge becomes, “Where do they go?’ I don’t think there’s an easy answer for that.”

San Diego Union Tribune

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