Tomorrow, the City Council will hold its regular weekly meeting, and it is dominated by matters involving housing and homelessness. The agenda includes a whopping 13 discussion items, not to mention nine items for the Housing Authority, which is the City Council wearing a different hat.

There's a lot of ground to cover in this post, so let's get to it. If you'd like more detail, click the agenda, then click on the item. Over on the right side of the page, you'll see a staff report and links to other bits of supporting material.

City Council -- Tuesday, June 16

Tuesday's open session begins  at 11 a.m. with seven consent items that are considered noncontroversial and won't be discussed unless a Council member or someone from the public pulls them out for discussion. 

Arguably, the most important discussion item is an update of the Housing Element of the General Plan. 

Every eight years, the City is required to update its Housing Element, which is one of 10 elements of the General Plan, the City's guiding land-use blueprint. One of the key factors that goes into this update is what's known as the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, a state-driven process that determines how many homes, at all income levels, cities need to plan for. Ahead of this update, it was determined that San Diego must plan for 108,036 additional homes during the next eight years. At Tuesday's meeting, the City's Planning Department will ask the Council to adopt the update.

Here are other discussion items involving housing and homelessness:

• Homeless Emergency Aid Program: As part of the state budget passed in 2018, the Governor and the Legislature created a $500-million Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP) to help communities reduce homelessness. The San Diego region got roughly $33 million of that, $14.1 million of which went to the City of San Diego (the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless got $18.8 million). The City allocated its share to various programs, and on Tuesday, the Council will be asked to amend those allocations by redirecting $257,512 from rental assistance to capital improvements ($42,819) and services ($214,693). 


• Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention Program: A year after the Governor and the Legislature created HEAP, they created HHAP, the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention program, this time allocating $650 million statewide. Of that total, the City of San Diego is getting $22.5 million, which it plans to use on bridge shelters, youth programs, court diversion, the Safe Parking Program, family reunification, outreach coordination, and transitional storage facilities. The action requested is for the Council to accept, appropriate, and expend this money. In a separate agenda item, the Council will be asked to sign a memorandum of understanding with the San Diego Housing Commission to administer the HHAP funding.


• Safe Parking Program: The City funds a Safe Parking Program so that residents who are experiencing homelessness can safely sleep in their vehicles at any of three locations -- two parking lots in Kearny Mesa and one in eastern Mission Valley. The program is administered by the Housing Commission and run under a contract with the nonprofit organization Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS). In addition to a safe place to sleep, the program provides case management and aims to connect program participants with permanent housing opportunities. On Tuesday, the Council will be asked to allow the Housing Commission to renew the contract with JFS for $956,921 for one year, during which 600 unique individuals are expected to take part, with one-year options possible for the following two years. Every cent of the money comes from the state HHAP program described above.


• Bridge Shelters: This item is similar to the previous one -- the Council is asked to allow the Housing Commission to renew or initiate contracts with various organizations for the operation of the City's Bridge Shelter Program. For the coming fiscal year, the program will include two shelters operated by Alpha Project in Barrio Logan and East Village, one operated by Father Joe's Villages in Downtown, and one operated by Veterans Village of San Diego at an as-yet-unidentified site. The Alpha Project and Father Joe's contracts are for one year while the Veterans Village contracts is for six months. The total amount for all the contracts, largely funded through the HHAP program, is roughly $15.9 million.


• Transitional Storage Centers: This item would allow the Housing Commission to contract out for the operations at two transitional storage centers (scroll down) in Logan Heights and El Cerrito -- 1,000 storage units for a little less than $2 million for one year.

• Courthouse Commons: In order for the City to issue tax-exempt bonds, it must hold a public hearing under the federal Tax Equity & Fiscal Responsibility Act. In this case, the Housing Commission is asking the Council to approve the issuance of $24 million in multifamily housing revenue bonds to help finance Courthouse Commons, a proposed development at 202 West Broadway, Downtown, that would include 82 units, 41 of which would be affordable to low-income renters.


• Mississippi El Cajon Boulevard Apartments: Another Housing Commission-driven TEFRA hearing, this one involves the issuance of $12.5 million in tax-exempt multifamily housing revenue bonds, as well as $4 million in taxable bonds, to help finance the proposed Mississippi El Cajon Boulevard Apartments. This project, located at 2139 El Cajon Blvd. in University Heights, would include 60 affordable units.

And here are the rest of the discussion items on the agenda:

• Annual Report on Internal Financial Control: Back in 2004, when the City had some issues with public disclosures of financial information, the Council passed an ordinance requiring City management to annually evaluate their internal financial controls and submit a written report on that evaluation to the Audit Committee. This is that. The report's bottom line: Management concludes that the internal financial controls are A-OK. The Audit Committee accepted the report on May 20.


• 4055 54th Street Public Right-of-Way Vacation: The City's Development Services Department on Tuesday will ask the Council to approve its request to hand over to a private property owner a chunk of land on the east side of 54th Street just north of University Avenue in El Cerrito. It's an excess piece of the 54th Street right-of-way, totaling 17 percent of one acre, and the City doesn't need it -- might as well let the landowner do something of value there.


• Recreation Center Fund Budgets: The City's Parks and Recreation Department is asking the Council approve budgets for its Recreation Center Funds for the fiscal year that starts on July 1. Recreation Center Funds supplement program operations at 59 rec centers across the city. The money in these funds is sourced from class registration fees (78 percent) and park and building permit fees (22 percent).


• Third Quarter Budget Monitoring Report: The budget monitoring report on the third quarter of the current fiscal year gives Council members a rundown of how the City's actual revenues and expenditures from July 1, 2019, through March 31, 2020, compared with projections made when the budget was passed last June. This is the first mid-year monitoring report that reveals the amount of revenue lost due to COVID-19. The Council is asked by the Department of Finance to make a series of adjustments to the current fiscal year budget. This was originally scheduled for the June 8 meeting, but the Council didn't get to it.

In addition to all of that, the Council, acting as the Housing Authority, will take up nine items -- six of which are simply companion items to Council matters summarized above (Mississippi El Cajon Boulevard Apartments, Courthouse Commons, Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention Program, Transitional Storage Centers, Bridge Shelters, Safe Parking Program). They have to be approved by both the Council and the Housing Authority.

Here are the three remaining items for the Housing Authority to discuss:

• San Diego Housing Commission Budget: The Authority will be asked to approve the Housing Commission's budget of $525 million for the fiscal year that starts on July 1.


• Paul Mirabile Center for Adults Experiencing Homelessness: The Authority will be asked to allow the Housing Commission to enter into a nearly $2-million agreement with Father Joe's Villages for the operation of the City of San Diego’s interim shelter program at the Paul Mirabile Center in East Village for an initial one-year term, with four one-year options to renew.


• San Diego Housing Commission Semi-Annual Grant Report: This is an informational item in which the Housing Commission will present a report on its grant activities from July through December 2020.

Phew! That's quite enough for one day, right?

The meeting officially begins at 9 a.m., when the Council will listen to any public comments related to the closed session agenda before moving into closed session. They will return to open session at 11 a.m.

Due to COVID-19, only City staff and credentialed members of the press may attend in person. However, anyone can participate and make comments by dialing 619-541-6310 and entering the access code 877861 followed by # when the item you're interested in comes up (full call-in instructions). Watch the meeting on cable TV channel 24 or AT&T channel 99, or stream it online.

Next up: a post on the City Council's special meeting to wrap up the Mission Valley land sale to SDSU and the next Audit Committee meeting, both happening on Wednesday, June 17.

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