The cost of providing services and temporary shelter for Manteca’s homeless has yet to impact the city’s general fund that pays for day-to-day municipal services.

And the cost of designing, building, and getting a permanent homeless navigation center to the point it is operational is highly unlikely to require a penny of local tax dollars.

It is all due to the city’s methodical approach to securing state, federal, and private sector funds to pick up the tab.

“We have been taking a very conservative approach,” City Manager Toni Lundgren said in terms of how the city has approached financing homeless services.

The tab for the outreach services, meals, showers, restrooms, and such as well as providing a secure location for homeless to overnight in tents and vehicles in the fenced in parking lot at 555 Industrial Park Drive has surpassed $800,000 a year.

And some of the recent additional services — such as switching to an armed security guard service overnight — has helped take some pressure off of the Manteca Police Department.

Lundgren said while the city has been successful at avoiding general fund impacts for direct homeless services, that may not always be the case going forward.

But she, added, the city will continue to exhaust every avenue it can to assist its homeless efforts.

Although the transition has just started into processing homeless into available beds in two 25-bed portable dorms — one for men and one for women — the city in the past month has had  close to a hundred homeless individuals at one time or another “camping” at 555 Industrial Park Drive.

“That’s a hundred people that aren’t sleeping on the streets (or in illegal encampments),” Lundgren said.

Lundgren noted as such the city “is doing something” to get the homeless off the streets, contrary to some social media postings contending otherwise.

She noted in the past two months, His Way — that the city has contracted with to offer emergency homeless services — has been able to place eight homeless individuals into their substance abuse recovery program.

The transition into dorm beds is requiring that those doing so agree to meet specific rules.

And given there are limited beds, the city may not get to the point where they are allowed under court rulings to apply pressure on the homeless sleeping and/or encamping on public property to either use an available bed at the emergency shelter or move on.

The city is in the process of trying to secure two more potable dorms that will likely allow police to step up pressure under legal parameters they are required to follow.

Two more dorms would give the city space for 75 males and 25 females.

While that doesn’t cover  the last official homeless headcount two years ago that put Manteca’s unsheltered number at 129, not all homeless are expected to take advantage of an available bed.

At that point, they lose — for want of a better term — “temporary squatters’ rights” on a large swath of public property. They then can be pressured to move. And if needed, continually be told to do so.

City leaders, though, expect the official homeless count to be significantly higher when the next point-in-time count is conducted Jan. 29.

The 2019 homeless count, before the pandemic, was at 218.

The status of the permanent

homeless navigation center

The city is in the process of issuing requests for proposals to design and build a permanent homeless navigation center off of Carnegie Court on the backside of the 8 acres the city purchased for that purpose and low-income housing along South Main Street.

The requests are expected to go out in February.

The city has almost $20 million set aside in state grants for the endeavor.

That includes $15 million that Mayor Gary Singh worked with state Senator Susan Eggman to secure

It is the largest grant for any city under 100,000 to secure for a homeless navigation center or homeless shelter in the Central Valley.

It is also the largest dollar amount for a state or federal grant Manteca has received for any purpose.

Lundgren said the proposals the city is seeking employ a progressive design approach to allow maximum flexibility to avoid change orders and such creating delays.

As an example, it would allow the city to seek PG&E connections at the start and make necessary adjustments in design as the city waits for service to be extended.

It is dealing with the reality that some entities and private concerns are experiencing as much as a year — and sometimes as long as two years — in terms of a waiting period for PG&E to extend service.

“With our utilities (sewer and water) we can do them at any time,” Lundgren said. “That isn’t the case with PG&E.”

It may allow Manteca to avoid what has tripped up Tracy that is proceeding with its own homeless navigation center project.

Tracy has experienced a severe PG&E delay forcing them to rent expensive generators.

As such, Lundgren views the progressive build approach as a way not just to keep the project moving forward but doing so in the most cost effective manner.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com