SLO neighbors protest proposed overnight parking site for homeless people: ‘It’s insane’

The city of San Luis Obispo could move its safe parking program to a new location in a residential neighborhood — and some residents aren’t happy with the proposal.

The city plans to temporarily set up an overnight parking site for homeless people within a 200-foot-long stretch of Palm Street between the entrance to the San Luis Obispo Veterans Memorial Building and Grand Avenue.

That’s a few blocks from Highway 101 and the entrance to the Cal Poly university campus.

Lynn Hamilton, an agribusiness professor at Cal Poly’s College of Agriculture, Food & Environmental Sciences, called news of the city’s plan “shocking.”

Hamilton has owned her home on Palm Street for 25 years. It’s a stone’s throw from where the city plans to set up the interim site.

Hamilton Wednesday said she was frustrated the city had selected the site without sufficiently notifying residents.

While her neighbors received postcards earlier this week, she said, she was not notified and heard the news instead from another area resident, Mark Adams.

Additionally, Hamilton objects to “the lack of transparency, lack of opportunity for public comment and the VERY short time period for notification,” she wrote in an email to the city she shared with The Tribune.

“As disruptive as having this parking on our street will be, it’s even worse the way it’s being handled,” Hamilton told The Tribune in a phone call.

San Luis Obispo homelessness response manager Daisy Wiberg said the decision to consider that part of Palm Street as an interim safe parking site was made to make sure current participants in the city’s safe parking program would have somewhere to go while the city works to establish a replacement program.

Here’s why the city is moving forward with an interim safe parking site — and what residents think about the move.

Why does SLO need new location for safe parking program?

The city’s Railroad Square Safe Parking Program, which started sheltering unhoused residents in their vehicles in late 2021, is set to shut down Aug. 27, Wiberg said July 29.

The Railroad Square site will be replaced by a series of rotating sites hosted by faith-based organizations and private and public property owners. That was projected to start Oct. 1 under the guidance of the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County, Wiberg said.

Wiberg said the city has not finalized its plans with the three faith-based organizations that have engaged in talks so far, potentially leaving a gap in services for people who used the Railroad Square program.

To fill that gap, the city can use a director’s action permit to select an interim location for the parking site until a rotational model has been finalized, Wiberg said.

Director’s action permits allow the operators of an approved program to select locations without first consulting the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission, Wiberg said.

“The Planning Commission approved CAPSLO as administrator for this program, and changed it to a director’s action (permit), where it’s not going back to the Planning Commission to approve each site, but they approved the kind of the program model,” Wiberg said. “Now, with this site and any other sites that we confirm moving forward, we would do this noticing process ...

“Then there’s an appeal window for residents to to bring forward and appeal, and then it would be approved by our community development director.”

The director’s action permit won’t be formally approved until Aug. 14, when the city’s community development director decides whether to approve or deny the project, or defer it back to the Planning Commission, Wiberg said.

Wiberg said Palm Street was identified as a potential spot for the program because it doesn’t experience as much through traffic as other nearby city streets, and is wide enough to accommodate the vehicles.

The interim site would operate for a maximum of four months at Palm Street, though the city hopes to have a host site identified by Oct. 1, Wiberg said.

“We were hopeful that we would have a host site location confirmed and able to launch the rotating model by Sept. 1, so our decision to move forward with this interim location happened later than we would have normally planned,” Wiberg told The Tribune. “Otherwise, we would have started kind of outreach efforts sooner.”

However, Hamilton said, the short time frame didn’t leave room for input from nearby residents or public hearings, regardless of the city’s director’s action permit.

“It’s just very disturbing that our public officials can just completely change the nature of your home, and that’s what they’re doing,” Hamilton said. “They’re completely changing the nature of the street I live on.”

What could interim safe parking site look like?

For the most part, Wiberg said, the interim safe parking site proposed for Palm Street would operate similarly to the existing safe parking program.

Like the Railroad Square program, the interim site would be open overnight from 7 p.m. from 7 a.m., and would host no more than 20 vehicles in total, Wiberg said. Those would likely be split between around 10 vehicles and five recreational vehicles.

A dumpster, restrooms and a wash station would be available to program participants, Wiberg said.

During the program’s operating hours, that 200-foot-long stretch of Palm Street would be closed to through traffic, she said.

“We met with the veterans hall, and they’ve been supportive of us using this location,” Wiberg said. “Obviously, they are adjacent to this site, so we wanted to make sure that we had conversations with them.”

In accordance with the city’s safe parking regulations, the site would have a 50-foot buffer from any residential properties, and CAPSLO would be required to mail contact information and resources associated with the program to residents within a 300-foot radius of the site in accordance with the City’s Good Neighbor Policy, deputy city manager Greg Hermann told Hamilton in an email she shared with The Tribune.

The San Luis Obispo Police Department would routinely check the site for disturbances during program hours, Hermann told Hamilton in the email.

Neighborhood residents frustrated with lack of outreach

Adams, a real estate appraiser, has lived around the corner from the proposed location for the interim site for 24 years.

He said he is against running a safe parking program in a residential area.

He also takes issue with the lack of transparency in the site selection process. Other changes to a neighborhood, such as opening an Airbnb or changing the structure of a residential home, require public hearings and notifications for nearby residents, Adams said.

Adams said the city’s efforts to notify residents was not sufficient, and said the city’s announcement about the plan in New Times alternate weekly newspaper was a “weak excuse.”

“It’s coming with a plan not in place — it’s an experiment in the process,” Adams said of the city.

Adams also said safe parking programs don’t do enough to address homelessness permanently, and that other solutions would have been a better use of city funds.

Hamilton said the city didn’t consider the potential impact of Cal Poly’s student population. With fall term about to begin, students will soon fill homes in surrounding neighborhoods and overtake street parking, she said.

“That’s why I chose to buy here, because I have zero commute — I ride my bike or I walk,” Hamilton said. “I think (it’s) yet another piece of the short-sighted puzzle.”

In the meantime, Hamilton said she means to appeal the city’s safe parking site decision.

“I don’t know why this particular change of use of a street or area doesn’t have the same level of scrutiny that private property owners have to go through,” Hamilton said. “It’s insane.”