San Diego’s proposed warehouse shelter would be one of the largest nationwide. How do the others work?

The warehouse sits empty a little north of the airport.

The San Diego City Council has debated for months, mostly behind closed doors, whether to convert the property into a homeless shelter, and while many details remain undecided, proponents have repeatedly returned to one part of the plan that would set the facility apart from almost all others: More than 1,000 people could live inside.

The end result has the potential to both reduce how many individuals sleep on local streets while simultaneously introducing challenges the city has never faced long term.

In interviews, representatives of homelessness organizations around the country flagged just five shelters — in Washington D.C., New York City, San Antonio, Los Angeles and Phoenix — that have been able to hold similar numbers, and leaders from three of those unpacked how they care for so many in one spot.

“We’re spoken of negatively because we have so many people,” said Amy Schwabenlender, CEO of Keys to Change, the organization overseeing a Phoenix campus that sleeps around 900. “We wouldn’t have to if there were other places for people to be, and we wouldn’t have so many people here if there was more prevention.”

One difference between San Diego’s proposal and the other shelters is size.

The Middletown warehouse by Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street includes three buildings and nearly 65,000 square feet. In contrast, Phoenix has more than 157,600 square feet spread across eight buildings, Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles uses a five-story structure with 220,000 square feet and San Antonio’s Haven for Hope includes about 500,000 square feet on nearly two dozen acres.

But leaders agreed with San Diego officials that any large space allowed for quick pivots.

“We have the flexibility of reacting to the needs of the unsheltered as the demographics change,” said Jeff Hudson, interim president and CEO of Union Rescue Mission. “On the streets of L.A., as I suspect is similar with San Diego, we are finding a dramatic increase in need for shelter for families.”

Running a large shelter can be like managing a town.

Hundreds of staffers might be needed to keep the doors open 24 hours. Some projects host regular town halls for residents to give feedback. San Antonio had to get a “pigeon wrangler” to relocate birds pooping by the lunch tables.

Everyone said they tried to offer on site just about every service someone could need, from dental clinics to government offices where people request missing documents. Phoenix has its own post office.

Los Angeles’ Union Rescue Mission might be most like San Diego’s warehouse proposal, in that it’s in an urban area (Skid Row) and a housing-poor region (Southern California). The structure has the capacity for around 1,200, although Hudson, the CEO, said they tend to sleep about 800 people a night.

Meal times and activities are staggered so rooms don’t overflow. When more families started showing up, they installed raised cubicles in a gym to offer more privacy.

“We’re kinda the go-to facility, particularly for women and children,” Hudson said. “Other groups are doing great work, they just don’t have the capacity that we do.”

One caveat: Because the Rescue Mission is privately funded, the nonprofit has more leeway to restrict who’s allowed in, and the Skid Row facility only accepts people trying to get clean.

San Antonio’s Haven for Hope similarly offers sober living spaces, yet it also has more traditional “low-barrier” beds open to almost anyone.

The campus is usually full. Even with 13 buildings and spots for 1,450 people, staffers have long had to lay out mats on floors to hold the more than 1,700 that may show up any given night, according to Director of Communications Terri Behling.

While their downtown location has upsides — some county detox beds are across the street —neighboring buildings largely block the organization from expanding.

In Arizona, staffers at the 13-acre Keys to Change campus recently hosted a group of San Diego officials.

They discussed ways to organize beds in tight spaces and how best to collaborate with a range of service organizations, according to Schwabenlender, the CEO. The visitors further evaluated how Phoenix added showers and bathrooms to a shipping container that was then attached to a large tent, called a sprung shelter.

Alex Visotzky, a senior policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said many cities were moving away from big projects. “We are seeing less and less of these types of large shelters.”

A range of challenges, including staffing and security, made them arguably less attractive to vulnerable people than more private spaces, Visotzky added.

California did put up many homeless people in hotels during the pandemic, county officials continue to offer vouchers for renting local rooms and multiple cities, including San Diego and Chula Vista, have turned motels into shelters. There are also smaller buildings with bunk beds and tents that can sleep 150 or more.

But some San Diego leaders say homelessness is growing enough that a massive one-stop shop is still needed.

“I truly believe that Kettner and Vine, moving forward, is a campus-style model that the city can be proud of for decades,” said Sarah Jarman, director of the city’s homelessness strategies and solutions department. “It really is the space that we want the entire community to be proud of.”

The project has been named Hope @ Vine and Mayor Todd Gloria recently wrote that it would include 24-hour security, laundry, a commercial kitchen, recreation areas and gardens, among other services. Jarman said the largest of the property’s three buildings could be divided up inside to house different groups and officials have noted that San Diego already has pandemic-era experience caring for the 1,300 homeless people who once stayed in the convention center, although that facility is significantly larger than the warehouse.

The new shelter would likely cost around $82 per bed, per night, which equals about $30 million a year. A city spokesperson said it was too early to say how that annual budget might be broken down.

If the City Council does approve a lease, Hope @ Vine could take up to a year-and-a-half to launch.

A public hearing on the proposal is expected in the coming weeks.

Homelessness countywide has increased every month for more than two years, and January’s point-in-time count found more than 6,100 people sleeping on streets or in vehicles. Thousands more were at least under a roof, but the region’s shelter system has nowhere near enough beds for everybody asking .