Victorville project will help homeless

The $28 million Wellness Center Campus, scheduled to begin its first phase of construction next month, will provide medical and other services to people who have no place to live. The facility will be paid for by a grant from the state’s Homekey program.

 

 

Victorville is about to undergo a major project to reduce its homeless problem.

Construction is expected to begin next month on the Wellness Center Campus, a $28 million recuperative care and interim housing facility that will be built on city-owned land, according to Victorville officials.

The 4.5-acre campus will be built in four phases at 16902 First St. and is expected to be completed in December. It will be paid for with a $28 million grant the city received last December from the state’s Homekey program, which helps cities fight homelessness.

Homekey is administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

On March 15, the city council took the first step toward construction when it awarded a $4.8 million contract for the project’s first phase to Angeles Contractor Inc. in the City of Industry. Work in that phase will include installation of underground utilities that will support the homeless shelter and its medical clinic.

The vote was 3-1, with Councilwoman Blanca Gomez casting the dissenting vote.

Victorville Wellness Center will be the first facility of its kind in San Bernardino County, which has a serious homeless problem that extends to Victorville and much of the High Desert. In 2020, 451 people identified as homeless were living in Victorville, according to that year’s Point-In-Time Count.
That gave the city the second-highest homeless population in San Bernardino County, behind San Bernardino, which had 890 homeless. The Point-In-Time Count, a one-day nationwide event conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, was not held in 2021 because of the pandemic.

The idea to develop a large, comprehensive facility to help homeless people rehabilitate themselves began in 2019, when the city’s 12-member Homeless Solutions Task Force concluded that was the best way to address the problem.

The Wellness Center, which will support homeless people and those believed to be on the verge of becoming homeless, was proposed about one year later but was postponed because of COVID-19.

“There is no one cause of homelessness, so we must provide a framework of support to assist our homeless community,” Mayor Debra Jones said in a statement. “To this point, one of the greatest challenges has been the lack of a comprehensive facility where shelter, food, and a full suite of support services are readily accessible.

“Our Wellness Center will bring these services together in one location to help homeless individuals stabilize and rebuild their lives.”

The Wellness Center will use the “housing first” approach to helping homeless people, which gets people off the street and then begins rehabilitation. When completed, It will have 110 units and a minimum of 170 beds, which will more than double Victorville’s shelter-bed supply.

A garden, recreational sports areas, dog kennel and landscaped open space will be included in the project, which will be restricted to homeless people living within Victorville, Victorville spokeswoman Sue Jones said.

Given the results of the Point-in-Time Count, Victorville officials felt they had to something dramatic to address the city’s homeless problem.

“We have the second-largest homeless population in San Bernardino County, and we’re one of the largest cities up here, so Victorville is the logical place for this kind of facility,” Sue Jones said. “I don’t know why the homeless problem is so bad here, but it is. But it’s not just here. It’s bad all over California.”

As of January 2020, an estimated 161,548 people were homeless in California on any given day, according to HUD.

Of that, 8,030 were family households, 11,401 were veterans, 12,172 were unaccompanied adults 18 to 24 years old and 51,785 were Individuals who were chronically homeless.

In San Bernardino County, the 2020 Point-In-Time Count found 3,125 homeless people, a 20 percent year-over-year increase.

The Wellness Center has the full support of the High Desert business, which view the project as a good thing for commerce, said Mark Creffield, president and chief executive officer of the Greater High Desert Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s something Victorville really needs, and it will do good things for the city,” Creffield said. “The chamber is behind it 100 percent.”

The project got a stronger endorsement from Joseph Brady, president of The Bradco Cos. in Victorville, one of the largest and most successful commercial real estate brokerages in the High Desert.

“I have absolute confidence in the city of Victorville and what they’re doing,” Brady said. “[The Wellness Center] is a good thing for the city, and I don’t think it will hurt businesses or property values. In the long run, I think it will help property values.

“We need to help homeless people, and I think the city is heading in the right direction.”