Six months after opening, Central Cities Navigation Center nears full house
Approximately six months ago, Fountain Valley gained access to its first dedicated shelter beds, providing additional means of addressing its unhoused situation, and the effort is seeing success, the City Council learned during a meeting this month.
The Central Cities Navigation Center, a partnership between the cities of Fountain Valley, Garden Grove and Westminster, opened on June 12 in an industrial area at 13871 West St. in Garden Grove.
An 18,166-square-foot facility with 85 beds, the center has the capacity to expand to 100 beds. Fountain Valley has access to 13 beds for its homeless population. Garden Grove has 50 beds for its use, while Westminster has an allocation of 22 beds.
Fountain Valley has seen an intake of 24 individuals at the navigation center since it opened, with a dozen people currently residing at the facility, the City Council learned Dec. 17 from representatives from Volunteers of America, Los Angeles, the organization that manages the shelter, and City Net, Fountain Valley’s contracted homeless outreach and engagement service provider.
The current inhabitants of the Fountain Valley’s allocated beds include seven single men, two single women, and two couples. Overall, there were 82 individuals from the three collaborating cities staying at the shelter as of mid-December.
The center is equipped with dorms to accommodate 55 men, 22 women, six couples, and two flex rooms. It is a referral-only facility restricted to adults. Those taken in by the shelter can stay for up to four months.
Vice Mayor Jim Cunneen called the shelter a “phenomenal place” in describing the amenities and wondered how it might be marketed to those deciding whether they were willing to go.
“Shelters live in a strange world, because on one hand, you want individuals to [say], ‘That looks good. I want to go there,’” said Eric Richardson, director of housing for Volunteers of America. “On the other hand, [we’re thinking], ‘We don’t want you to stay there.’ We want you to like it, but not quite like it that much.”
Cunneen asked the providers how the neighboring community had received the shelter.
“Nobody wants a shelter in their area,” said Daniel Torres, the center’s program manager. “For us, it’s always the no walk-off policy that has made the shelter a lot better, not allowing people to hang around and loiter around the shelter.
“Most of the time, when you walk by the shelter, unless you know that it’s a shelter, you don’t know what it is. It has no signage. … It just has a glass door, so for the most part, we’ve been pretty good with the neighbors. They all have my phone number.”
Torres added that many of the services offered are coming onto the site, including physical and mental health services and local faith groups.
“For us, we want the services to come onto the site because sometimes if we send out the clients out to the field, they might not make it to the destination,” Torres said. “One of the biggest goals that we have in the site is trying to get them connected to more income.”
Between Oct. 23 and Dec. 6, City Net helped facilitate getting 13 unhoused people off the street in Fountain Valley, with referrals being placed in the Central Cities Navigation Center and the Yale Navigation Center, which is based in Santa Ana.
A collaborative effort between City Net and local law enforcement is seeing the latter refer potential clients for services. If services are refused, police are being notified so that applicable ordinances and laws can be upheld.
Andres Hernandez, City Net’s program supervisor for Orange County, added that the outreach service and law enforcement began working more closely together after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling that allowed cities to enforce laws against homeless encampments.
“Overall, a lot of clients have been really receptive to this partnership,” Hernandez said. “Those that haven’t, well, they’ve been assisted by Fountain Valley [police] to make a better decision on their current whereabouts or activities.”
From July through November, City Net carried out 425 client interactions in Fountain Valley, leading to 37 street exits to a shelter and two into permanent housing, according to data presented to the City Council.
“I know that when we first started, we got off to a bit of a rough start, and I think that over the last 90 days or so, we’ve seen some real traction and some improvements,” Councilman Glenn Grandis said in addressing City Net. “... It took a while for us to really get going, but we’re doing it now. Definitely improvements, and we see it out on the street, and the most important thing is that we’re providing services to people in need.”
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