Salvation Army asks Modesto to help fund its 180-bed shelter. How much does it need?

The Salvation Army Modesto Corps remade its homeless shelter during the pandemic thanks to a few million dollars in COVID-19 relief funding and the need to keep its shelter guests on its campus to guard against them getting sick and infecting others.

Whereas men and women once lined up late in the afternoon for dinner, a shower and a bed for the night before they had to leave in the morning, the shelter has become a 24/7 operation, serving three meals a day, offering case management and other services to its guests, who do not have to leave during the day.

But the pandemic relief funding has dried up, the 180-bed shelter is facing budget challenges and the army is looking to the city to help the shelter maintain its current level of service. Additionally, Stanislaus County had covered some of the shelter’s costs with its relief funding, but that has ended.

The shelter serves clients who are increasingly older and have physical disabilities. “I never thought I’d be here,” 83-year-old Juanita Carvahlo said about her first experience with homelessness. She said she has been at the shelter for five months. She is not among those with a physical disability.

Maj. Darren Stratton said he is talking with city officials about Modesto providing funding for the shelter in the coming year.

The shelter’s 2024 budget will be about $2.9 million and there is about $500,000 in reserves to cover it, leaving a $2.4 million shortfall. Stratton said he’d like the city to contribute $1.2 million to $1.5 million, and the army will rely on donations to make up the rest.

The shelter typically runs at a deficit and relies on donations to close the gap, but deficits in recent years have been much smaller, ranging from $145,000 to $1 million.

“I don’t expect the city to 100% fund the shelter,” Stratton said. “But donors’ generosity is no longer sufficient to sustain the existing level of service. That is why we are looking for formalized partnerships.”

He suggested Modesto could use Measure H, the 1% general sales tax voters approved in November 2022 and which is expected to bring in about $42 million annually. The city told voters it would spend the tax on public safety, parks and recreation, reducing blight, trimming trees and homelessness, and it has.

“How much of that has been spent toward shelter operations?” Stratton asked. While Modesto has allocated Measure H funding for homelessness, it has not allocated any for shelter operations.

Stratton said the Modesto Corps is looking at grants and other funding sources, but they take time.

City doing its due diligence

The major said he needs an answer from the city by Dec. 31. He said that is the deadline he has been given by Modesto Corps’ divisional headquarters in San Francisco on whether the city will make a commitment. Without more funding, he said, the shelter could face staff reductions in the new year while trying to provide the same level of services for its shelter guests.

Stratton said he expects the Modesto Corps would ask the city for less help in future years as the two work on securing grants and other funding to help pay for the shelter.

“I think that we all see the positives of it not being a nighttime shelter but a 24/7 shelter with case management,” said Jessica Hill, the city’s community and economic development director. ... We are committed to working with them as partners.”

But Hill said before city staff could recommend the City Council provide the shelter with funding, the city needs to complete its due diligence. “I think we are trying to understand monetarily what it costs to be a 24/7 shelter,” she said.

Hill said Modesto has asked the army for the shelter’s prepandemic funding sources, the costs with increased staffing for a 24/7 operation and what the army is doing to secure other funding. Stratton said his staff is working to provide answers.

Hill said the city learned only in early November from the army the full extent of the deficit, though she acknowledged Stratton arrived here just a few months ago. She said the city also is talking with the county on what help it can provide.

Carvalho, the 83-year-old who has been at the shelter for five months, said she had been working as a live-in caretaker in San Jose but that ended and she returned to Modesto, where she’d grown up.

“I ended up coming back here to be with my kids,” she said as she sat in a chair on a recent weekday at the Berberian Center campus. “I spent all the money I had left, and I played the stock market and I lost.”

Carvalho said she has a daughter and a son. Her daughter is at the shelter, and Carvalho said her son also is homeless and living on the streets. She’s been married three times. Her last husband died about four years ago.

Carvalho said this is the first time she’s been homeless. She said she once owned a home but that was a quarter century ago. She said she’s been a beautician, worked for Gallo Glass, owned a bar and card room in Empire and worked in Reno.

Carvalho said she gets about $1,200 a month from Social Security and her Gallo pension.

She has a grandson in Empire, she said, but he and his wife rent a one-bedroom apartment and don’t have a car. She drives them to the grocery store and helps out in other ways.

“We pay her back by cooking her breakfast,” said grandson Adam Ecklund.

When asked what she drives, she pointed to a nearby 1999 Mercedes SUV sitting behind her in the parking lot for shelter guests. Carvalho said she and her then husband bought it when it was brand new. She said they traded in a Ford and paid cash.

Carvalho said she is working with a case manager to get into subsidized senior housing. She expects she might have to wait four or five months. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I didn’t save. Nobody saved. We lived paycheck to paycheck. You better save or you are going to end up out here with me,” she added with a deep, hearty laugh.

Canes, walkers, wheelchairs common at shelter

Stories like Carvalho’s are becoming commonplace.

“One thing that is very sobering to my wife and I is the face of homelessness has absolutely changed,” said Stratton, who came here nearly five months ago after a dozen years with The Salvation Army in Arizona working in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs.

“Coming here to Modesto and seeing the number of individuals who are senior citizens, the number who are physically disabled, some having mental health challenges, seeing people with canes and walkers and wheelchairs, the reality of what I’m seeing is, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” said Stratton, who worked with homeless people in Chico, Napa and Yuba City for the army before his Arizona assignment.

Salvation Army Advisory Board member Bob Kroeze said case management and the other services are essential to help shelter guests move forward with their lives, including getting into permanent housing. Without that, he said, the shelter just becomes a place for people to sleep.

The shelter is housed in the army’s Berberian Center at Ninth and D streets, near downtown. The center also houses Stanislaus County’s 182-bed low-barrier shelter, which allows partners, pets and possessions, unlike the army shelter.

The county shelter opened four years ago. The county pays for it and the army manages it. The army shelter opened about 20 years ago. Both shelters run at near capacity.

Salvation Army Shelter Director Jim Stokes said the majority of the two shelters’ guests are 55 and older and have a physical disability. He said the majority of the older guests are 60 to 80 years old. He said that is in addition to guests who need help with mental health and substance abuse issues.

Seven case managers at both shelters

Stokes said seven case managers now work with guests in both shelters. The shelters also have monitors, kitchen staff, janitors and other employees. Stratton said each shelter has about 25 employees and any staff reductions would be in the army’s shelter.

Stokes said on a bad month, only a few people between both shelters will find permanent housing, while in a good month, it is as many a 10. The majority move into apartments with vouchers to help pay the rent, he said. Some rent rooms and others get into subsidized affordable housing.

The Berberian Center is on the Modesto Corps’s campus, which also has the corps’s administrative and social service offices as well as other services.

The budget problems with the army’s shelter are tied to the county’s low-barrier shelter. Stratton said during the pandemic, when the county shelter also received pandemic relief dollars, the county covered 100% of the campus’s administrative costs and some of the kitchen staff costs.

“They had COVID money to do it,” Stratton said. “The county now can’t do it.”

The current budget for the low-barrier shelter is $3.1 million, down from $3.9 million in the previous budget. Stratton said the army and county went line by line through the budget looking for and making reductions, and he said the current budget has the county paying half of the administrative and kitchen costs it had been fully paying.

Stratton said that means the budget for the army shelter has gone from nearly $2.1 million to a proposed $2.9 million. The army and the city also are going line by line through the shelter’s budget.

The numbers show how the pandemic transformed the shelter’s budget.

The army’s shelter’s budget was nearly $589,000 in 2018 and $647,000 in 2019. Since then, it has averaged nearly $2 million annually. This came about as the state and federal grants that helped fund the shelter drastically increased during the pandemic.

The grants were $191,000 in 2018 and $272,000 in 2019. They then rose to $992,000 in 2020, $1.48 million in 2021, $2.9 million in 2022 and $927,000 in 2023. Stratton said nearly all of the increase came from pandemic relief funding.

The county’s low-barrier shelter received about $4.9 million in COVID-19 grants to cover expenses from April 2020 through September 2023, according to the county.