SLO church wants to host overnight parking for homeless people. Why neighbors are ‘nervous’

More than 200 neighbors flocked to the parking lot of a San Luis Obispo church on Wednesday evening to debate whether it should host an overnight parking site for homeless people.

SLO Naz Church has volunteered its upper parking lot as a place where unhoused people can stay in their vehicles as part of the city’s new Rotating Overnight Safe Parking program.

That’s sparked debate among nearby residents over whether the program is a good fit for the neighborhood.

Jack Lahey, Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo homeless services director, attended Wednesday’s meeting along with San Luis Obispo homelessness response manager Daisy Wiberg and SLO Naz Church pastor Doug Pittam to outline the safe parking program’s rules and goals and answer questions from the community.

“This neighborhood has always been compassionate,” Pittman said Wednesday. “This neighborhood has always expressed wisdom to me ... ”

While some residents showed support for the program, citing SLO Naz Church’s history of providing humanitarian aid, others expressed concerns over safety and unauthorized visitors.

How would SLO safe parking program work?

Lahey and Wiberg kicked off the meeting by explaining how a safe parking site at SLO Naz Church would work.

If approved for the program, the church’s lot at 3396 Johnson Ave. would host 12 vehicles overnight between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., and would include a portable toilet and Dumpster for the participants’ use.

Safe parking program participants would need to move their vehicles at least a half mile from the parking site during daytime hours, and would only receive authorization to park at the site after passing a background check and a 30-day stay at 40 Prado Homeless Services Center’s safe parking program.

During that vetting process, potential participants would need to work with a housing navigator and make sure their vehicles are licensed and up to date on registration, Lahey said.

When parking on the SLO Naz Church site, participants would need to display placards showing they were authorized to park there or would be required to leave, Lahey said.

This vetting and approval process was added to keep the site safer and less accessible to unauthorized parkers. That was an issue at the Railroad Square Safe Parking program, which closed Aug. 27, Lahey said.

While the SLO Naz Church site would not feature a designated security officer or full-time police presence, CAPSLO workers would visit the site overnight to ensure only authorized participants were present, Lahey said.

Participants would elect a site captain who would act as the main point of contact for the site’s conditions, Lahey said.

The SLO Naz Church location has not yet been confirmed by the church board or city at this time, Wiberg said.

Wiberg said the program will not launch until four to six additional safe parking sites have been identified, with each site hosting the program one or two months a year.

According to Lahey, many of the Railroad Square participants were from SLO or surrounding communities.

“Most of them had not been experiencing chronic homelessness,” Lahey said. “There were a lot of people who were working, and a lot of people who had just lost their jobs and were down on their luck.”

Neighbors: Proposed safe parking site needs better security

Going into the hosting process, Pittam said, the church board was primarily concerned with three things: insurance, the safety of surrounding neighborhoods and the safety of the Kidz Korner preschool, which is located near SLO Naz Church.

Those concerns were echoed by many area residents, who worried about the safe parking program’s lack of permanent security and overall fit with the residential area.

A father of three school-aged children living near the church said he was concerned about the lack of security measures.

“My responsibility for my children’s safety — who spend three-plus days a week on this campus — is not transitory,” said the resident, who did not give his name. “A camera’s not going to jump off a tripod and quell a situation, and a cop driving around and checking a window sticker is not going to prevent something from happening.”

Several residents said they were less concerned about the program’s participants than they were about unhoused people who could come to the parking site uninvited.

Others questioned the ability of CAPSLO and the city to enforce good neighbor policies that require participants to move at least half a mile from the site during the day.

“(Participants are) supposed to not be within a half mile of this site,” one neighborhood resident said. “Unfortunately, just over a half mile from here, you’re still in this neighborhood.”

Lahey said unauthorized parking on the site and nearby streets would need to be reported by program participants or neighbors to the city’s Parking Services office.

Many meeting attendees said, while the safe parking program is a good idea worth pursing, it should not be located in a residential neighborhood.

Todd Gailey, a former pastor at SLO Naz Church, said he was glad the church reached out to the public and gathered feedback, but should not host the parking site due to the neighbors’ concerns.

The former pastor said he also serves as a firefighter and paramedic and spent nine days in Maui, Hawaii, helping with wildfire recovery efforts. He encouraged his neighbors to find other ways to support the homeless community than hosting the parking site.

“I want us to be a community that stands up and says ‘We have people in need ... Let’s serve them,’ “ he said. “I also know that in Ecclesiastes, it says there’s a time and a place for everything.

“I don’t want to be inviting homeless into my personal neighborhood.”

About 40 people at the meeting signed a petition asking the church not to host the safe parking program.

Supporters: Homelessness ‘could happen to anybody’

During the discussion period, three former Railroad Square program participants spoke about their experiences staying at an overnight parking site.

One former participant said she was a homeowner in Paso Robles until financial hardship forced her live in her vehicle with her cat two years ago.

The woman, who did not identify herself by name, stayed at Railroad Square until she was able to find new housing.

“I saw it grow, and I contributed to it because I’ve been a teacher all my life,” she said. “There were a lot of children that came (to the Railroad Square site) and I wanted it to be a place that would be comfortable for them.”

A woman who lives near SLO Naz Church said the program represents an opportunity to help people in need, allowing homeless participants to make the transition into permanent housing.

“I also am concerned about the children in the neighborhood,” she said. “I’m concerned that they’re learning judgment over kindness, exclusion over acceptance and bullying over compassion.”

“This could happen to anybody — it happened to me,” added the woman, who did not give her name. “One day, I was making $120,000 a year, the next, I was making zero, and I lived in a van and parked illegally on the street, and that’s exactly what happened with these other people.”

Another neighborhood resident commended SLO Naz Church for “staying true” to their faith and supporting the parking program.

“It takes a lot of bravery to do what is right when you’re facing so much backlash, and I want you to know that there are neighbors here that support you,” the unidentified woman told Pittman. “To my neighbors here that are feeling really nervous about this program, I believe we can be nervous and brave and caring at the same time.”