South Bend leaders slam county backlash to planned homeless shelter, defend low-barrier model

SOUTH BEND — City leaders and top homeless advocates on Friday revealed more about plans for a homeless shelter on the northwest side in response to backlash that has further delayed a six-year search for an apt site.

Led by South Bend Mayor James Mueller, supporters of the 80-bed New Day Intake Center, a planned low-barrier shelter that would eschew sobriety or income requirements for guests, pushed back against St. Joseph County officials who disrupted a key step last week.

On Thursday, the South Bend Redevelopment Commission put off a decision to buy a five-acre parcel of land on Bendix Drive where city leaders envision the future shelter. The land is owned by the South Bend Community School Corp., and the city would buy it for about $277,000.

Four elected county officials and nearby business owners spoke at that meeting about what they call a general decline around Motels4Now, the temporary low-barrier shelter on Lincoln Way West. They argued that the new site's neighbors would suffer similarly.

Mueller had strong words for three county leaders — county commissioner Derek Dieter and county councilors Joe Thomas and Amy Drake — who sat in the same room Friday.

"To those who say we need these critical services in this community but this site is not the right one," Mueller said, "show us which site is better. Give us the site that's better. We've been working on this for years."

Sites passed on for South Bend low-barrier shelter

Mueller said the city had previously suggested a large county-owned tract of land north of Portage Manor, the former facility for adults with disabilities that county commissioners closed last year. The county said no.

"I didn’t want low-barrier housing out there," Dieter told The Tribune on Friday. "I want to try to develop that for nicer homes and so on. Out of the gate, before we started looking to close Portage Manor, it was not a good fit.”

Mueller said county officials also rejected a site near the South Bend Airport. Dieter told The Tribune it was determined to be too close to the St. Joseph County DuComb Center and the St. Joseph County Police Department.

Dieter and others suggested the new shelter should be built closer to downtown, so people can easily access an array of social services agencies.

A plan years ago to bring the site to the southeast side of South Bend, near Ivy Tech Community College, fell apart in 2019 after neighbors resisted. Mueller on Friday was more sympathetic to their argument that the area carries an inordinate burden of hosting many social service providers, such as Center for the Homeless, Our Lady of the Road Catholic ministry, Broadway Christian Parish and Hope Ministries.

What's important to the city and leaders of the New Day Intake Center, which will be run by Our Lady of the Road, is that the new site is near a Transpo bus line as well as amenities like grocery stores.

South Bend's success in housing-first approach to homelessness

Beyond debate over where the center should be, some in the community reject the city's endorsement of the housing-first approach to ending chronic homelessness.

Programs that house people first and provide mental health addiction services along the way, such as Motels4Now, have been increasingly shown to curb homelessness more effectively than programs that require sobriety or active income in order to secure shelter.

Homelessness: St. Joseph County homelessness rose in 2023. Here are the numbers.

But councilor Drake said she believed a low-barrier shelter would attract people to South Bend who wanted to stay somewhere for free where they could do drugs without consequence.

"We like incentive-based programs that work and help people, instead of giving them a home where they can sit and overdose and die quietly," Drake said.

“All of us know California is trash because of that model," Drake added, "and they cannot control the homeless."

The vast majority of Motels4Now guests are from the area, according to Sheila McCarthy, the director of Motels4Now who will also lead the new center.

McCarthy said the shelter has served more than 700 guests since the shelter opened in August 2020. About 78% of those people have found success, McCarthy said, meaning they're still at the motel or they've moved willingly. With the help of on-site housing counselors, more than 200 have moved on to permanent housing, and three in four of those people remain housed.

Five people have died from drug overdoses since Motels4Now began, McCarthy told The Tribune.

The program combats this issue by providing NARCAN nasal spray to staff to reverse potentially lethal overdoses and by placing most guests with a roommate, who can alert staff to problems. It also regularly brings in mental health and addiction counselors from Oaklawn mental health clinic and clinicians from Beacon Health System.

She said there were no police reports filed in regard to Motels4Now in December, and there were only six calls for emergency services. Most months that number stays below 10 calls, she said, though it rises during warm-weather months, as does police activity elsewhere.

"Motels4Now is not a permanent solution," Mueller said. "That can't go on indefinitely. But we also can't go back to large encampments in our city."

Details emerge on New Day Intake Center site

Our Lady of the Road leaders said the site would be surrounded by a 10-foot-high fence and feature 24/7 on-site security. McCarthy said the same three rules that apply at Motels4Now will likely remain in place: no outside guests, no violence or threats, and no loud noise between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m.

The intake center is projected to cost between $12 million and $16 million to build. Leaders have already acquired about half of the needed funding through grants from the state and city.

Steve Camilleri, director of Center for the Homeless, said the intake center is an essential addition to the area's continuum of care, which is the network of housing and social services available to people in poverty. Without a low-barrier shelter, he said, people's basic needs will continue to go unmet.

"We're trying to keep people alive," said Caleb Bauer, executive director of community investment, "and get them out of the continuing cycle of chronic homelessness."

IF YOU GO

What: The city will host a public meeting to share more information about the New Day Intake Center.

When: Thursday, Feb. 1, at 6 p.m.

Where: The Beacon Resource Center, at 4210 Lincoln Way W.

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend to host public meeting on low-barrier homeless shelter