‘We have a passion to help.’ Building of Merced County’s $6.4M homeless center underway
Construction is underway on Merced County’s “Navigation Center,” which will help address homelessness in the area.
Construction crews have begun placing modified shipping containers at the 1411 B Street site. The 15,000 square-foot facility will serve as a low barrier emergency shelter option for individuals currently residing in public spaces.
Low barrier essentially means the main priority will be housing people, with minimal restrictions — regardless of their life circumstances.
“Homelessness is a top priority in the City of Merced and has been for some time, also county wide and region wide,” said Merced Mayor Mike Murphy. “So this is one important step. There’s not a silver bullet to ending or reducing homelessness, but it’s these thought out, intentional steps that together make a difference.”
The facility, which is scheduled to open in November or December, will include around 75 beds, plus kitchen and dining facilities, laundry, classroom, clinic, and office space for support service providers. The facility will be co-ed and pet friendly.
The cost of the center will be $6.48 million to build and will cost approximately $1.78 million to run annually, according to John Ceccoli, a management analyst for the County of Merced.
Merced County has contracted the Merced Rescue Mission to operate the facility.
“So the goal is not to be another shelter,” Bruce Metcalf, who is the executive director of the Merced Rescue Mission. “While it will provide shelter and three meals per day, it will have a clinic, many different services from human services agency, from behavior health, all working together to try to meet the needs of each individual to try to help them become independent and find housing so they can be on their own.”
Aims and goals
Metcalf said there will be 19 employees operating the facility, which will be open 24 hours per day.
The aim of the shelter is to help transition individuals out of homelessness. Clients will be assigned a case manager.
The goal is to link center clients to permanent supportive and affordable housing units as quickly as possible, while simultaneously working on addressing barriers to sustainability such as lack of income and behavioral health challenges.
According to Merced County Supervisor Lloyd Pareira, there are about 600 homeless people in Merced County, with about 300 of those folks already in some sort of shelter.
“We have a passion to help the homeless,” Pareira said. “We believe that this site will allow that to happen. Instead of them being in camps all over the area they can come here and be centrally located. That way case managers will know where to find them and be able to help them and work with them.”
Pareira also pointed out that Assembly member Adam Gray, D-Merced, played a big role in helping get state funding through the state budget toward the project.
Pareira said the choice to use modified shipping containers to construct the facility not only saved money, but also shaved off about 18 months of construction time.
“The Rescue Mission is in the process of hiring outreach workers,” Ceccoli said. “We’re going to saturate Merced, the City of Merced as well as the County of Merced, to identify people early who would be interested in staying here.”
Pareira estimated the project is halfway completed.
“Here there is an opportunity to have hope and that gives me a lot of hope as well,” Pareira said.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 12:46 PM.
