Despite controversy, city supports homeless center

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

The city of Napa will continue to financially support the Hope Resource Center despite ongoing neighborhood problems with the homeless clientele.

Napa will contribute $41,000 from its general fund for the coming year while staff works with the county and social service agencies on ways to make Old Town less of a homeless magnet.

Napa County recently asked the Salvation Army and First Presbyterian Church to consider moving their weekday feeding program out of Old Town.

The county’s Health and Human Services complex on Old Sonoma Road might be a better site, Jim Featherstone, the county’s assistant health and human services director, told the Napa City Council Tuesday night.

“Our neighborhood tends to be more forgiving. We’ve been there longer,” Featherstone said of the county center that now serves people with drug, alcohol and mental health problems.

The Salvation Army has declined to consider moving its hot lunch program away from its center at Division and Franklin streets, Featherstone said. The Salvation Army considers meals an integral part of its community ministry, he said.

First Presbyterian Church, sponsor of the Table, was willing to look at the suitability of the county’s facilities on Old Sonoma Road, the Rev. Ed Hart said Wednesday.

After a site inspection Tuesday, Hart said the county’s kitchen and dining room were too small to serve the more than 150 people who now eat an early dinner at church facilities on Third Street.

One other feeding program occurs in Old Town, an informal effort by community members to deliver sack meals to Division and Franklin on weekends, Featherstone said.

Featherstone said he was still in discussions to move the weekend distribution to Old Sonoma Road, where guests would have access to a dining room and a bathroom.

Neighbors have complained over the years that the Hope center, combined with the feeding programs, has made their area a magnet for down-and-out people who fight, use foul language and subject passersby to displays of intoxication.

The City Council held a public workshop last December on the Hope center, which offers showers, clothes washers and social services to homeless people.

Since then, city staff has been working with police, service providers and other community groups on ways of lessening neighborhood problems.

Councilmembers Juliana Inman and Mark van Gorder suggested Tuesday that relocation of the Hope Center to a more appropriate site should also be part of staff’s mandate.

The council could direct staff to do this, Assistant City Manager Dana Smith said. For now, staff considers the Hope Center a vital service that isn’t going anywhere, she said.

Unlike past Hope Center discussions, no neighbors attended Tuesday’s council consideration of center funding.

The center’s sponsor, Community Action Napa Valley, had originally asked the city for $77,000, but this was lowered to $41,000 after the cities of American Canyon, St. Helena and Calistoga all ponied up money.

Featherstone said it was encouraging that other cities were joining Napa and Napa County in supporting the Hope Center. Homelessness is a countywide concern, he said, with most of the people who congregate in downtown Napa from the Napa Valley’s five cities.

The homeless task force will be talking to the jail, local health care facilities and other providers of services on ways to keep people from ending up on the street in downtown Napa, Featherstone said.

Hart said there were fewer disturbances these days around First Presbyterian Church, located a stone’s throw away from the Hope Center, housed at First United Methodist Church.

“The Hope Center has cleaned up their act. There hasn’t been as much going on the past six months,” Hart said.

Lowell Downey, who lives a block from the Hope Center, said he couldn’t see much difference. He voiced disappointment that the council wasn’t working to relocate the center.

“It’s clear that we have a city staff and social service programs that ignore the direction of the City Council and a City Council that doesn’t stand up for the people and what needs to be done,” Downey said.

The homeless were causing problems in downtown and in Old Town before there was a Hope Center, Featherstone said. Conditions are better today with the center than without it, he said. More than 400 people received services at the center last year, he said.

Napa Police Sgt. Debbie Peecook said conditions near the Hope Center, including the Triangle Park at Division and Franklin streets, had been better the past few months, with fewer police complaints.

But problems continue to flare, said Peecook, who called the situation “dynamic.”

“It depends on who is out, who is in jail, who is having issues with each other. Is it super hot out? Is it cold out?” Peecook said.

Featherstone said two dozen people were the core of the problem and not all of them were homeless. Peecook estimated that 30 or so people, their numbers forever changing, were the troublemakers.

The Hope Center may run a good program within its walls, she said, but it can’t control what happens on the street.

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