GILROY
– The effort to bring a 25,000-square-foot homeless shelter to
central Gilroy is $2 million closer to becoming a reality.
GILROY – The effort to bring a 25,000-square-foot homeless shelter to central Gilroy is $2 million closer to becoming a reality.
Santa Clara County supervisors voted Tuesday to contribute $5 million in housing funds toward three homeless shelter projects in Gilroy, Palo Alto and San Jose. The county decision comes nearly a year after Gilroy City Council approved an environmental review and zoning change allowing the shelter.
“There’s $2 million set aside for Gilroy in the form of a grant,” District 1 County Supervisor Don Gage said Thursday. “That’s a grant as opposed to a loan, so it’s money free and clear.”
The funding will go toward agencies involved in developing the shelter which will house homeless men, women and families for up to six months as they find work, permanent housing and other services.
The shelter will take over an eight-acre site at 9345 Monterey Road north of Leavesley Road, currently home to the crumbling Serra Apartments. The shelter will share the land with a development that could include 60 apartments and 13 market-rate homes.
The major developer of the homeless shelter project will be the Emergency Housing Consortium. Officials on the project were not available before deadline.
South County Housing is developing the apartments and single family homes. Although the $2 million grant will not go toward SCH’s end of the project, Executive Director Dennis Lawler called the county decision “exciting news.”
“Funding of this significance gives us leverage to get competitive grants from other sources,” Lawler said. “This is a sign of support for the overall project.”
Currently, Gilroy’s only homeless shelter is at the National Guard Armory on Wren Avenue near Las Animas school. It operates in the wintertime only.
“The armory is essentially cots. This will be about 100 times better,” Gage said. “This will be a place where people can get services from help in finding jobs to referrals for drug and alcohol treatment.”
The shelter will hold roughly 140 beds. There will be enough capacity to separate men, women and families, Gage said.
The Serra Apartments are scheduled to be burned down May 16-18 by the Gilroy Fire Department, which will use the blaze for practice in fighting structure fires. At the end of the month, a groundbreaking ceremony will launch construction.
