OCEANSIDE
The San Diego Rescue Mission will operate Oceanside’s new 50-bed homeless shelter, despite recommendations by the city staff and Housing Commission to go with Interfaith Community Services.
The Rescue Mission will provide “the broadest benefits at the most efficient cost,” said Councilman Peter Weiss at Wednesday’s Oceanside City Council meeting. He said the Interfaith proposal for the shelter was “impressive,” but it comes with $1 million in annual operating costs to the city while the other offer does not.
“We are not here to pick a winner or a loser,” Weiss said, before the 3-2 vote to approve the contract. “We are here to help our homeless population.”
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Homelessness is hardly new in Oceanside, but there seems to be a growing intolerance of it.
In recent weeks, longtime residents have repeatedly called for the city to roust the transients from their camps, stop feeding them free meals, and get them out of town.
“No more Brother Benno’s,” resident Donna McGinty told the City Council at a recent meeting, referring to the soup kitchen near the city airport that has fed the homeless since 1983. “That has got to go.”
She and other speakers said services like Brother Benno’s and the Bread of Life Rescue Mission in Oceanside only perpetuate homelessness and allow people to continue lives of crime and drug addiction.