Sister Betty McGovern, center, assists a woman named Celina, right, of San Bernardino, as she practices for her GED test on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at Veronica's Home of Mercy in San Bernardino, Ca.
SAN BERNARDINO >> Mary’s Mercy Center now has approval to move forward with the first comprehensive center for homeless men in the central San Bernardino Valley.
The center will be built in phases, eventually offering housing, job training and other services to 115 homeless men, which city officials hope will help lower the number of homeless people that they see — aside from humanitarian motives — as discouraging business and making residents uncomfortable.
Known as Mary’s Village, the project will be on Walnut Street between Pico Avenue and San Marcos Street, about 1.5 miles away from the two other centers run by Mary’s Mercy Center on the Westside.
Monday’s City Council vote was 4-2, with opponents Councilman Henry Nickel and Councilwoman Bessine Littlefield Richard worried the plan would in fact draw more homeless people to the city and unfairly burden the Westside. Councilman John Valdivia, whose south San Bernardino ward includes the 11-acre project site, was absent.
Residents will live on-site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and a typical resident is at the facility for 12 to 18 months, said Mike Hein, vice president and administrator of Mary’s Mercy Center.
“The misconception is we’ll have people coming and going,” Hein said Wednesday. “They’re there seven days a week, under supervision; on the weekends we have staffing. The residents have to take care of washing their clothes, cooking, housekeeping. It’s all part of the lifestyle change.”
Veronica’s Home of Mercy, also run by Mary’s Mercy Center, is a model for Mary’s Village. The different demographics — Veronica’s Home is for women and children, while Mary’s Village is for men — mean there will be certain changes.
But the essence of the program’s success — 75 to 80 percent accomplish the individualized goals set by their case manager, such as getting a GED before getting a job and renting their own apartment — is empowerment, Hein said.
“You give them back their self-esteem,” he said. “They think better of themselves because they’re sometimes told they’re never going to amount to anything, but we show them they can.”
Mary’s Mercy Center opened in 1987, and offers services including free food for large numbers of homeless people — something the new location will not have. Veronica’s Home started in 2010, and Hein hopes 2017 will see the first phase of Mary’s Village.
Wednesday afternoon, Rebecca — following the center’s policy for residents, she didn’t share her last name — was working through algebra equations at the education center of Veronica’s Home.
She’s preparing to begin classes this fall at San Bernardino Valley College to eventually become a high school math teacher, Rebecca said.
“Math is something I’ve always understood,” she said.
Rebecca was taking classes at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut when she became pregnant with her second child, who’s now 6 months old. She lost her job as a result, and the baby’s father left her, she said.
She learned of Veronica’s Home and enrolled 10 months ago, she said.
“I’ve seen a huge change in myself since then,” she said. “I feel like I can make it.”
One concern council members had is that people will come to San Bernardino from other communities.
The center will try to prioritize citizens of the city, but it would jeopardize its funding if it required it, Terry Kent of Mary’s Mercy Center told the council.
Already, San Bernardino has a lion’s share of the homeless: 546 people, which is 40 percent of the county’s homeless despite having only 10 percent of the county’s population, according to the county’s 2015 point-in-time count.
But the count also shows the number of homeless in 2015 versus 2014 fell much faster in the city than the county overall — accounting for 78 percent of the county’s drop — which is a sign the city’s approaches are working, Mayor Carey Davis said.
“The access center was one of the parts to the solution,” Davis said. “It was not intended to be the entire solution. ... This will be part of the solution.”
Others criticized the homeless access center at Seccombe Lake as attracting more homeless people, and said the number of homeless organizations — 38 in the city, far exceeding other local cities, resident Juan Figueroa said — showed the city continued to treat the problem’s symptoms, allowing the problem itself to worsen.
Nickel echoed that, saying the city needed a comprehensive plan to combat homelessness.
“I’m not blaming you,” he told representatives of Mary’s Mercy Center. “I’m blaming us. We haven’t formulated policy.”