Homeless services provider Father Joe’s Villages will convert one of its East Village shelters to a behavioral health facility, it was announced at a July 31 press conference.
The facility will include 45 detox beds and 250 sober-living shelter beds.
The move is intended to help tackle the problem of fentanyl addiction and other drug-and-alcohol issues that create homelessness and serve as a huge barrier to getting off (and staying off) the streets.
At present, there are just two Medi-Cal eligible detox beds in the City of San Diego.
Fentanyl has caused the deaths of more than 1,770 people in San Diego County since 2019, according to District 7 San Diego City Councilmember Raul Campillo.
Deacon Jim Vargas, president and CEO of Father Joe’s Villages, says 375 people lost their lives while living on the streets in 2023.
Vargas credits Campillo with streamlining procedural red tape in the city’s Municipal Code to get a detox facility built.
At the press conference, Campillo spoke about meeting with Vargas about how Land Development Codes were huge deterrents to getting detox beds put into place.
“It made common sense to streamline the process,” Campillo said.
The council member also mentioned his own brother was a victim of an opioid overdose.
And with the huge Comic-Con convention having just departed the nearby San Diego Convention Center, Campillo quoted Robert Downey Jr., the Iron Man actor who has had highly publicized battles with addictions: “Just because you’ve hit bottom doesn’t mean you have to stay there.”
Due to a different roll of red tape, creation of the detox facility at Father Joe’s cannot be funded by the government. Vargas is confident he can raise the $1.5 million needed for the project from private donations.
Vargas hopes the detox facility will open in early 2025. SDSun
