San Diego officials have agreed to pay $13.1 million to have healthy meals delivered to hundreds of homeless people living in tents at the city’s designated safe sleeping site during the next five years.
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The deal, which a City Council committee approved unanimously last week, covers breakfast and dinner for as many as 581 people who sleep each night in O Lot near the Naval Medical Center in Bal boa Park.
The city has been delivering meals to people in O Lot since shortly after the site opened in June 2023 in conjunction with what was then a new city ban on outdoor camping.
With an existing contract to serve the lot on the verge of reaching the limit of how much the city can spend, city officials have agreed to a long-term contract with the current meal provider, Rowe Solutions.
The cost of the meals will rise under the new deal to $5.50 for each breakfast, a 19% hike, and $6.50 for each dinner, up 15%.
Money for the meals, which has come from the city’s general fund, will now come from Measure C, a hotel tax surcharge that pays for homeless services and upgrades to the city’s waterfront convention center.
Meals are also provided at the city’s smaller tent lot at 20th and B streets in Golden Hill, which has slots for 118 tents.
But there is no separate contract for those meals, which are part of the overall contract for that site with nonprofit Dreams for Change.
Because the much larger O Lot is operated by two separate contractors — Dreams for Change and the Downtown San Diego Partnership — the city decided to handle meals as a separate contract for the site.
Despite the price increase for meals, the annual cost of the contract will actually fall from $2.6 million to $2.5 million because the city expects to deliver fewer per day than the previous contract estimated.
Matt Hoffman, a city spokesperson, said Monday that another motive for the new contract was to right-size the capacity numbers and refine the scope of work included.
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Last week’s approval by the council’s Land Use and Housing Committee sends the new contract to the full council for final approval sometime after a month-long recess that begins Wednesday and runs through Aug. 18.
The city’s sleeping sites have been criticized for rodent infestations, sanitation problems, violence among campers, weak overdose prevention efforts and flooding in heavy rain. Some frequent users of the lots filed a lawsuit last year over the conditions.
City officials have touted the lots for serving as a stepping stone for hundreds of people who arrived at the lots homeless and were able to transition to permanent housing.
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, San Diego’s tent lots have served 1,890 people, and of those, 205 moved into housing afterward, according to data from the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
The lots allow pets and couples, but people must be at least 18 and be verified as homeless to be admitted.
Walk-ups are not allowed. People must be referred to the lots by either the Police Department or the city’s homeless outreach team.
In addition to free meals, the lots provide portable toilets, showers, laundry facilities and transportation, along with access to case management, housing navigation, medical resources, mental health services, referrals to substance use treatment, employment services and other supportive services.
The five-year contract is essentially a one-year deal with four one-year options for the city and the contractor to agree to extend it.
Meals are not provided at the city’s four safe parking lots for people living in RVs and other vehicles, with one exception: Dinner is provided daily at the Kearny Mesa lot, 8804 Balboa Ave.
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