ESCONDIDO - Advocates of an emergency homeless shelter in Escondido may be facing another collision with the City Council next week.

The Salvation Army and Interfaith Community Services are preparing to return to the council on Jan. 10 with a request to continue operating inland North County's only walk-in homeless shelter on Las Villas Way, near El Norte and Centre City parkways.

Without taking a formal vote, a majority of the council said Dec. 20 that they couldn't support the request because Escondido does more than its fair share for the homeless in North County.

The next day, the Salvation Army found a way to open the 50-bed Escondido shelter by starting the schedule early for a previously planned rotating shelter. The rotating shelter, normally 12 beds, is scheduled to move to a church in Poway after Sunday.

Two City Council members, Ed Gallo and Marie Waldron, said Tuesday that the council previously rejected the request and suggested that as a matter of procedure, the issue shouldn't be coming back to the council again.

"The direction we gave was rather obvious," Gallo said. "We should have taken a vote."

Several council members said they felt manipulated by Interfaith, which closed the 50-bed winter shelter it had previously run at its Escondido headquarters to convert it into Merle's Place, transitional housing for seniors and disabled veterans.

"We go through this every winter, right before the holidays," Gallo said.

Waldron noted that as part of the approval of Interfaith's emergency shelter in December 2005, she thought the nonprofit had assured the council that it would not come back again because Merle's Place would be replacing the emergency shelter.

Waldron said she had received a barrage of letters and e-mails decrying the council's attitude. Many were from outside Escondido, she said.

She said churches and charities in other North County cities need to step up to the plate.

"We in Escondido can't solve the region's problems, and I don't know if governments should be taking the lead," she said. "The rotational program has worked, but it needs to be expanded. We could have it running at multiple sites simultaneously around North County, perhaps."

Councilman Sam Abed said that together with city staffers, he was drafting a letter to all North County city councils and city managers, comparing Escondido's spending on the homeless with other cities' and asking their support for a regional approach to the homeless.

Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler, who originally brought the Interfaith/Salvation Army request to the city and was the only council member who said she supported the emergency shelter, said last week she had agreed to bring the shelter request back. She was unavailable Tuesday.

Councilman Dick Daniels declined comment Tuesday, saying he wanted to evaluate how or if the Interfaith/Salvation Army request had changed.

Placing the request on the agenda is only possible because the council did not take a formal vote in December, according to Joyce Masterson of the city manager's office.

If the council had taken a vote, only a member of the council majority could bring the matter back, she said.

Pfeiler previously said she would join the request with a call to reactivate a North County task force on the homeless, which has been moribund for the last few years.

Depending on persuasion

Officials from Interfaith Community Services said that although the specifics of their request had changed slightly, they hoped they could convince council members that Escondido needs an emergency homeless shelter now.

"There is a distinct possibility that council members' personal perspectives may have changed," said Interfaith's executive director, Suzanne Stewart Pohlman.

She said she understood why council members might be frustrated.

"If I sat on the council, I might feel fed up by the timing," Pohlman said. "But we've been attempting to persuade someone to come forward for the last three years."

The proposed shelter at the Salvation Army's gymnasium is still scheduled to be activated only when it is raining or the outside temperature is 39 degrees or below, and would be open until the end of March. The proposed capacity has been lowered from 50 to 40 people.

Three night watchmen from Escondido's Fellowship Center would close the shelter's doors at 7 p.m., meaning those wanting to stay at the shelter would have to arrive before that time. In the morning, guests would travel to Interfaith, where breakfast, a sack lunch, case management and access to showers and laundry would be provided during the day.

Interfaith spokeswoman Christine Vaughan said that she hoped to counteract council members' perception that "if we build it, they will come."

Abed, for example, has argued that homeless people migrate across city boundaries to where services are provided.

The Salvation Army said its shelter has held between 25 and 28 people for the last few nights, with 18 people on Christmas night.

On Dec. 23, a clinical psychologist surveyed 16 people at the Salvation Army shelter and found that their average time of residence in Escondido was 15 years, said Mel Takahara, program director at the Salvation Army.

Most of the group said they considered Escondido home and had owned, rented or shared housing in the city in the last few years, he said. The mostly male group had an average age of 49.7 and 12 of them had worked in Escondido.

More surveys will be performed this week, he said.

"It isn't just a matter of numbers," Takahara said. "It's also the profile of people who are seeking help. These are individuals who aren't usually served by the rotational shelter, which usually serves women and children."

- Contact staff writer Quinn Eastman at (760) 740-5412 or qeastman@nctimes.com.

On the Net:

Previous articles:

Council says no

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12/21/news/inland/3_01_4712_20_06.txt

Rotational shelter to open anyway

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12/22/news/inland/18_34_0712_21_06.txt

Merle's Place

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/08/18/news/inland/21_46_488_17_06.txt

Council approves shelter in 2005

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/12/08/news/inland/escondido/21_31_1212_7_05.txt