Monterey Mayor Roberson blocks homeless shelter and safe parking.

In a meeting that went on until 1am today, the Monterey City Council struck down staff proposals to allow churches to shelter up to 25 homeless people per night and allow six homeless women to sleep in their vehicles at the Monterey United Methodist Church. The decision comes a month after the city council slated $28,252 for homeless services with the intent of creating a warming shelter.

“My primary tenet is that residents know their neighborhood,” Mayor Clyde Roberson said after residents from the neighborhood around Soledad Drive—near the Del Monte Shopping Center—spoke in numbers at the council meeting. Residents said they feared for their safety and their property values if six women were allowed to sleep in their vehicles through the One Startfish Safe Parking program that provides oversight and social work.

After the planning commission denied a use permit to Monterey United Methodist Church and One Starfish Safe Parking Program, City Manager Mike McCarthy decided to take the issue to the city council hoping they would overturn the commission’s ruling.

Unlike other areas on the Peninsula, including Carmel and Pacific Grove, Monterey has not provided any locations for homeless women living in their vehicles to sleep under the One Starfish program.

The council voted 3-2 against the appeal, with Roberson and Councilmembers Libby Downey and Ed Smith voting in the majority. Downey said she had planned to vote for the appeal but changed her mind when she heard dozen or more neighborhood residents come out strongly against it.

The Alta Vista neighborhood in Monterey—where the church is located—has an entrenched transient population who have set up camps in the woods. But Monterey Police Chief Dave Hober noted at the meeting, crime rates in the area are no different than in other parts of the city.

Councilmember and Alta Vista resident Alan Haffa and Councilmember Timothy Barrett supported the appeal.

“I’m disappointed in my friends and neighbors who gave into fear and disinformation,” Haffa said from the dais. “I was hoping we could be the neighborhood to get this done.”

In the second agenda item on homelessness, Roberson and Smith voted against an emergency and temporary zoning ordinance that would have allowed churches to shelter up to 25 people per night. As an emergency ordinance it needed a four-fifths majority to pass. The ordinance applied to all churches in the city, but Assistant City Manager Hans Uslar noted that the city called out for possible warming shelter locations, and the Monterey United Methodist Church was the only to answer.

“I travelled in 48 states. This is the least compassionate city I have even been in. This is shameful,” resident Michael Fletch said in public comment before the vote.

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