Shelter Outreach Plus to Open Emergency Shelter for Salinas Men

After this morning’s cleanup of Salinas’ Chinatown, many homeless people and advocates spoke of the need for more services for the city’s downtrodden. Now there’s some good news.

Shelter Outreach Plus, a nonprofit that provides services to the county’s homeless, announced today that it is going to start an emergency housing program that will provide 30 to 90 days of lodging for about 15 homeless Salinas men.

The program is a revamp of I-HELP (the Interfaith Homeless Emergency Lodging Program), which currently transports men throughout Salinas and Monterey to host churches which provide them with overnight housing and meals. The program, as it is now, is financially unsustainable and isn’t meeting the goals of helping secure employment and permanent housing for the men in the program, according to Reyes Bonilla, the nonprofit’s executive director.

The new emergency housing will be in Marina and will offer on-site case management, life-skills training, and employment search assistance. Plus, clients can get medical and mental health care from the County Department of Public Health, which is located nearby.

“To have them at one site—kind of a one stop center—will have better outcomes for our men,” Bonilla says.

The Salinas churches that now assist homeless men through the I-HELP program are being asked to continue showing support by serving meals, providing mentoring and training, and donating clothing and other items.

Homeless men will be given some assistance in reaching the housing center initially, but will be expected to have some measure of self-sustainability and work by the end of their stay.

Bonilla expects the emergency housing center, which is near the nonprofits’ other transitional programs, to open in about two months.