The clearest voices on solving the issue of homelessness are three little kids.

When the Monterey County Board of Supervisors met on May 22, there was a pretty unusual and pretty heated discussion. Unusual because the most compassionate involved were three little girls under the age of 12, and heated because it involved the political football that is homelessness.

On May 14, the city of Salinas sent county Department of Social Services Director Elliott Robinson notice that as of May 31, it was terminating a memorandum of understanding under which the two entities operate a winter warming shelter for the homeless in Oldtown.

Under the MOU, the city and the county threw in $600,000, contracted with nonprofit Community Homeless Solutions as the operator and opened the doors to what is supposed to be a temporary facility on West Alisal Street, providing shelter and meals to an average of 65 people a night. As Robinson told the supes at the May 22 meeting, if the shelter closes, all of those people would be out on the streets.

It’s worth noting that on the night of May 21, those people included 10 children. Shelter manager Jesus Armenta said they’ve seen a significant increase in the number of families coming through the door and that most can be described as working poor.

“The families we have there now are good people. They’re struggling,” Armenta says. “Some of them are working, some of them are trying to find employment and they’re grateful to have shelter over their head for themselves and their children.”

The city still wants to partner with the county on a permanent year-round shelter, slated to be developed at 1220 Natividad Road. But things, as they sometimes do, fall apart. The county is facing a budget crisis that has it $36 million in the hole for next year. The permanent shelter might go on the backburner as a result, but even if not, it would be a year or more before it could open.

That MOU was clear: The temporary shelter was to close for the season on May 31. It’s not that Salinas officials don’t want to continue helping the homeless – they just want the county to keep its promise and do what it said it was going to do.

As Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter told the supes, if the county and state can build a bridge in Big Sur in just about eight months, surely they can move a couple of portables to Natividad Road and open a shelter. In fact, he suggested that maybe a temporary shelter should open next to Macy’s in Monterey – the screaming from the residents and business community would be so loud and sustained they could probably open the Natividad shelter in just a few weeks.

“We should all be ashamed of ourselves, myself included,” Gunter told the supervisors. “There should not be children in that shelter. We should have made arrangements, through voucher programs or other programs, to place them in housing.

“If we can’t get a couple of trailers moved to Natividad Road, we’ve obviously failed the homeless people here,” he added. “We’re basically storing them overnight and during the day we let them flee.”

Enter Clarissa and Paola and Juliet. Three little girls who climbed onto a box during public comment time so they could reach the microphone to say how they and their parents and friends bring meals to shelter residents. They noted how sad it was there were homeless families in the community. One of them even offered to help the county fundraise to keep the shelter going, since money seems to be an issue.

The supervisors voted 3-2 to keep the shelter open through October, which is when the winter shelter would open anyway. Whether this temporary-yet-permanent shelter will remain on Alisal, to the city’s consternation, remains to be seen. Supervisors Mary Adams and John Phillips voted against it, only because they feel the county isn’t moving fast enough toward the promised permanent solution.

Adams did move to extend the shelter by one month, to give the county and city more time to partner on a creative solution.

“Let me be clear, I never want to see our neighbors sleeping on the streets,” Adams writes by email after the meeting. “I believe the county, and all the cities herein, have a statutory and moral obligation to end homelessness in our communities.”

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at maryrduan@gmail.com