San Bernardino Council Receives Navigation Center Update; City With 40% of County Homeless Faces Dec. 31 Deadline

At a special San Bernardino City Council meeting on Jan. 15, Deputy Director of Housing & Homelessness Cassandra Searcy walked councilmembers through what she called the city’s “current homeless landscape,” then outlined next steps for the 200-bed SB HOPE Campus Navigation Center and a slate of city-funded initiatives intended to move people from street outreach to interim shelter and, ultimately, housing.

“Not to sound redundant, but our city does continue to have the highest concentration of homeless people in the county,” Searcy said. “We have nearly 40% of the county’s homeless that reside in our streets.”

Searcy cited the 2025 point-in-time count showing 1,535 unhoused people in San Bernardino, up from 1,417 in 2024 — an 8% increase — but warned the tally does not reflect what staff and residents see daily. “You can drive around the street and see that that number is not accurate,” she said. “Experts will tell you you should probably take your point in time count number and double, if not triple it if you want a more accurate reflection.”

The point-in-time count still matters, Searcy told the council, because it is tied to funding and compliance. “It’s something that is required with our federal funds, some of our state funds, and it serves an overall purpose,” she said, adding that the city uses the number to apply for grants and for auditing.

Searcy’s presentation described a response pipeline that begins with outreach and encampment resolution, relies heavily on interim stabilization — including a motel voucher program — and aims to feed into navigation centers and housing programs. 

Councilmembers broadly praised the scope of the update but pressed staff on sustainability — particularly as San Bernardino moves toward operating a 200-bed navigation center while still trying to reduce the city’s street population.

Councilwoman Kim Knaus said she wanted clarity because the city is “too far in” to reverse course on a major investment. “We came to this major decision of investing quite a bit of money into a 200 bed Homeless Navigation center,” she said. “We’re too far in. We’re not turning back or changing any plans, that’s for sure.”

Knaus said she compared San Bernardino to Riverside — another county seat — and said Riverside’s recent point-in-time count was 614 while San Bernardino’s is more than 1,500. She acknowledged the city has expanded bed capacity but said the upward trend demands a clearer financial plan. “In order for me to really make the best decision for us to move forward appropriately and think about the sustainability of this navigation center, what I need to understand is our true sustainability capacity,” she said.

The questions turned pointed when Knaus challenged cost assumptions and how the city would treat “regional partners” if other jurisdictions are expected to rely on SB HOPE Campus beds. “If that’s the actual cost to actually service an individual that comes into our navigation center, why aren’t we imparting that cost on the other partners that are being a part of the regional approach?” she asked.

As staff tried to reconcile slide-to-slide differences, the exchange tightened. “I think a lot of numbers are in this presentation,” City Manager Eric Levitt said, describing the $53,000-per-bed figure as an estimate and calling the “regional” figures exploratory. “If you want us to explore it more… we could come back with this with exactly what’s going to occur,” he said.

Knaus said the confusion itself underscored her larger concern: the city must understand not only the operator’s cost, but what it will take for the city to oversee and manage the property. “That doesn’t really reflect the true cost to our city,” she said, adding that even with an operator in place, “it’s just not a hands-off approach.”

Searcy said the estimate she was describing reflected the operator’s costs, not day-to-day city staffing, and emphasized the city is not positioning itself as the operator. “We’re going to provide oversight, but we’re not going to operate this facility,” she said. “We’re going to allow the operator to do the day to day oversight.”

Levitt told Knaus staff could return with clearer detail on which oversight and property-management duties would fall to the operator and which would remain the city’s responsibility. “We can come back with whether that property management is in the operator’s contract,” he said, adding that staff would include it in the broader evaluation councilmembers requested.

Councilwoman Dr. Treasure Ortiz framed the sustainability debate as part of a wider funding squeeze. When asked about the $1.4 million allocated over three years for key outreach points and what happens when those funds sunset, Ortiz said the city is already watching state and federal shifts closely. “Everybody is kind of at a nervous point right now,” she said, pointing to cuts and uncertainty that are affecting cities and the county. “We’re constantly on the lookout,” she added, saying the city is monitoring grants and opportunities and “if it applies in any kind of way, we’re going to go after it.”

Ortiz also raised the political and operational reality that a limited number of organizations have the capacity to move quickly. “We didn’t want the optics of the community saying wow, you guys are awarding everything to the Salvation Army,” she said. “But they are one of the few organizations that have the means and the ability to get the job done.”

Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, while commending the report, cautioned against simplistic expectations that building beds will clear the streets. “It is not illegal to be homeless in the state of California,” she said, adding that “a lot of people don’t want to be housed,” and that people must choose shelter and services for outcomes to change. She also argued the burden should not rest on one city. “Homelessness is not just a one city, one region problem. It’s everywhere,” she said. “In my ideal world, every city should have at least one shelter.”

Ibarra said she has seen evidence — including a past conversation with elected officials — that some jurisdictions push the problem elsewhere. She described officials “bragging” to her that they buy one-way tickets for people experiencing homelessness and said the bus route ended in San Bernardino. “Their jaws dropped,” she said, when she told them San Bernardino should bill their cities “a hundred thousand per year per person that you bring into our city.”

Councilmembers also debated enforcement, quality-of-life complaints and jurisdictional limits. Ortiz said residents ask why behaviors visible on the streets persist even as services expand, listing conduct that is illegal regardless of housing status. “Where’s the accountability?” she asked. Levitt responded that police enforce laws but face limitations in certain areas — including Caltrans land — where proactive enforcement is restricted. “Caltrans will not allow them to be proactive on Caltrans land,” he said.

Councilman Theodore Sanchez said the city has increased enforcement over the past two years and argued that homelessness is not a legal shield. “Being homeless does not give you a pass or provides you with immunity from breaking the law,” he said, crediting city attorney agreements and police leadership for improved quality-of-life enforcement.

Sanchez pivoted the discussion back to the project’s funding and timeline, warning the navigation center cannot slip if the city wants to meet the deadline. “There needs to be a certificate of occupancy by December 31st of 2026,” he said, urging staff to press negotiations with the county and identify how to close remaining gaps. He framed the shortfall as broader than the number on a slide, citing the county contribution the city is seeking and the remaining amount still not covered.

San Bernardino officials said the 200-bed SB HOPE Campus Navigation Center is being funded through a mix of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) dollars, HOME-ARP (a HUD program connected to ARPA), Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds, the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program, and hospital funding. Some of those sources carry spending and completion timelines that require the project to be completed by the end of the year, officials added.

City leaders also distinguished the navigation center from a separate effort backed by Homekey funding. The SB Community Wellness Campus, a project the city is developing in partnership with Lutheran Social Services and Dignity Moves, is using $35 million in Homekey funds and is expected to be completed in February or March, officials said. The wellness campus will include 140 non-congregate beds along with health care and other on-site assistance, according to the city.

Levitt said the city may need to use reserves to keep the project moving while it pursues outside dollars. “My anticipation all along has been… that we would use reserves to fill it while we try to find a way to then backfill those reserves,” he said, arguing that waiting to resolve every funding question before awarding contracts could jeopardize completion.

Mayor Helen Tran asked if the city has sought state or federal partners beyond the county. Levitt said not directly, but said earmarks could be explored. Tran also asked San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman to clarify the difference between the city’s COAST team and the PEACE Team. “The COAST team doesn’t make arrests,” Goodman said, describing COAST as a multidisciplinary stabilization response for people suffering from mental illness, while the PEACE Team also focuses on enforcement.

Tran also asked how the city responds to families experiencing homelessness if the navigation center serves adults. Searcy said the city connects families encountered by outreach teams to organizations that specialize in serving that population. “We are not excluding them,” she said. “We are just working collaboratively with those organizations.”

During public comment, former councilmember Jim Mulvihill praised the report’s candor and measurement focus. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he said, calling the presentation unusually direct about the possibility of not reaching goals and about the way per-bed costs climb when capacity is not met.

Shazette Scott, with Family Assistance Program, urged the city to deepen partnerships with nonprofits that are “a little bit more strapped” as federal mechanisms tighten. She said cities across the county are building navigation and wellness centers and said, “Family Assistance is excited to partner with the city.”

Other speakers underscored how encampments are affecting daily life in specific parts of the city. Faith Gamble, a San Bernardino resident and SEIU 2015 member, told the council she was “here to complain” about the area around the union hall where her group meets at 195 Arrow, saying the location is “full of homeless” and describing fear when she drives up and sees encampments on both sides. She asked the city to “come and find these people and put them where they should be,” adding that people leave and return in the evenings and that “it’s really bad.”

Christian Shaughnessy, a San Bernardino resident, urged the city to build protections into the navigation center’s intake practices amid heightened community anxiety about immigration enforcement near shelters. Referring to “recent national and statewide events,” Shaughnessy asked the council to ensure immigration status information is collected only when it is “truly existentially necessary and relevant for the client, or perhaps not at all,” and said that expectation should be clearly communicated to the eventual service provider operating the navigation center.

The council ultimately directed staff to return with deeper analysis of regional cost-sharing and county options while the 200-bed project continues moving toward a 2026 construction timeline — a balancing act between urgent street conditions, a complex funding picture, and the question at the center of the night’s debate: whether San Bernardino should keep carrying the county’s largest burden largely on its own.