The Manteca City Council on Tuesday may select one of three staff recommended sites for Inner City Action to place a large tent to serve as a temporary homeless resource center on a prolonged basis.

The three parcels that staff also are suggesting the council might want to consider for a permanent Inner City Action homeless resource center are:

580 MOFFAT BLVD.: The city owned 7.55 acres are located between the VFW Post parking lot and a city water treatment facility. Advantages staff listed are the fact there are sidewalks and its close proximity to the VFW building, Manteca Transit Center, animal shelter and Tidewater Bike Path.

The general commercial zoning allows a church or a place of worship by right.

The location borders the Garfield and Moffat Boulevard intersection and is directly across from what will be the front of Manteca High after Manteca Unified finishes its $40 million upgrade and campus expansion to accommodate growth that gets underway in the coming months.

Inner City for nearly two years operated a once-a-week outreach effort a half mile to the southeast in the fenced in parking lot of an industrial building along Moffat just west of Powers Avenue.

133 E. WETMORE ST.: The city owned parcel is just east of Main Street between the animal shelter and the water tower. Advantages staff listed are the fact there are sidewalks and its close proximity to the Manteca Transit Center, animal shelter and Tidewater Bike Path.

The public/quasi-public zoning allows a church or a place of worship by right.

682 S. MAIN ST: The 8.07 acres that borders South Main Street and also touches Carnegie Court that borders Alhambra Water is part of a larger parcel between BR Funsten and Extra Space Storage.

Advantages staff listed are the fact there are sidewalks and its relative proximity to the Manteca Transit Center (0.37 miles), animal shelter (0.25 miles), and Tidewater Bike Path (0.37 miles).

The commercial mixed use zoning allows a church or a place of worship by right.

It is not owned by the city but rather the successor agency to the Manteca Redevelopment Agency.

The site that Inner City Action placed a tent for 25 days to operate a homeless resource center at 555 Industrial Park Drive is where Inner City Action is working with the city to see if it can acquire the 57,000-square-foot former Qualex building for a permanent homeless resource center.

The light industrial zoning requires a traditional use permit for a church or place of worship. There are no sidewalks and it is located on a STAA designated truck routes.

Inner City acquiring it as a permanent home would require clearing two major hurdles — getting 10 other taxing agencies that would be entitled to split the proceeds with the city from a mandated auction and to then get the California Legislature to pass a law that would make an exception to the law that required all redevelopment agency problems that weren’t committed to a project moving forward when RDAs were disbanded to be sold at auction.

The same issues would apply to the South Main Street location given it is also controlled by the successor agency to the RDA.

Inner City Action will present a proposal for use of the Qualex building when the council meets Tuesday at 7 p.m. in its role as the successor agency board at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.

The council made the request for a written proposal at their March 19 meeting. That’s also when they directed staff to come up with potential locations where a tent could be pitched to serve as a temporary homeless resource center until such time a permanent location can be obtained by Inner City Action.

Besides possibly selecting a temporary site from the list of three alternates to the Qualex property, council is being asked to decide the maximum time the tent can occupy the chosen site under a conditional use permit.

They will also have to decide whether to waive the required $9,514 fee for a conditional use permit for the tent and backfill it from city funding sources. 

During a 25-day “homeless tent revival” Inner City Action operated through Feb. 17 in the parking lot of the Qualex building they had 366 unsheltered individuals pass through their gates and into the temporary homeless resource center compound. Of those, 243 were male and 123 female. They had 308 homeless individuals take showers and 73 receive haircuts. Each day they served 30 to 50 breakfasts, 50 to 77 lunches, and 40 to 60 dinners.

The services being available on a consistent routine basis is considered critical to building relationships and trust to eventually get the homeless to commit to programs needed to get off the street.

Those showers, meals, haircuts, and the fact there was a place for the homeless to go allowed Inner City Action during those 25 days get 23 people off the street and into rehab programs and/or shelter including three children.

Inner City Action leaders Pastor Frank and Kim Saldana have repeatedly stress they do not operate drop-in homeless shelters or drop-in soup kitchens as they are counterproductive to efforts to get the homes off the street and returned to productive lives.

They used the tent revival to build relationships through assistance they offer that allowed them to 23 people to become a part of their program.