Crunched by time, the proposed Welcome Home Village temporary housing project isn't so welcome by neighboring residents.

San Luis Obispo County envisioned setting up the 80-bed shelter space on a gravel lot it owns behind the Department of Social Services headquarters on Higuera Street in the city of SLO. The county received $13.4 million from the state's Encampment Resolution Fund for the project, and it must be used up before it expires in 2026.

• File Map Courtesy Of Homeless Services Division
• NEW HOME? SLO County officials chose a Higuera Street lot as the site for the proposed Welcome Home Village project but they're now searching for other locations because of allegations about its negative environmental impacts.

But a group of South Higuera business and property owners aren't satisfied with how the county planned the project. They aired their concerns via a letter written by Los Angeles attorney Paul Beard II. He wrote to the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 13, criticizing an alleged lack of consultation with affected community members and claiming that people only found out about the proposed project at a July 11 meeting about the funding.

"There were no communications about the project between county staff and business and property owners in and around the South Higuera Business Park prior to the July 11, 2023, Board of Supervisors meeting," Beard wrote in the letter. "Given that, nearly a decade ago, efforts to place a homeless development on this same site failed, owners were shocked to learn that the county would be targeting the same site for a homeless shelter."

Led by Community Action Partnership of SLO County, a shelter project proposed for the South Higuera lot around 2013 shifted to 40 Prado Road. Beard contended that if the community members knew about the new project earlier, they would have alerted county officials about "numerous (unmitigable) environmental impacts the project would cause."

The letter called for a thorough environmental review, something the county tried to sidestep with a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption. According to Beard, the Welcome Home Village project at the Higuera Street site doesn't qualify for exemption because it's inconsistent with SLO's zoning designation.

The land for the project falls within the service-commercial district of the Higuera Commerce Park Specific Plan. Under that plan, he said, projects on that land can't be used for residential purposes including supportive or transitional housing. The rules in the specific plan override SLO's zoning regulations that allow for such sheltering, according to Beard.

The attorney claimed that new traffic would be created through the project's construction, the staff who would work there, and the people and pets who would eventually live there.

"The project also does not satisfy the fourth condition for a Class 32 exemption, because the project results in significant effects relating to traffic and noise," he said. "The project site currently is unimproved. But the site is used as a daily overflow parking lot for the county's Social Services Department and has anywhere from 15- to 20-plus vehicles that would have to find parking elsewhere in the already limited street parking available."

The SLO City Council discussed Beard's letter in closed session on Dec. 6 as anticipated litigation. City Attorney Christine Dietrick told New Times on Dec. 26 that the council took no reportable action in the session and that the county will take over communication with Beard.

"The city remains very committed to supporting the county in implementing a project utilizing the substantial grant funding that has been awarded to provide this much-needed project to advance our collective objectives to address homelessness," she said.

Assistant County Counsel Jon Ansolabehere hinted that a potential makeover looms ahead for the Welcome Home Village project. He told New Times that the county completed evaluating the CEQA allegations from Beard.

"While the county is still in conversations with the adjacent business owners, the county is exploring the feasibility of moving the project to another location," he said. "We do not have a specific time frame for when the project will be considered at a Board [of Supervisors] meeting." Δ