After Delays, Vallejo's Homeless Shelter Finally Underway

The city of Vallejo plans to break ground on Thursday on a long-anticipated navigation center that will provide 125 shelter beds and wrap-around services for homeless people. Participants can stay for up to six months, with possible extensions, and be assigned a case manager to help them find permanent housing.

The center will be “a one-stop shop for individuals experiencing homelessness,” said Natalie Peterson, Vallejo’s assistant to the city manager. “While they’re at the navigation center, they will have access to individualized case management, medical and mental health care.” Participants will also have access to job training, she said.

The center is expected to have some onsite medical services, as well as showers, laundry, a dining hall and a community garden. There will also be accommodations for people with pets, including a kennel and a space for dogs to run around.

Anyone experiencing homelessness in Solano County will be eligible to be referred to the center. Drug and alcohol use will not be allowed on the site, but participants will not have to be sober or submit to drug testing to stay there, Peterson said.

The center will be built using modular construction and is expected to be finished in December, with people moving in shortly after. The project breaking ground is a long time coming, Peterson said.

When a previously planned location for the center was found unfit for human habitation in late 2021, it was just the latest in a series of significant delays to the project.

The idea for a center was first proposed in 2017 but has been mired in setbacks ever since. First, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered plans to break ground in early 2020. Then, the project faced a more than $5 million funding gap in 2021 that led to the city’s former housing and community development program manager, Judy Shepard-Hall, being fired. Now, she’s suing the city of Vallejo over it, alleging then-city manager Greg Nyhoff — who later resigned — set her up to take the fall for bungling the project’s management.

“There’s been a couple different groups of city staff who have come and gone through this project,” Peterson said. “I think I can speak on behalf of all our partners; we are very excited to see this coming to fruition.”

Money for the construction was eventually cobbled together from state grants, city funds and leftover pandemic-era state money allocated by Solano County supervisors. About $6 million of operational costs are expected to be covered by Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente and NorthBay Healthcare.

In a statement, Darryl Curry, senior vice president of Kaiser Permanente’s Napa Solano division, thanked the city of Vallejo for “perseverance in opening the Navigation Center at such a critical time for our community.”

“Kaiser Permanente’s $3 million contribution to the Vallejo Navigation Center emphasizes our commitment to helping the most vulnerable members of our community secure stable and affordable housing,” Curry said in a press release.