Two dozen detox beds for low-income residents will open in the coming weeks at a renovated East County facility, a needed addition to a region short on spots for those struggling with addiction.
The program is a partnership between the local organization Genesis Recovery and the East County Transitional Living Center, a homeless shelter in El Cajon. Participants who graduate from rehab will be able sign up for temporary housing, job training and other services through the shelter.
The beds, which are all for men, should be available by June 1.
“We have people all over San Diego that are in terrible situations,” Julie Hayden, who is both Genesis’ executive director and CEO of the transitional living center, said Thursday during a ribbon cutting at the site. “We might see them as people to ignore or be frustrated at, and yet I have seen that person come out of homelessness, come out of addiction, get their life back, get their family back and turn into a leader for our community.”
Homelessness can intersect with drugs and alcohol in complicated ways.
About 35% of California’s homeless residents report regularly using drugs, according to a massive study by UC San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. Methamphetamine was the most common substance, followed by opioids and cocaine. In some cases, the traumas of living outside appear to have contributed to the problem: 42% of those frequently taking drugs said they began using regularly only after becoming homeless.
Yet help can be hard to find. More than a quarter, 28%, said they’d been unable to access treatment.
This has been an issue in San Diego County. Two large recovery programs — Volunteers of America and Veterans Village of San Diego — shuttered in recent years after outside investigations flagged issues with how they were run. As of last year, there were fewer than 80 beds countywide that accepted Medi-Cal, the state health insurance for low-income residents.
Officials are working to increase that total, but the bottleneck means the new site in East County will likely fill up fast.
The center is located in Dulzura, a small community by the Otay Mountain Wilderness. Getting there requires a long drive on the two-lane Highway 94 followed by dirt roads marked by potholes. Horses were grazing in a nearby field on Thursday. An owl hooted from a pepper tree.
The isolation is by design: Leaders believe participants must be at least temporarily cut off from their old lives for the treatment to work. New arrivals are to turn over their phones and not make any calls for seven days. Even after the one-week mark, calls will only be allowed through a facility phone.
Michael Westby, 57, praised the approach. He had a career working in Hollywood’s camera and electrical departments — his credits on the Internet Movie Database include the first “Transformers” film — but struggled with alcoholism. Westby finally signed up for the transitional living center’s existing rehab program, graduated, relapsed and then enrolled again.
“The first time I did it for my family,” he said Thursday. “The second time I went through the program, I did it for myself.” The second time stuck, and Westby is now the kitchen manager at the Dulzura site.
The land is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, although the transitional living center has a lease-to-own agreement for the property and is sub-leasing the site to Genesis.
The ongoing renovation required $80,000 in county funding through Supervisor Joel Anderson’s office. Several organizations, including the Caster Family Foundation and the Grossmont Healthcare District, chipped in to pay for the program’s initial expenses, and officials said stays of up to three months will eventually be covered through the county and Medicaid. Annual operating costs should be about $2.5 million.
That government means participants won’t be required to attend Bible studies, although the transitional living center is known for its faith-based programming and the Dulzura site is filled with Christian symbols. A wooden sign near the entrance declares that lives can be transformed through Christ, while a whiteboard in a conference room was recently covered in verses from 2nd Timothy: “Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace.”
Genesis previously ran a program for men at a different location until the owner sold the property, according to Hayden, the group’s executive director. That facility shut down in 2022. The year after, Hayden took over the transitional living center and quickly pitched ways to link the two organizations.
Hayden added that they’d applied for a grant to construct another building in Dulzura that could potentially hold dozens of additional beds and were looking into opening a separate site for women.
“Our foot is on the gas to do more of these types of efforts,” said Drew Moser, CEO of the Lucky Duck Foundation, another er of the program. “Twenty-four beds is absolutely a step in the right direction but it’s nowhere close to what is needed.”
