Every day, hundreds of San Diegans experiencing homelessness visit the Neil Good Day Center. It’s a place where they can meet their basic needs, whether that be a shelter referral or a shower, and connect to services, including diversion support, that can help them along their transition out of homelessness.
Imagine what the community loses if the Neil Good Day Center closes.
For hundreds of our clients, it means waking up with nowhere to go. No reliable place to take a shower or use a restroom. No mailbox to receive essential paperwork to obtain employment and housing. No place to safely store their belongings. No place to do their laundry. No place for unhoused women to rest in safety. No case managers. A more difficult time finding medical and behavioral health care.
Overdoses rise because people are less able to access substance use treatment or supplies like naloxone. The potential for outbreaks like hepatitis A rise because fewer people are able to shower or use the restroom safely. Closing the day center means closing its four public bathrooms and denying individuals their basic dignity.
This speaks to what we at Father Joe’s Villages, and the city, have known the day center represents: stability for hundreds of people who, otherwise, have virtually none. In recent years, San Diego has made meaningful progress on ending homelessness for hundreds of San Diegans. That continuing progress depends on a connected system of resources — shelters, housing programs, diversion and prevention services.
At the forefront to access these resources is the Neil Good Day Center. The day center is a big part of this progress. While the most recent Point-in-Time Count showed a drop in street homelessness, the day center saw an increase in utilization.
The day center is often the first step for many people to find the services they need to get back on their feet. My staff and I see what this means for people each and every day.
We served 6,712 people in 2025 alone. From June 2023 to June 2024, we spoke with 756 people about shelter alternatives. And, over the past two years, we were able to offer direct diversion assistance to 211 households. This meant that these households were able to exit shelter faster or even avoid entering it in the first place, representing 211 families and individuals who did not cycle deeper into homelessness.
The complete elimination of city funding for the Neil Good Day Center, and its eventual closure at the end of the year, as well as $3.7 million in cuts to non-personnel homeless services in the fiscal 2026-27 budget, represent the short-term illusion of saving funds without regard to how much it will truly cost the city long-term.
These costs don’t simply vanish into the abstract without services like the day center. Instead, these costs are absorbed by the city’s already strained homelessness budget. It already costs taxpayers as much $50,000 annually to support one person experiencing homelessness. A San Diego without the day center means that people are more likely to resort to emergency rooms or long-term shelters, risking an increase in that annual cost.
Now that the city has finalized this year’s budget, we are asking local organizations to step up and join us in filling those gaps left by the City Council and the mayor in supporting our neighbors. In this time, we can’t risk losing any momentum, not if we hope to ensure that the 9,803 people currently experiencing homelessness are able to move into permanent housing.
The reality is that our city cannot afford to lose the Neil Good Day Center. Neither can the hundreds of San Diegans who depend on its services each and every day. To that end, we will do whatever we can to keep some version of the day center operational, even if that means building and managing one of our own. We owe that much to our neighbors.
DeLessio is the employment and housing manager at Father Joe’s Villages.