In the midst of record-breaking rainstorms, the Good Samaritan shelter opened a temporary day warming center in an empty storefront from Friday to Tuesday in downtown Santa Barbara. 

Sylvia Bernard, director of Good Samaritan, started looking for an option for a day center when she saw the forecast of heavy rain the weekend starting last Friday.

“It’s kind of unheard of that we’ve had this much rain,” Bernard said.

During severe weather conditions such as rain or freezing temperatures, churches and veterans centers throughout the community will house the homeless population for the night in warming centers, according to Bernard. However, during the day, those locations cannot house the homeless. 

“It was heartbreaking for our staff to, you know, make everyone leave our host sites,” Bernard said. “We have agreements with them that they will not be there during the day.”

Santa Barbara has not had a day center serving the unhoused population since 2015, when PATH Santa Barbara took over the Casa Esperanza homeless shelter at 816 Cacique St.

In light of the storms that started on Friday, Bernard said she decided that Good Samaritan would work with Santa Barbara County to open a temporary shelter that would operate 24 hours a day for as long as the rain lasted.

Bernard worked with Ben Romo, a representative of the owners of the building, to temporarily secure a shelter spot at 12 E. Carrillo St., a vacant storefront just beneath a space that Good Samaritan rents out at 14 E. Carrillo St.

“This is an example of a government agency, governments, nonprofits and the business sector coming together to make something happen,” Romo said.

“I called Ben on Wednesday, he was able to get approval on Thursday, and we opened up on Friday,” Bernard said.

The shelter became a community effort.

The county provided staffing support as well as lunches for the shelter, the Santa Barbara Foundation provided additional funding, churches that worked with Good Samaritan provided dinner, the city provided parking passes for the staff to use while working in the temporary shelter, and chairs for the shelter were borrowed from the city library.

“It’s really a testament to what can happen when there is a crisis and how, you know, partners and county and city and nonprofits and the community all come together to make something really work and especially for our most vulnerable neighbors,” Bernard said.

In the four full days it was open, the shelter housed an average of 50 people per day and night, serving as many as 54 people a day. People who came to the center after it was full were transported to the PATH shelter for the night, according to Bernard.

The shelter closed after the rain cleared Tuesday morning.

Bernard said there are no plans to use unrented storefronts as “pop up” shelters in the near future, but she is “hoping that this is a model that can be duplicated for the future.”