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# City Hall approves homeless shelter funding
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-hall-approves-homeless-shelter-funding/
- Published: 2003-09-25T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:00:14.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Community, Ocean Park, #archive-import, Homeless

*Shelter scheduled to open in two years*

The City Council approved a $1.2 million loan Tuesday for the city’s biggest social service provider to open a controversial 55-bed homeless shelter at Michigan Avenue and Cloverfield Boulevard.

With a $6.19 million grant from housing trust funds, Ocean Park Community Center is set to buy the roughly $5 million property at 1751 Cloverfield Blvd. and immediately deed it over to City Hall, which would lease it to OPCC for 55 years. The loan will help OPCC convert the lot, which contains an industrial building and is surrounded by three filling stations and an auto body shop, into a homeless shelter and social services center.

Area residents, businesses, and neighborhood groups have opposed the shelter, saying the Sunset Park and Pico neighborhood area already has its fair share of homeless services.

Councilmen Bob Holbrook and Herb Katz reiterated their distaste for the project. Holbrook said that since City Hall’s money is being used to fund the project, City Hall should have been involved in picking the location. Instead, OPCC found the property independently and asked City Hall for funding.

“I mean, this just all seems backwards to me,” Holbrook said.

OPCC also got $400,000 in Los Angeles County mental health and housing funding and has applied for $900,000 in state and federal housing money. In addition, John Maceri, executive director of OPCC, said the shelter will raise about $800,000 on its own.

OPCC must move from its location at 612 Colorado Ave., because Big Blue Bus, housed in the same complex, is expanding. In July, OPCC opened escrow on the Cloverfield property, where several million dollars in upgrades are planned.

As part of a compromise fashioned by the City Council in August, the overnight shelter portion of OPCC will move to the new site, and OPCC’s daytime services, which serve about 250 people a day, will find a different location. Maceri said his group was looking at an area on the south end of the Big Blue Bus campus where Samoshel and Swashlock, two other providers of homeless services, are already located.

Maceri said OPCC will begin work on permits for the Cloverfield property as soon as the escrow closes in early October. He expects to have the 33,700-square-foot facility up and running within two years.

“It’s been a long and difficult road,” Maceri said Wednesday. “But I’m happy that we’re going to move forward to the next phase and I’m really looking forward to developing a project that’s going to be good for the community.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 25, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/092503.pdf?ref=smdp.com)