SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY has come to the rescue of a rescue mission.
The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this month to spend $1.5 million to complete a new facility under construction at the Gospel Center Rescue Mission after its financing deal fell apart. The Christian-based nonprofit offers programs to try to reintegrate people experiencing homelessness back into society and help addicts recover.
It marks the second time the board has contributed to the New Life Program Multipurpose Center at the Stockton mission. In 2021, the board voted to contribute $2 million, bringing its total to $3.5 million.
Without the bailout, the mission said it wouldn’t be able to get a $2 million grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank, board papers state.
The gospel center’s expansion is aimed at allowing it to take in an additional 110 residents. There would be 27 beds for “recuperative care,” which offers shelter to unhoused individuals who are “too well to be in the hospital, but too sick to recuperate on the streets,” according to the mission’s website. Another 83 beds would go to those in the New Life Program, a residential addiction treatment program.
“We all need to chip in.”
Supervisor Robert Rickman
Supervisor Robert Rickman expressed concern that Stockton and other cities haven’t participated in closing the shortfall, and the burden is falling on the county. “We all need to chip in,” he said. (The Stockton City Council tapped its discretionary fund in April to give the mission $150,000, its second donation in a year, Stocktonia reported at the time.)
Other supervisors heaped praise on the mission and said its work in getting unhoused people off the street has been cost effective.
The rescue mission should be a model for the state when it comes to turning around otherwise wasted lives, said Supervisor Mario Gardea.
And Supervisor Steven Ding lauded the mission’s CEO, David Midura.
“Everybody loves you, and everybody knows that you’re a good man with a good soul but a business mind and you’re going to do it right,” Ding said.
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.