As a full-time resident at the Elements at Coldstream, only 250 feet from the planned homeless navigation center, I am delighted to see our town and county advancing one important piece of the puzzle to address homelessness and deliver services to a highly vulnerable segment of our community.
I want to express my strong support for establishing a navigation center in our town.
The Tahoe Truckee Homeless Action Coalition is advancing a one-year navigation center pilot on Deerfield Drive to provide a small, year-round space where people experiencing homelessness can access interim beds and stabilizing support services. The proposed 3,000-square-foot center would offer six interim housing beds and 10-year-round shelter beds, giving community members a safe place to stay while connecting with case management, healthcare, and housing navigation services. There will always be at least two professional staff on-site.
We all know that homelessness is not just a statistic — it represents veterans, seniors, families, and individuals who, for many different reasons, have fallen on hard times. A navigation center is not a permanent shelter; rather, it is a place designed to help people stabilize their lives — to connect them with housing, health care, counseling, job resources, and to restore dignity and direction instead of leaving them in cycles of dependency.
When we talk about helping the homeless, what we’re really talking about is helping our entire community. A well-managed navigation center reduces street homelessness, improves public safety, and ensures that people aren’t left sleeping in doorways, in the woods, or under overpasses. Communities that have embraced this model report cleaner, safer neighborhoods and real success stories in moving people from crisis to stability. For example, navigation centers in San Francisco have shown that with proper oversight, the centers did not lead to increased crime, and in fact neighborhoods saw decreased incidents when the center actively managed adjoining property and trash.
That said, I also recognize and respect concerns that some neighbors may have. Change can bring uncertainty, and it’s important we approach this with both transparency and shared responsibility. That’s why it’s been critical that we build community engagement into the process as early as possible.
In particular, I believe we should:
- Create clear communication channels such as a neighborhood advisory group, regular updates, and a responsive hotline, so that if any issues arise, they can be addressed quickly and collaboratively. In San Francisco, one navigation center operator implemented a 24-hour hotline and held regular quarterly meetings with neighbors to address concerns about trash and loitering and to maintain corridor cleanliness.
- Set clear rules for safety, cleanliness, and conduct, and ensure that both staff of the center and residents have a voice in how the center operates.
I applaud the local homeless coalition and the operator of the navigation center for engaging the community in the creation of a good neighbor policy. Such a policy should include regular perimeter cleaning, monitoring for trash and debris, and clear and prompt response to community-led concerns.
We need to integrate the center into the fabric of the community — making sure there’s no sense of “us versus them” but rather “we together” — to ensure compassion and accountability go hand in hand.
By supporting this navigation center, we are saying we value both the wellbeing of our unhoused neighbors and the strength of our community as a whole. We’re saying we’d rather be part of a solution than part of the problem. We’re saying we can lead with empathy, plan with care, and show our community can be both kind and proactive.
Let us go forward together. Let us lead with empathy. Let’s plan with care. And let’s show that our community can uphold its values of compassion, responsibility, and collaboration. It’s the Truckee way.
For more information including how to donate to this project, please visit tthomelesscoalition.org.
