Key points:
- Davis Daytime Respite Center’s potential closure sparks urgency among officials and residents.
- The center provided vital services but was never a solution to homelessness.
- Davis spends about $1.8 million annually on homelessness services.
The looming possible closure of the Daytime Respite Center in Davis has triggered urgency among councilmembers, service providers, and residents. With Downtown Streets Team shutting down operations statewide on October 31, the question is not whether the center has been valuable—it clearly has—but whether its temporary, stopgap nature has ever truly addressed the crisis of homelessness in Davis.
The Respite Center has provided a safe place for unhoused residents to rest, shower, receive mail, and access case management. In 2024, 111 people engaged in case management services there, with 20 securing housing. In 2025, the numbers rose to 139 engaged and 10 housed. Dozens of barriers to stability were removed. On paper, these are meaningful gains. But for all of the investment—over half a million dollars annually—the center was never a solution to homelessness. It was a Band-Aid that made the city feel like it was doing something while sidestepping the harder work of actually providing permanent housing.
Councilmember Gloria Partida warned that “if we allow a gap in service, we will lose that trust, and rebuilding it will take years.” She is right—continuity matters.
Case managers and clients build fragile relationships that collapse when programs end abruptly. The testimony from residents and service providers makes clear that the Respite Center has served as a lifeline. But it is also true that Davis has been pouring scarce resources into a model that was never designed to end homelessness. The result is that the city is constantly scrambling to patch holes while the underlying problems grow worse.
Paul’s Place shows what a more comprehensive approach can look like. As a purpose-built facility that combines shelter beds, case management, and transitional housing, it provides a continuum of care rather than just a holding space. It is not enough—capacity is limited—but it demonstrates the principle Davis should build on: housing connected directly to services. By contrast, the Respite Center has been a place to rest and recover, but it has not created a permanent way forward for most of the people who rely on it.
The city’s own research makes this painfully clear. Davis does not lack outreach workers. Between city programs, nonprofits like Davis Community Meals and Housing, and county services, there are already 8 to 10 full-time professionals engaged in outreach and navigation. Adding more would be duplication. The real gaps are far more serious: not enough permanent supportive housing, inadequate access to detox and residential substance abuse treatment, too little crisis mental health support, and almost no preparation for the rising number of older adults becoming newly homeless with complex medical needs.
Providers describe the frustration of working with someone ready to enter detox only to discover there are no beds available, forcing them onto a waitlist for months. By the time a space opens, the person has disappeared or relapsed. Others point to the looming wave of older adults experiencing homelessness for the first time after the age of 50, many with medical conditions that make life on the street especially brutal. Without senior-specific housing and medical support, the health system will be overwhelmed alongside the shelter system. These are the cracks people are falling through while Davis debates whether to keep the doors open on a failing model.
The fiscal stakes are enormous. Davis currently spends about $1.8 million annually on homelessness services. The Respite Center accounts for the single largest chunk, more than $500,000, followed by allocations for Paul’s Place, Pacifico Housing, winter shelter, and CDBG grants. Yet even with these investments, outcomes remain fragile. Federal and state funding streams are volatile. Programs like safe parking rely on donations unlikely to sustain long-term. The danger is that Davis spreads its limited resources too thin across temporary projects, leaving none with the stability to last. That is exactly what the city risks doing if it continues pouring money into the Respite Center without a larger plan.
The Homelessness Strategic Plan lays out a different vision. It imagines “a community-wide network of care, grounded in respect, delivering humanizing and person-centered support.” But achieving that requires difficult trade-offs. Davis cannot do everything at once. It cannot build detox centers, senior housing, supportive housing, expanded shelter, and case management without prioritizing. For too long, the city has chosen the politically easy route: fund the temporary programs, keep people off the streets during the day, and hope that counts as progress. The Respite Center’s closure exposes that illusion.
Mayor Bapu Vaitla put it bluntly: “We can’t sit here and solve acute psychiatric care overnight. But we can act to keep respite services available.” He is right about the short term, but wrong if that becomes the city’s entire strategy. Acting to keep respite services available cannot become an excuse to avoid the deeper work. It is not enough to provide showers and mailboxes. Dignity means more than a temporary reprieve from the streets. It means housing, stability, and a pathway out.
Residents who testified before council spoke with urgency about the harm closure would cause. “Please don’t close this center suddenly,” one resident said. “It serves 40 to 70 people a day who rely on it for mail, medications, case management, showers, and a safe place to be. Sudden closure will do real harm.” Another said, “It’s one of the few places in Yolo or Sacramento County where people can get food, showers, and clean clothes. Why would we take that away?” They are not wrong. But neither are they asking the harder question: why is this all Davis has to offer?
Temporary services have their place. Day shelters can be important entry points into the system. But they must not become the end point. They must connect directly into a pipeline to permanent housing. Without that, they become little more than expensive waiting rooms for people who deserve real solutions. Paul’s Place, limited as it is, shows the way forward. The Respite Center does not.
The truth is that the Respite Center was never a solution. Its closure can be treated as a crisis—or as an opportunity. Davis can either double down on the easy politics of stopgap programs or it can finally confront the reality that only housing, backed by mental health and addiction treatment, will end homelessness. That means investing in permanent supportive housing, pushing for more extremely low-income units in every project, preparing for the coming surge of older adults, and building clinical services that catch people before they fall through the cracks.
The easy path is to keep patching leaks. The harder path—the one that fulfills the city’s own vision of a true network of care—is to build the housing and services that make respite centers obsolete. This is the choice now before Davis. The Respite Center made the city feel like it was doing something. Its closure forces Davis to finally do what actually matters.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
I thought the decision was made not to close the respite center. They will be seeking a new contractor and, I guess, using city staff to keep it open in the interim.
You are correct. They talked a lot of good talk during the meeting, but in the end, they did nothing towards closing/moving the place, except to put some money to reverse what I’m told is a barely functional and very unattractive/dirty/unwelcoming place, which of course steers to keeping it there, and then about using the location for ‘expanded services’ (again that means no location change), matching services to the neighborhood needs (what I took as a disgusting attempt to try to appease the neighborhood by saying services would match neighborhood needs, when in fact what the neighborhood needs is to be rid of this welt), and then capped with a cherry of ‘we are looking into moving it, but behind the scenes we already looked and there is no other possible site but we’ll keep looking’. And Chapman clearly wanted it kept where it is, either he’s the only honest one up there that it isn’t moving, or he’s the only one who wants our neighborhoods to keeping taking the facility consequences up the grand wazoo. Kicking the can down the road? . . . more like they shot the can out of a cannon and it landed in a field outside of Knights Landing.
This was always a flawed concept. Essentially the same as feeding feral cats, in regard to increasing the local unhoused population which is drawn from the entire region and beyond.
You either provide full services (including shelter), or you don’t. Somehow, I suspect that places like Granite Bay have chosen the latter (and don’t have any homeless people, as a result).
“For too long, the city has chosen the politically easy route: fund the temporary programs, keep people off the streets during the day, and hope that counts as progress.”
I don’t see how this is a politically easy route. They have three neighborhoods furious at them for breaking the promises and utterly failing with ‘were they go after 5pm’. But I guess with the district system, four districts don’t care, so it all falls on one council person, so 4-1, so WIN WIN WIN = Total Failure = Politically Easy. We are so messed up, Davis.
Absolutely nothing about the other residents who spoke. Those of us who want it gone and moved to each of the other four districts. Prioritizing the homeless, but a group of residents gets screwed, always core District 3 it seems. Put it there. Let’s put everything there. Then the other four of us are politically secure from this mess.
And a couple of people told me they’ve been inside it, and they said it’s dirty, hot, clothes washers broken, showers broken. They say they are going to fix it, but how did the City let it get into that state EVER??? What the actual F is going on with this place?
The focus of my piece was on the fact that the respite center isn’t really a homeless solution. So if it is angering people who live near it, all the more reason to find a real solution.