New Huntington Beach complex offers comfort for formerly homeless seniors
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Janet Di Pietro used to spend a lot of time in the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Costa Mesa.
Di Pietro’s plan had nothing to do with breakfast, and everything to do with survival.
With people not taking vacations, her business as an in-home pet sitter fell apart soon after the coronavirus pandemic began. She went from couch surfing at friends’ houses to sleeping in that IHOP parking lot in her truck.
She had suddenly become homeless.
“The city of Costa Mesa kept tapping on my window,” Di Pietro said. “They said, ‘If we catch you here one more time, we’re going to impound your vehicle and possibly take your dog to the animal shelter.’ That’s when I realized I needed to ask for help.”
After staying for more than three years at Yale Navigation Center in Santa Ana, Di Pietro, 64, finally has a place she can call home.
She’s one of the residents at the new Pelican Harbor senior apartments in Huntington Beach, which held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 20.
The 42-unit complex, set on an L-shaped lot near the 5 Points intersection of Beach Boulevard and Main Street, is for low-income and formerly homeless seniors who are at least 62 years old. It’s a joint venture of Irvine-based Jamboree Housing Corporation and USA Properties Fund, in partnership with the city of Huntington Beach and County of Orange.
“Many seniors we serve have endured a lifetime of hardship, often without the support others may take for granted,” Jamboree President/CEO Laura Archuleta said. “Pelican Harbor is more than just housing. Delivering high-quality housing and services means giving them safety, dignity and opportunity to thrive.”
The four-story complex features all one-bedroom apartments and surrounds a 4,000-square-foot community space. There’s also a 2,300-square-foot outdoor courtyard and pet park, which is good news for Di Pietro’s Chihuahua.
Pelican Harbor reserves 33 permanent supportive housing apartments for seniors experiencing homelessness, Jamboree spokeswoman Marissa Felicano said, with the other nine for low-income seniors. Residents earn 30-50% of the area median income — between $33,150 and $55,250 annually — and will pay no more than 30% of that income toward rent.
Rent at 33 of the apartments will be subsidized using Project-Based Vouchers, secured by the county through the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.
The $39.2-million facility, which had its groundbreaking in 2022, was funded by both public and private partners. Huntington Beach contributed $2.8 million in HOME funds provided through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as $300,000 of city inclusionary funds.
Among the other funding sources, which included millions of dollars in loans, Jamboree and the County of Orange secured $5.8 million in No Place Like Home funding from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The Orange County Health Care Agency brought in $3.6 million in Mental Health Services Act funding for seniors receiving supportive services at Pelican Harbor.
Barry Kielsmeier, chairman of Beach Cities Interfaith Services, said his organization funded the $1,000 security deposit for each of the apartments.
“We believe in helping people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but there are times that people don’t have any bootstraps,” Kielsmeier said. “We wanted to take that last speed bump and make sure those folks had a place to live, and that they were not going to remain homeless because they couldn’t come up with a security deposit. Sometimes as little as $1,000, having a debt or something like that, can keep people on the street. It’s insane, but that’s the reality we live with.”
Thirty-three of the 43 apartments will be supported by Project-Based Vouchers from the County of Orange, through the U.S. Department of Housing and Development.
Di Pietro is certainly grateful, even as she has dealt with cancer along with her homelessness in recent years. She said she was diagnosed with terminal Stage 2 ovarian cancer in 2020, and has undergone 70 chemotherapy treatments through Hoag.
She was originally projected to have five years to live after her diagnosis, but she’ll pass that mark in May when she turns 65, she said.
Di Pietro spoke at last week’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. She said her new apartment will extend her life and give her back a sense of normalcy.
“With chemo, you get free haircuts, but if I had hair I could let my hair down,” she said. “It’s been the most wonderful experience.”
Part of her mission now is to speak out about some misconceptions about homelessness.
“The more I can give my story and how I fell from grace, I hope to make it more real for all of those people out there,” Di Pietro said. “So when they see us on the street, they don’t look away. There’s a lot of good, there’s a lot of bad in being homeless. While I’m here, I want to try and put a ding in that stigma. We’re not all criminals, we’re not all bad people. We’ve just fallen from grace, but I’m going to keep going.
“I want to scream from the tallest mountain, ‘Just give us a chance!’”
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