SAN DIEGOSAN DIEGO — A feud between the county and El Cajon over a hotel voucher program underscores, once again, the complexities in addressing homelessness.
The Regional Homeless Assistance Program had been running and expanding for about two years with little controversy until the East County city recently blamed it for a surge in homeless people, crime and drug use. Since its inception in 2020, it has provided temporary shelter for more than 1,000 people and helped hundreds take their first step toward permanent housing.
But the negative attention has overshadowed what county officials have lauded as a successful effort to help homeless people. The county-run program is credited with helping more than 300 individuals find some sort of permanent housing since it started two years ago.
Officials acknowledge the program doesn’t work for everybody. While 30 percent of participants leave for housing, just over half are considered unsuccessful exits, with some leaving because of criminal activity, violence or drug use, as El Cajon alleges was the case.
The arrests at the hotels raised questions from El Cajon officials about whether the county has a vetting process before issuing vouchers.
It does, and people can be denied the vouchers for outstanding warrants and a variety of other reasons, said Barbara Jiménez, the county’s Health and Human Services Agency’s community operations officer, who oversees the Department of Homeless Solutions and Equitable Communities and the voucher program.
Origins of the program
The idea of using vouchers to provide temporary, safe lodging for homeless people is not new, and for years has been a way for the county to provide shelter during inclement weather. But in January 2020, the Board of Supervisors asked the Health and Human Services Agency to take more action on homelessness in unincorporated areas, which led to the creation of the Regional Homeless Assistance Program.
While the program is focused on helping homeless people in the unincorporated, Jiménez said there are few hotels there, so most hotels in the program within incorporated cities.
Twenty-two hotels are in the program, and the county has the capacity to provide rooms for 250 households, Jiménez said. Eight hotels are in El Cajon, five are in San Diego, three are in Escondido, two are in Chula Vista, and Oceanside, Ramona, Santee and Vista each have one. As of Oct. 14, about 1,400 people have been served by the program since Jan. 1, 2020.
Of the people served in the program since its start, El Cajon had the most clients with 527. Chula Vista had 306, Escondido 295, San Diego 83, National City 69, Santee 48, Vista 51, Oceanside 15 and Ramona 4.
In September, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells and City Manager Graham Mitchell said a city investigation had found most rooms in some of the hotels in the program were occupied by homeless people with vouchers, and they accused the county of bringing in homeless people from other areas.
Information provided from the county, however, shows that many people in the rooms may have come from an El Cajon encampment that had recently been shut down.
According to the county, 78 households from the encampment were provided vouchers for the hotel program, and 62 were placed in the El Cajon hotels.
Concerns about the voucher program also have arisen in Santee.
During a public meeting last month, City Manager Marlene Best said the owner of Santee’s Rodeway Inn had agreed to “dramatically” reduce the number of county vouchers they accepted.
“We don’t have some of the similar problems that you may have heard about in the media, that the city of El Cajon has,” Best told the city council.
While the 54-room hotel took in high numbers of homeless people during the height of the pandemic, it now only accepts around a half-dozen vouchers, officials said.
Homeless advocate Michael McConnell sees an irony in cities that complain about homeless people in their area while also wanting to reduce the number of vouchers accepted at their local hotels.
“If cities don’t want people on the sidewalk, in canyons and riverbeds, they should advocate for more vouchers, not less,” he said. “But with the voucher program comes an obligation to provide adequate services to make sure the hotels do not become problematic and as many people can transition to permanent housing as possible.”
The five participating hotels in the city of San Diego are in Districts 3, 8 and 9. District 3 is represented by Stephen Whitburn and includes downtown San Diego, District 8 is represented by Vivian Moreno and includes neighborhoods south of downtown and South County, and District 9 is represented by Sean Elo-Rivera and includes the SDSU area, Kensington and City Heights. The county did not reveal the names or locations of the hotels, citing privacy laws for the clients.
Representatives from two of the offices said they have not heard of any complaints about the program. A representative from Whitburn’s office did not reply to the question.
David Rolland, director of communications for San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, said his office had not received complaints about the program.
Escondido also is looking into the issue.
“We did go out and try to get a pulse on what’s going on,” Escondido Mayor Paul McNamara said about city staff visiting the hotels. “We haven’t directed them, but we’ve asked the managers to be reasonable in this. You don’t want the hotel filled up with vouchers.”
The Econo Lodge in south Escondido is one of the hotels in the city that accept vouchers, and neighbors have complained to the city about criminal activity and homeless people in the area, McNamara said.
Deputy City Manager Christopher McKinney said the city has not found a connection between the program and any illegal activity.
“Our police department is reaching out to hotels in town to inquire about how many vouchers they are accepting at a given time,” he said. “We’re not doing that in an effort to limit them. At this time, we don’t have a limit we’re thinking about imposing or want to impose. We really just want to collect the data because there’s a lot of assumptions and talk, especially because of what happened in El Cajon where almost all of the rooms were taken by people using vouchers.”
Vetting voucher holders
Jiménez said multiple teams are involved in identifying people for the program, checking their eligibility and finding them a room as part of a longer-term goal of connecting them with permanent housing.
The first step is with the county Office of Homeless Solutions’ direct services team, working in conjunction with the Homeless Assistance Resource Team (HART), to conduct outreach to find eligible clients, who then are referred to the county’s contracted partner, Equus Workforce Solutions, which screens the applicants to ensure they are appropriate for the program, Jiménez said.
“We are low-barrier, so we try to keep that in mind and really try to place people who wish to live there and to have as few barriers as possible while helping them gain access to the different services that are available, she said.
Sheriff’s deputies then conduct a record’s check for outstanding active warrants for serious crimes such as murder, sexual assault or domestic violence. Equus checks for lifetime ed sex offenders, who are not eligible to participate in the program, and the county team also checks a person’s eligibility through county programs and other systems, including the Homeless Management Information System, which collects data on homeless clients.
Jiménez said misdemeanor warrants might not make someone ineligible for the program, but people will be banned if they were previously kicked out of the program for destroying hotel property or other inappropriate behavior, including illegal drug use, hate speech or harassment or violence against other guests.
Clients who are exited from a program may be allowed to re-enter in some instances, according to information provided by the county.
Equus s hotels and books rooms, and the county provides transportation for the clients. Once checked in, the client meets within 48 hours with a housing navigator who sets up weekly meetings to work on a plan that could lead to permanent housing. Jiménez said 321 individuals, or 30 percent of clients, have secured housing through vouchers, subsidies, and occasionally through family reunification.
There also has been a high number of people who exited the program unsuccessfully. Of 1,046 households served in the program between Jan. 1, 2020 and Sept. 30, 2022, about 52 percent left for violations or other reasons. The most common reason was for a lack of follow-up or with the person helping them, which ed for 143 people leaving the program. An additional 92 left for not meeting specific goals, 34 caused property damage, 14 committed violence, 29 used drugs and 17 engaged in illegal activities. In all, 620 individual or 542 households unsuccessfully left the program.
Housing navigators and housing locators help clients in the program repair their credit, find employment and training, connect them with benefits for income, food and medical need, help them apply for rental subsidies and life-skill training. Equus also links participants to treatment for behavioral health issues.
There is no limit for how long people can stay in the program, though people can only stay in one hotel for 28 days before moving to another because of residency laws.
