For years, as officials across San Diego County spent millions of dollars on homelessness programs, ed camping bans and converted empty buildings into shelters, residents often had one question: Why aren’t things getting better?
Leaders on Tuesday got a good way to respond.
A new tally of the region’s homeless population found that this year’s number — 9,905 — was a decrease of several hundred people from 2024’s total and the county’s first drop since before the pandemic.
“The data released today by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness confirm that our comprehensive strategy to reduce homelessness and build more affordable housing is working,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement on Tuesday. “But this is not the time to take the foot off the gas. When something is working, you don’t change course.”
Homelessness dropped, if only slightly, in almost every community. Numbers were down in places that have sweeping anti-camping ordinances and those that don’t. There were decreases in cities with robust service organizations and some that have leaned more heavily on police.
“This is our city’s highest priority,” Oceanside Mayor Esther Sanchez wrote in an email. The North County municipality saw its unsheltered population slide from 361 to 318, and Sanchez said they aimed to cut that total in half within three years.
Carlsbad Mayor Keith Blackburn credited their drop to a local outreach team. So did Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, who also highlighted that his city had its own shelter and was “enforcing one of the strictest homeless encampment bans in the county.”
Several leaders further attributed the improving picture to outside financial , and a group of mayors from around California plan to travel to Sacramento this week to lobby lawmakers to continue funding the state’s Homeless, Housing Assistance, and Prevention program, which has bankrolled many local initiatives.
The data did raise questions.
El Cajon, for example, was the only large city in the county to see more people (344) living outside or in their cars in January as compared to last year, when there were 283. (The handful of other places that recorded increases, like Poway or Fallbrook, only saw numbers go up in the single digits.)
Tamera Kohler, head of the regional task force, initially attributed El Cajon’s jump to people sleeping in their vehicles at one of the area’s designated parking lots. But East County’s Magnolia Safe Parking site is currently closed for renovations, and it and other similar lots appear to be outside city limits.
“I don’t know how these numbers are derived,” El Cajon City Manager Graham Mitchell said in an interview. Mitchell participated in the one-day count and, while homeless residents were certainly visible, he hadn’t flagged a surge in encampments. Mitchell wondered if El Cajon’s total included unincorporated areas. Kohler, with the task force, said it did not.
This is not the first time El Cajon has been surprised by a point-in-time count. Several years ago, an unexpectedly high tally led to the realization that eight local hotels were accepting vouchers which help homeless residents rent rooms. No other city in the county had more businesses participating in the county program. That led to a protracted fight with some of the hotels, the county and the state attorney general regarding how much say city leaders should have over vouchers.
While El Cajon eventually increased oversight, those changes did not reduce how many vouchers were in use, at least initially.
The point-in-time count again found that older adults made up a significant share of the county’s homeless population. Nearly 30% of everyone lacking shelter was at least 55 years old, according to the task force.
“Behind these numbers” are “grandparents, neighbors, and longtime community ,” Melinda Forstey, president and CEO of the local nonprofit Serving Seniors, said in a statement. “Most are not unhoused due to personal choices, but because of economic hardship.”
Deacon Jim Vargas, head of Father Joe’s Villages, pushed officials to continue offering rental assistance and create more shelter beds. “It is a travesty for anyone to spend their golden years on the streets,” he said in a statement.
The city of San Diego is in the process of opening or expanding several homelessness projects, including a women’s shelter downtown and a safe parking lot next to the airport, although leaders have said a budget deficit likely means no new facilities will launch next fiscal year.
The point-in-time count is only one way to measure the crisis, and other methods show that many people continue to fall into homelessness.
