Just weeks ago, local governments across the state cheered Gov. Gavin Newsom’s restoration of a key homelessness funding program in the new state budget.
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El Cajon and Encinitas had a different reaction about another state homelessness program a short while later. They declined to apply for grants sought by many other cities to finance clearing out homeless encampments and provide assistance to the inhabitants.
Most, but not all, of the council members in those two cities contend state conditions attached to the money conflicted with their localized approach to homelessness, even though the Encampment Resolution Funding program has become more flexible.
El Cajon could have been in line for $5.3 million, while Encinitas might have qualified for $4 million.
The dispute comes amid a backdrop of a harder line on homelessness at all levels of government, with the creation of more enforcement laws and funding shifts.
The Trump administration wants to take federal aid from long-term housing and direct it to programs focused on mental illness and addiction, with time-limited shelters.
Even Newsom warned local governments they needed to show more progress on homelessness and better accountability for programs that use state money. His move to cut the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program came just as the state and local jurisdictions were starting to slowly reverse the yearslong trend of increasing homelessness.
His insertion of $900 billion for HHAP in the budget triggered many sighs of relief. While the funding can go to an array of housing programs and services to help those who are homeless, many cities that accept it — like San Diego — have also been more aggressively cracking down on homeless people on public property.
Newsom has staged photo-ops around California, including in San Diego, where he has helped clean up encampments on state property.
There’s more context behind what happened in Encinitas and El Cajon. For years, they have had running battles with the state over mandates that they allow increased housing development and disagreements about restrictions on sheltering homeless people.
In 2022, El Cajon told local hotels participating in the county’s homeless voucher program that they would face fines of $1,000 a day for operating as unauthorized homeless shelters. California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned the city that it was engaged in unlawful discrimination in violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act. El Cajon rescinded its warning and entered into discussions with the hotels.
Much of the recent talk about the cities’ decision not to pursue encampment funding revolved around their opposition to the state’s “housing first” policy on addressing homelessness.
For decades, the policy had also been the bedrock philosophy behind federal homelessness funding, until President Donald Trump. The idea is to prioritize getting people into housing to help stabilize them and then provide various services they may need, from assistance with health matters, substance abuse and case management, which generally are offered on a voluntary basis.
Part of the problem, certainly in California, is there’s just not enough housing or shelter beds.
Critics, mostly conservatives, contend the focus first should be on treatment, mandatory sobriety and accountability before moving people into housing. They argue the increase in homelessness over the years shows housing first isn’t working.
However, several studies found that people in housing-first programs stayed in housing longer and used emergency services less than people in treatment-first programs, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
“It just feels wrong to me to adopt what I consider to be a tremendous failure, the housing-first policy,” El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells said, according to Hannah Elsmore of The San Diego Union-Tribune. “Although the part of me that would love to get free money is intrigued, I think it puts the handcuffs on us that I don’t like.”
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However, housing is essential at the start for other services to be effective, according to Ryan Clumpner, former vice chair of the San Diego Housing Commission, which oversees homelessness and low-income housing programs for the city of San Diego.
“Those treatments are almost never successful when people are living on the street,” said Clumpner, a political consultant.
A report to the Encinitas City Council suggests the current rules for the encampment grants are more flexible than previous ones.
The grant “allows cities a pathway to offer unhoused residents the necessary supportive services to stabilize them and ” (Authors of the report added the emphasis.)
A representative of the San Diego Rescue Mission, which contracts with both cities on homelessness services, also encouraged Encinitas leaders to apply for the grant, saying the Rescue Mission has used this program before and experienced no issues with the state, according to the Voice of San Diego.
Often, the debate over housing-first is framed as housing vs. treatment, when both are part of the policy — or are supposed to be.
“I don’t think just putting a roof over their head is going to solve the problem,” Riverside City Councilmember Sean Mill said earlier this year.
That’s when he joined his council’s majority in turning down a $20.1 million state grant to convert a Quality Inn hotel into housing for low-income seniors and homeless residents.
He said 94 of the 114 units would be designated for those with mental disabilities or substance abuse issues, but no funding was specified to help them with treatment, according to ABC 7 News.
Carlsbad and Oceanside took a different approach from these other cities. Working with the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, they accepted more than $11 million in state funding to connect people living in encampments with outreach workers, interim shelter and permanent housing.
Carlsbad Mayor Keith Blackburn acknowledged multi-layered solutions are needed to reduce homelessness, not just housing.
“We have a homeless outreach team, we have six officers, a sergeant and a social worker,” he said, according to Fox 5/KUSI in San Diego.
“They go out and talk to individuals and find out what their individual problem is. Just throwing people into homes, that doesn’t stop them from having mental problems, it doesn’t stop them from using drugs. I think we need to fix the problem, not just house the problem.”
The larger discussion on homelessness is sometimes simplified as a social problem or an enforcement problem. The reality is it’s both, but the social component needs to be there — including providing housing and shelter space — for enforcement to work.
Housing has to be a priority. Without it, we’re just moving people around and increasingly putting more pressure on vulnerable people who need help to simply deal with it.
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