Escondido’s Inspiration for New Homelessness Policy? Huntington Beach

Last year, a small group of Escondido leaders took a field trip to Huntington Beach.  

Mayor Dane White, Councilmember Joe Garcia, Police Chief Ed Varso, a couple police officers and a representative from the city manager’s office piled into cars and headed to the Huntington Beach Navigation Center, a homeless shelter owned and funded by the city and operated by a nonprofit called Mercy House. 

“I remember getting off the freeway and telling myself, ‘I’ll know when we’re close because I’ll start to see people loitering around,’” White said during a recent City Council meeting. 

But they didn’t. 

“We didn’t see any unhoused people around,” Garcia said. “That was one thing that really struck me and made me think that what they’re doing is really working.” 

Last year, Huntington Beach set out to end homelessness in 90 days. The city increased outreach to homeless residents and business owners and beefed-up enforcement in parks and public spaces. They didn’t end homelessness, but officials say they saw some success.  

White recalled seeing a clean and organized facility during their tour. There were amnesty bins in front of the shelter, too. “It was like, ‘don’t go inside with drugs, but if you have them, get rid of them here’ kind of thing,” White said. “I think that’s a reasonable policy.” 

The shelter had showers, bathrooms, a commercial kitchen, a laundry room and dog kennels. There were about 175 people there in a shelter that sits on two acres of land, White said. 

“I was quite impressed. It was actually very peaceful there,” he added. 

On Feb. 28, the Escondido City Council adopted a new homelessness policy. It was controversial because it rejects Housing First and supports a “public safety-first” approach to addressing Escondido’s growing homelessness crisis that includes tougher consequences on criminal activity among the city’s homeless population. 

City leaders also added an amendment to the policy that will ultimately ban homeless services in and around Escondido’s downtown area. This caused some friction with North County’s largest homeless services provider Interfaith Community Services, which operates the only homeless shelters in Escondido. 

One of those shelters, called Haven House, is operating out of Interfaith’s Turk Recuperative Care Center located near downtown. Interfaith’s headquarters, which offers case management, free meals, shower and laundry services and drug and alcohol treatment services is also located near downtown Escondido. 

Though it’s still unclear if the ban would impact existing services and shelters in downtown, Interfaith leaders are concerned about their future in the city. 

The policy also says the city will eventually open a city-run shelter requiring sobriety and prioritizing Escondido’s unhoused residents.  

“Could you imagine if we self-funded a shelter that had 175 beds and in a single year reduced the number of people on the streets by 50 percent,” White said at the meeting. “That’s what we’re out to do.” 

Escondido has the highest unsheltered homeless population in North County according to last year’s point-in-time count, with 304 unsheltered homeless people.   

In Huntington Beach, White and Garcia saw a city with little visible homelessness, a shelter that prohibited drugs and alcohol and prioritized Huntington Beach’s homeless residents and they got a sense that the homelessness problem was under control. 

City officials in Huntington Beach say they are proud of what they’ve accomplished, but their methodology, their recent policies and their shelter requirements haven’t gone without criticism from homeless advocates and experts. 

The 90-Day Plan 

Last year, the Huntington Beach City Council adopted a 90-day plan to end homelessness. City officials described it as a focus on outreach efforts to unhoused people; an increase in communication to business owners and residents about community resources and property rights; and a review of existing homeless services and programs.   

According to Orange County’s last point-in-time count, there were 330 homeless people in Huntington Beach last year and 188 of them were unsheltered. That’s about 40 percent less than Escondido’s unsheltered homeless population. 

However, the point-in-time count is a bare minimum count. In February 2023, Huntington Beach city staff reported 243 unduplicated contacts with unsheltered homeless people. Some of those contacts included individuals who don’t reside in Huntington Beach.

Brian Smith, the city’s Homeless Task Force lieutenant, told Voice of San Diego that the goal of the 90-day plan was to create a citywide push to better communicate to business owners and residents about what resources are available to them when encountering someone who needs assistance and to increase staff dedicated to homeless outreach, education and enforcement. 

“It was an effort on everybody to work together to get out in the community and bring awareness to what our programs are so that more people can get engaged,” Smith said. 

The plan also included an audit of the city’s existing homeless services to identify which programs and services needed improvements, he added. 

Though it didn’t end homelessness in the city, Smith said they have seen a significant improvement in how the city responds to homelessness and in how residents feel about homelessness in Huntington Beach. 

“I’ve been involved with our homeless engagement now for 14 plus years on and off and a police officer in the city for 20 years and I have seen a drastic improvement in quality of life for housed and unhoused individuals throughout our community,” Smith said. “It’s made a significant positive impact and has helped us really work with all of our communities to address their concerns.” 

Despite those positive reviews from city leaders, the plan provoked backlash from some homeless service experts who said it was just a way to increase police enforcement and implement more restrictive laws. 

The plan called for the addition of at least four police officers to the department’s Homeless Task Force, as well as overtime enforcement in specific areas of the city like downtown and a few of the city’s beach areas. 

The City Council also approved rules limiting homeless activity at parks and parking structures – an action that Councilmember Casey McKeon has in the past pointed out as being part of the 90-day plan, according to a report by Voice of OC. 

Brooke Weitzman, an attorney for the Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, criticized the plan in a Jan. 17, 2023 letter obtained by Voice of OC. She said the plan would criminalize the most vulnerable members of the community, a criticism Escondido’s new policy also received from residents and homeless advocates. 

Weitzman also said the plan failed to address the root cause of homelessness, which is a lack of available and affordable housing.  

Like Escondido’s new policy, Huntington Beach rejects the Housing First approach, which encourages more affordable housing contending that a stable home is the first step to helping people recover from life on the streets and drug and mental health crises.   

And then there’s Huntington Beach’s 175-bed navigation center, which Escondido leaders said is exactly the type of shelter they want to open. 

Clients of the shelter are required to give up any substances at the door, and only people with ties to Huntington Beach can be admitted, said Jennifer Carey, the city’s public affairs manager. 

There’s a larger debate statewide about whether it’s right for cities to limit their shelter beds to their own homeless residents. More and more cities are being transparent about the fact that they want to prioritize helping homeless people in their own cities, but critics say homeless people shouldn’t be turned away just because they may be from a different city. 

Out of 644 homeless people that were referred to shelters by Huntington Beach’s homeless outreach teams, 44 percent were referred to shelters outside of Huntington Beach, according to the city’s 2023 annual report. The city has previously been accused of pushing homeless people out of the city rather than helping them. 

Carey said city officials try to refer people to shelters that are specific to each person’s needs, but in some cases, people who don’t have ties to the city are referred to shelters outside of the city. 

If someone doesn’t qualify for the navigation center, a social worker will help identify a different shelter opportunity that works for them, she said. 

“Some examples of this are referring families to family shelters, people experiencing domestic violence to a shelter that specializes in that, or connecting someone to a county or city shelter in the area that they have their support systems when they do not have strong ties to Huntington Beach,” Carey said via email.  

The Navigation Center has also received some criticism for having a low success rate of moving shelter clients into permanent housing.  

In 2023, the shelter maintained a 93 percent occupancy rate, meaning outreach teams were, in fact, getting homeless people to accept shelter beds. But only 18 percent of its clients made it into permanent housing last year, according to the city’s 2023 annual report, which is a trend seen throughout Orange County shelters. 

Correction: This post has been updated to correct that Huntington Beach’s Navigation Center does not require sobriety, but does prohibit drugs and alcohol at the shelter.

Clarification: We’ve added additional context to help readers understand that Huntington Beach’s outreach workers are also contacted by homeless individuals outside of the city’s boundaries. These individuals are counted in the city’s contact count for February 2023.