Six months ago, a portion of the Buena Vista Creek in Oceanside served as a large homeless encampment that had been growing since the early 2000s.
More than 70 people were living in the creek bed during this time last year. Some had been there for upwards of 10 years.
The encampment was sophisticated, intricate and largely hidden from view. It had an unofficial mayor and tax collector. There was infrastructure, an entry gate, a downtown and a trash area. One woman built a makeshift shower; another woman had her own garden; one man was in the process of erecting a cement wall—he was building himself a house.
Today, the encampment is clear for the first time in decades. Within a few months, various flowers, plants and animals have replaced people, tents, clothes, shopping carts and trash—30 tons of trash to be specific.
Sixty-five people once camped along the creek bed are now in long-term, stable housing because of an ambitious experiment by officials in Oceanside and Carlsbad. Now, the two cities are working on relocating more homeless people in the area into long-term housing as the model continues to prove effective.
The Experiment
In 2024, Oceanside and Carlsbad received a state grant to move unsheltered homeless people camped along state Route 78 and the Buena Vista Creek into long-term housing.
The goal is to move every person living in encampments around the nearly 4-mile shared border between the two cities into housing. The state gave them four years and $11.4 million to do it.
The money is part of a series of grants through a program called the Encampment Resolution Fund, first announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. Cities are required to provide reports to the state to track spending and outcomes, Voice of San Diego previously reported.
The project is split into zones: Zone 1 was the creek bed area, the largest zone, which officials completed last July. Zone 2 in Carlsbad was much smaller and concluded near the end of last year. Now, officials are working on Zone 3, which is in Oceanside and is about half the size of Zone 1, Sofia Hughes, management analyst for Oceanside, told Voice.
Zones 2 and 3 are different than Zone 1 in that, instead of a concentrated area like a creek bed, they involve more outreach by connecting with people living on the streets.
A team of Oceanside and Carlsbad staff members, homeless outreach workers and local nonprofit organizations (Interfaith Community Services, Community Resource Center, Catholic Charities’ La Posada de Guadalupe homeless shelter in Carlsbad and Whole Person Care Clinic) are working together in each zone. The team engages with residents and offers wrap-around services like housing navigation, medical care, case management, substance abuse treatment, mental health services and more.
In each zone, the team first creates a by-name list of each person living there, which includes details about their situation, housing status and any needed supportive services. Case managers then help clients become “document ready,” Isaiah Chavira, a housing navigator with Interfaith told Voice. That means helping them obtain a driver’s license or ID card, a social security card, etc.
Finally, they use rapid re-housing, which is rental assistance and other supportive services, to place individuals and families living in encampments or on the street into their own apartments.
Clients receive a rental subsidy for their apartment based on their income, and those who don’t have any income have their entire rent subsidized. Housing navigators also help with car payments, storage bills, utilities, food, clothes and more while clients work with case managers to find stable employment and slowly achieve self-sufficiency.
“It’s a weight lifted off their shoulders,” Chavira said. “The program gets them into a safe environment, relieves their stress and makes them feel like they’re capable enough to eventually do it on their own.”
The Outcomes
So far, officials have placed 75 people into long-term housing from the first two zones. They’ll start working on getting almost 30 people housed from Zone 3 in the coming weeks. After completing Zone 3, they expect to work in one or two additional areas of the cities.
What program leaders are continuing to notice from the project so far is it’s working, Hughes said.
“We noticed in the first zone that a lot more people were willing to accept our help than we initially expected,” Hughes said. “And that’s something we’re still seeing as we continue the work.”
She added that almost every single person who was housed in the first two zones has remained housed and continues to participate in the program.
“We’ve seen a lot of success with the clients; we have one client who just celebrated three months of sobriety, one client recently regained custody of her kids now that she’s housed,” Hughes said. “A lot of people from Zones 1 and 2 have become employed and reconnected with their family members since becoming housed.”
As for the first creek bed encampment zone, outreach workers continue to monitor it multiple times a week to make sure it remains clear, but no one has tried to go back into the encampment.
“They’re housed now, so they don’t have to come back—they don’t want to come back,” Hughes said.
The businesses and residents surrounding the first two zones are also happy with the results. The two cities have seen a drastic reduction in calls to police and fire agencies related to homelessness in the first two zones, said Jessica Klein, senior program manager for Carlsbad. Feedback from businesses and residents in the area has also been very positive.
“We are all committed to seeing this project through and trying to reduce overall homelessness, not just for those who need housing, but for the overall community,” Klein said. “We’re continuing to see this be a really effective model in our communities with so many people receiving help who previously didn’t think they had many options.”
After completing the first encampment zone, Oceanside’s unsheltered homeless population decreased by 17 percent, Hughes told Voice. Now, other jurisdictions are considering replicating the model to reduce homelessness in their cities.
And after the term of the grant ends, the team is planning on seeking more state funding to continue these efforts in other areas of the two cities.
“When you offer people housing, they say ‘yes.’ People get well when they get indoors,” said Kris Freed, a consultant with the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. “And the community gets their community back.”