San Diego’s efforts to house its homeless residents aren’t keeping up with the number of people losing their homes.
The Regional Task Force on Homelessness, which coordinates the countywide response to the crisis, reports that 14,258 people sought homeless services for the first time over the last year. This total outpaced the 8,843 formerly unhoused people who exited homelessness.
That’s the equivalent of 16 people accessing homeless services for the first time for every 10 formerly homeless residents who were housed from October 2022 through September 2023.
One silver lining: The Task Force reports 1,069 fewer San Diegans fell into homelessness for the first time this past year than the previous one. Yet 3,018 fewer people exited homelessness, a drop that the Task Force said reflects the service system’s struggle to secure homes for unhoused San Diegans.
In a statement, the Task Force said a dearth of new federal emergency vouchers and large housing projects which bolstered housing efforts during the pandemic, along with spiking rents, have stymied efforts to house homeless San Diegans.
“Housing and homelessness are directly tied together, and when rental costs go up, so do the numbers of people experiencing homelessness,” Task Force CEO Tamera Kohler said.
When there aren’t accessible housing options for homeless residents, they also remain homeless for longer for longer periods of time.
Indeed, San Diego Housing Commission data shows the number of days homeless people in shelters overseen by the agency are spending waiting for housing has spiked 57 percent since 2021.
But Kohler said she was also hopeful the region has hit its “high water mark of individuals beginning their homeless experience.”
The region has been rolling out more prevention programs meant to aid people on the verge of homelessness.
Kohler argued increased housing opportunities are needed to turn the dial on the regional crisis.
“If we get some stabilizing in rent prices and availability, it will help, but long-term success will only come with more homes for people of all income levels; then, we’ve got a real chance to turn things around,” Kohler said. “Every new housing unit matters.”
Housing issues aren’t only about supply- it’s also about affordability. If people aren’t able to afford the units that are available, they end up homeless. (Most people are putting rent before savings, so safe your arguments about moving away… that takes money too). Affordability isn’t just rent- the biggest hurdle to affordability is stagnant incomes for anyone making less than six figures. It is also the depressed wages of San Diego. Compare any job in San Diego to its equivalent in Los Angeles and the starting wage in L.A. will $2- $3 more, which is significant. The entire region needs to boost the income for everyone making less than six figures in addition to adding more supply. Otherwise no one will be able to afford to live in those new units once the rent goes up.
You’re right, a lot of my friends have not been able to afford housing in San Diego so they bought tents and now live on the sidewalk. Oh wait, that literally never happens. Not one single homeless person in SD had a job that didn’t keep up with cost of living which led to homelessness. They’re alcoholics and drug addicts, full stop.
@ Straight to Jail–That would be the most visible homeless. But many homeless, including working people whose situation has nothing to do with addiction, live out of their cars, where you might not notice them. They deserve a place to live too.
It might be $2 to $3 more a hour in LA. But LA homelessness is worst than San Diego!
The hundreds of homeless people I see didn’t “lose their home” and everyone knows it. They never had a home, they were drug addict teens, remained drug addicts living with family until family had enough and now they’re living on your sidewalk. To author this article is to have no integrity whatsoever.
Ironic that VOSD printed this article at the same time you did the article on growing opposition to Todd Gloria and his “solutions” to the city’s homelessness problems. “Solutions” that are only making things whose while enriching his political contributors.
More people are leaving San Diego urban areas, than coming in (except for Biden’s unscreened illegals), so it isn’t a “housing shortage”… there are already too many people who can’t afford the rent, and more and more are being dumped on our streets daily.
The Mayor and City Council are on the wrong track. They think that forcing people to move and clear one patch of sidewalk without providing shelter beds or a home, solves the problem.
Yesterday (Sunday) my group went out to feed the homeless at Park and Broadway, we went through 6 carts worth of food, water, fruit, snacks and clothing in in less than an hour.
You are solving nothing, you are just increasing the misery, Putin, Kim, Xi, Netanyahu, Sinwar, would all be proud of you.
San Diego’s homelessness crisis will only grow more deadly as long as the city continues to pursue housing policies put forward by self-proclaimed “proud YIMBY” Todd Gloria. By upzoning much of the city, city hall politicians have incentivized local developers to buy up older affordable homes in established neighborhoods, evict residents, and bulldoze those homes to make room for expensive new apartment blocks. As long as those evictions continue, more and more people will become homeless. The mayor and city council claim to be clueless about the cause of homelessness, when they are the ones causing it.
The bar graph is confusing. Past to present should be left to right.
Hardly Data 🤓
What this article, and other VOSD articles don’t address is the true cause of so many people being evicted and pushed out into the streets by developers who buy up older affordable homes, evict residents, then take advantage of recent upzones by the city to build new luxury apartment blocks and condo towers.
The mayor and city council members who spend so much time bemoaning our growing homelessness crisis are the same ones who caused it when they upzoned most of the city to allow taller and denser housing. That is causing the increase in evicted residents and tenants now homeless. Why won’t VOSD do any articles on the causes of homelessness?