As County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer argues she’s more qualified to tackle the homelessness crisis than opponent Kevin Faulconer, she’s often touted the hundreds of shelter spaces she says the county has added since she took office.
“We’ve gone from zero to over 900 safe shelter spaces, like this one,” Lawson-Remer says standing in front of a large tent shelter outside the county’s Midway health complex in a campaign ad. (Awkwardly, the ad includes footage of a solely city-funded shelter in Barrio Logan that Faulconer opened in 2017 when he was mayor.)
The county does have hundreds more shelter beds than it did when Lawson-Remer took office in January 2021, but her statements paper over the county’s struggles on the shelter front. She’s also counting more than just traditional shelter beds.
Before we get into the numbers: The county has yet to open any brick-and-mortar shelters of its own for homeless residents in unincorporated areas.
The latest setback in the county’s years-long effort to deliver shelter came this summer when a majority of supervisors voted to nix a planned Spring Valley tiny home project at county Chair Nora Vargas’s urging. Lawson-Remer was the only supervisor to oppose that move. The county is now pursuing a smaller project in Lemon Grove that’s not expected to open until at least late summer 2026.
At Voice of San Diego’s Politifest event last month, Lawson-Remer said county staff historically haven’t had the know-how to open shelters, so the county paid other governments and contractors to supply beds as a workaround.
“We have put online about 1,000 beds, as I mentioned, but we’ve done that by paying for the beds instead of building them from scratch since we don’t have the expertise that has to build them from scratch,” Lawson-Remer said.
About those numbers: The county helped fund about 350 beds now serving homeless residents in Chula Vista, Escondido, Oceanside and San Diego via a grant program it created in 2022 to support new shelters in cities. The county awarded money for another 36-bed shelter that has since closed.
In 2022, the county also partnered with the city of San Diego on a 150-bed shelter on county property behind its health complex. The city oversees the contract with nonprofit operator Alpha Project while the county handles facility issues.
These moves marked a change for a county bureaucracy that had long said it could provide services for homeless housing and shelter but should not assist with brick-and-mortar needs.
Lawson-Remer’s claims about shelter additions incorporate less traditional options too.
She includes 250 vouchers the county offers for homeless residents to use at contracted hotels. More than 1,800 people have temporarily stayed in hotels with the help of the program.
But the voucher program kicked off in 2020 – before Lawson-Remer took office.
Lawson-Remer spokesperson James Canning said that supervisors voted in March to seek bids to allow for the program to continue operating but the program didn’t start on Lawson-Remer’s watch.
Lawson-Remer is also counting nearly 130 parking spots for people who live in vehicles, including 44 the county itself opened and 85 run by the cities of San Diego and Vista that the county helped support with 2022 grant funds. The county itself classifies lots that provide a safe place for people who live in cars or RVs to park as shelter options, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers people staying in the lots unsheltered. The sites offer a place to park rather than actual shelter.
All told, the services Lawson-Remer is describing add up to 503 shelter beds, 250 motel vouchers and 129 safe parking spaces – or 882 safe havens for homeless residents that the county has helped open that remain in service. The total hits 918 when you include the San Diego shelter that closed this summer.
Lawson-Remer’s team noted the county expects to eventually open 70 sleeping cabins in Lemon Grove and a 17-space safe parking lot in Lakeside. A county-supported expansion at the La Posada de Guadalupe shelter in Carlsbad also remains in the works.
Incorporating those expected additions pushes the total number of spaces backed by county funds to over 1,000.
The bottom line: The county has helped open more than 500 shelter beds on Lawson-Remer’s watch and provided dozens of vouchers and safe parking spaces for homeless San Diegans.
But it hasn’t delivered most of those new safe havens directly – and has yet to open a shelter on its own.
Lawson-Remer said she’s proud of the non-traditional tactics that county has pursued to provide more options.
“I think we should be looking for the most efficient and quickest ways that we can get beds,” Lawson-Remer said.
Lawson Remer looks like she is one step away from a shelter bed herself.