ESCONDIDO — The Escondido City Council has recently approved a homelessness policy embracing sobriety over the statewide Housing First model to serve as a framework for developing a new city-owned homeless shelter.
The policy, drafted by Mayor Dane White and Councilmember Joe Garcia, employs a “Public Safety First approach,” prioritizing sobriety and mental health care as prerequisites for the city’s homeless population to obtain long-term housing.
The decision follows extensive research by White and Garcia, who previously formed an ad hoc subcommittee on homelessness and spent the last year visiting various shelters across the region. In Huntington Beach, shelter residents are required to discard drugs and paraphernalia in “amnesty boxes,” a concept the duo aims to emulate in Escondido.
White described the policy as a crucial first step toward addressing homelessness in the community, emphasizing sobriety and mental health as essential steps toward attaining financial independence and stable housing.
“We believe any policy that enables personally destructive behavior is neither compassionate nor effective,” the policy states.
According to the policy, the city will no longer distribute free resources such as tents, tarps, syringes, or drug paraphernalia, as it believes such actions enable substance abuse and perpetuate homelessness.
Furthermore, the policy identifies drug addiction and untreated mental health issues as primary factors contributing to homelessness and associated criminal activity within the city. While the city acknowledges that not all unhoused individuals are “criminal transients” and “stands ready and willing to lend immediate support to those willing to accept help,” the policy also states that “choosing sobriety is the only acceptable option.”
“Data shows that the vast majority of unhoused people are either addicted to drugs, experiencing a mental health crisis, or both,” the policy reads. “We recognize that drug addiction and untreated mental health concerns are the root causes of the state of affairs on the streets of Escondido.”
White said that he wouldn’t expect future residents of the city’s homeless shelter to pass a drug test, but they can’t bring illicit substances into the facility with them.
The policy also rejects the Housing First approach, which prioritizes permanent housing before addressing behavioral health and substance abuse issues, deeming it “ineffective and unsustainable,” with the only exception being low-income seniors priced out of their homes.
White said he hopes to obtain shelter funding from sources that don’t prioritize the Housing First model and seeks to avoid county funds altogether out of concerns that a local shelter will become a regional hub for the homeless.
However, some members of the public expressed skepticism, questioning the policy’s focus on drug addiction and its departure from collaborative efforts with local organizations like Interfaith Community Services, which supports the Housing First approach.
Rev. Meg Decker of Escondido’s Trinity Episcopal Church called the policy “shortsighted, limited and divisive.”
“You can’t get sober on the streets,” Decker said, who felt the city was leaning away from working with local Housing First organizations, like Interfaith Community Services, to combat homelessness.
Escondido resident Kymberly Walker, a mental health clinician who conducts homeless outreach, supported implementing a homeless policy but felt the policy’s language failed to acknowledge other factors leading to growing numbers of homeless and unhoused residents, such as high living costs and low wages.
“You’re making all of the homeless sound like addicts, and that is not the case,” Walker said. “A lot of the homeless that are here in Escondido today are families of two working adults that make the minimum wage and have children that cannot support their rent in the city.”
Greg Anglea, CEO of Interfaith Community Services, said a lack of housing and shelter beds fuels homelessness. According to Interfaith, there are only 15 general shelter beds available in Escondido for over 300 people experiencing homelessness.
“Somebody who wants to get into the treatment programs that we operate? They’re full. Somebody wants to get into our Recuperative Care Center? That’s full. Our Family Shelter that just opened last year? Full,” Anglea said during a Feb. 27 community forum. “We’re all frustrated. These are our neighbors. We need places for people to go.”
Both Garcia and White defended the policy as compassionate toward unhoused people, along with an expectation for them to want to help themselves by achieving sobriety.
“We want to get our homeless to a place where they can begin to heal from the pain and trauma that they live in,” Garcia said.
Despite concerns, the City Council voted 4-1 in favor of the policy, with the mayor proposing two additional amendments: directing staff to explore imposing a moratorium on homeless shelters in the downtown specific plan area with a surrounding six-block buffer zone, and initiatives to reunite homeless individuals with family members where possible.
Both Interfaith’s Turk Center and its 550 W. Washington Ave. headquarters are located within the mayor’s proposed buffer zone.
The prohibition of shelters in the downtown district is in response to the county’s recent proposal to place a temporary homeless shelter on East Valley Parkway.
