OCEANSIDE — Over the next six months, the city will revamp its approach to tackling homelessness by increasing social services, shelter beds and permanent housing options while preventing more people from losing their homes.
During a homeless workshop in February, the Oceanside City Council directed staff on several pathways to improving the city’s strategies to tackle homelessness, following staff’s recommendation to update the city’s Homelessness Action Plan.
“We’ve made significant strides in addressing the issue of homelessness here in Oceanside,” said City Manager Jonathan Borrego at the Feb. 12 workshop. “Thanks to the leadership of City Council, we have dedicated quite a bit of resources, and we do think we have made a significant dent, but of course there is still much more work to be done.”
The directions centered around five staff-recommended strategic initiatives: optimizing new and existing outreach and supportive services, diversifying short-term housing solutions, scaling up long-term housing inventory, reducing the public health and safety impacts of homelessness, and ensuring sustainability in the homeless response system.
The council added that preventing at-risk households from falling into homelessness is an additional strategic initiative.
While the majority of City Council also agreed with staff’s recommendation to bump up the Oceanside Navigation Center from 50 to 75 beds, only a 3-2 council majority opted to direct staff to bring back requests for proposals from organizations to take on the shelter’s operations rather than automatically hand it over to its existing operator, San Diego Rescue Mission.
In November, a council majority renewed a one-year extension of San Diego Rescue Mission’s property use agreement with the city to run the shelter. At the time, staff had recommended separating the property use agreement from the facility operating agreement since the shelter had been operating for over a year.
Housing and Neighborhood Services Director Leilani Hines noted that the operating piece would need to return to council before November, when the Rescue Mission’s agreement expires.
Deputy Mayor Eric Joyce, who suggested the move during the Feb. 12 workshop, Mayor Esther Sanchez, and Councilmember Jimmy Figueroa voted in favor of bringing back requests for proposals for a shelter operator, while Councilmembers Rick Robinson and Peter Weiss opposed it.
“I think our current provider could have met that, but I see where this is going,” Robinson said.
In addition to the future shelter operator, the council unanimously agreed to take the same approach to running the state-funded partnership with Carlsbad to address encampments along the state Route 78 corridor.
Last year, Oceanside and Carlsbad received $11.4 million in state funding to clear out encampments and provide supportive, wraparound services through teams of social workers, drug counselors, street medicine, peer support and housing navigators who would aid unhoused people living there into shelter and on track to permanent housing.
The initiative, known as the Encampment Resolution Fund Project, will launch in the next few months.
Hines, confident about the project’s positive outcomes, requested the city standardize its approach to tackling encampments citywide based on the Encampment Resolution Fund model.
Sanchez said she was excited to start learning from the model, noting the importance of shifting away from a law enforcement forward approach.
The model will still require the presence of code enforcement and police to clear out encampments. They will step in at the end of the process after social workers, housing navigators, and others on the support team have reached individuals living in the encampment.
“It’s more effective, less costly, and we need to get our cops back on the street,” Sanchez said.
Over the next few months, staff will work on updating the city’s Homelessness Action Plan to include the standardized model, which will also use a by-name list approach to prioritize helping known chronically homeless individuals residing in the city first.
Additionally, staff will explore expanding short-term housing options — such as tiny homes or other housing alternatives besides apartments — to eventually scale up to increase long-term housing inventory and add a community housing trust to help fund affordable housing projects.
“We need more permanent housing across the board,” Hines said.
Last year, the city brought 103 permanent supportive housing units online, which are helping keep people off the streets. Between now and 2026, the city expects to bring approximately 691 affordable units online.
One of those projects is the 100% affordable, 111-unit South El Camino Real project, which is expected to break ground in the spring.
Another 100% affordable project coming online soon is the 712 Seagaze project, which will construct 179 300-square foot studio apartments in an eight-story building near Oceanside High School.
The project was originally approved with 64 hotel rooms, and only 10% of its apartments would have been dedicated to affordable housing. However, last summer, the developers qualified for $48.7 million from California’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Grant Program, which required the entire project to be converted to affordable housing. The hotel rooms were also nixed from the project last year.
Other potential affordable housing options include the Olive Park Apartments, which applied for 199 units earlier this year, plus the 43-unit Shadow Way Apartment and 56-unit South Coast Villas projects.
Staff emphasized the importance of continuing to work on addressing homelessness as it creates public health risks, degrades the local environment and impacts public safety for both unhoused and housed residents alike.
“If we do nothing related to homelessness, this will continue to be a problem overall,” Hines said.
Staff will return to the City Council in June with an update on its progress, following the release of this year’s Homeless Point-In-Time Count numbers. The goal is to finalize the Homelessness Action Plan update by September.
