EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary is a response to Community Resource Center CEO John Van Cleef’s op-ed, “Enough is enough.”
By S. Garcia
If calling attention to the daily decay of our public spaces, open-air drug use, and the surge in homeless-related issues is “stoking fear,” then let’s be very clear: fear is not the problem — denial is.
What’s truly dangerous isn’t the language or imagery used in a social media post. It’s the refusal by leaders like John Van Cleef to acknowledge what Encinitas residents and business owners witness daily: sidewalks turned into shelters, storefronts turned into bathrooms, and public parks turned into encampments.
Instead of confronting these escalating consequences, Van Cleef offers empty outrage over tone, ignoring the deep frustration and growing alarm of a community that has had enough.
He calls it “cherry-picked data.” We call it lived experience.
The Community Resource Center (CRC) may have started with good intentions, but today it has become a regional magnet for homelessness, addiction, and lawlessness — drawing individuals from across the county and beyond, with little regard for the impact on Encinitas families, small businesses, or public safety.
Van Cleef accuses Save Encinitas Now of “dehumanizing” the homeless. But let’s be clear: what actually dehumanizes people is allowing them to sleep in bushes, on sidewalks, and in parks — unsheltered, untreated, and unsafe.
It’s dehumanizing to ignore open drug use, overdose deaths, and the daily spiral of suffering on our streets while pretending this is compassion.
It’s not noble — it’s negligence.
Yes, the CRC may help some people. That’s commendable.
But what’s not commendable is how far it has overstepped. What began as a local resource has become a hub that actively draws in transient populations, most with no ties to Encinitas.
After receiving food and services, many linger in the community. They camp illegally. They sleep in front of businesses. They use drugs in the open. They steal from local stores.
This isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s dangerous and has created a public safety crisis. These consequences are eroding downtown Encinitas. Families are avoiding the downtown. Many business owners are struggling. Residents no longer feel safe in their city.
And what does Van Cleef offer in response? Hollow moral platitudes. He speaks from a perch of moral superiority, yet provides no real solutions for the rising crime, the filth, the overdoses, or the escalating mental health emergencies — many of which are drawn to Encinitas by the CRC. Our community deserves action, not ideology.
Encinitas residents should be deeply offended by Van Cleef (who DOESN’T live in Encinitas) and those like him who place the appearance of compassion above the reality of it.
There is nothing compassionate about enabling an ecosystem of harm while claiming the moral high ground. This isn’t a housing crisis — it’s a crisis of clarity and courage.
Here’s the truth no one wants to say: The CRC has become a business that depends on the persistence of homelessness to sustain itself.
They advertise services near trolley stops, drawing more people into Encinitas.
Why? Because they receive local, state, and federal funding based on the size of the problem they serve. If homelessness were solved, the money would dry up, as would the $10-$14 million expansion they’re now pushing.
Why would they want to eliminate the very issue that funds them?
While Van Cleef clutches his pearls over a cartoon, he remains silent about the actual damage happening every day. Guns have been pulled on neighbors. Storefronts defecated on.
Over 50% of weekly local sheriff calls are now related to homeless issues. Encinitas is overwhelmed — and the CRC wants to grow?
Even worse, they now intend to expand their services into neighborhoods across the city. Plans for mobile food distributions would push these same problems from downtown into our residential streets. We cannot allow that to happen.
Let us be absolutely clear: We urge the Encinitas mayor and City Council to reject the CRC’s proposed expansion immediately and unequivocally. It represents a growing threat to our city’s safety, livability and future.
It’s time to stop confusing passivity with compassion. Real compassion demands responsibility, structure, and solutions.
Good intentions and virtue signaling will not clean our streets or keep our families safe. Enough with the empty rhetoric — it’s time for real leadership.
Enough is enough.
S. Garcia is an Encinitas resident and one of several operators of Save Encinitas Now on Instagram. Below are screenshots of comments posted on the group’s IG page about homelessness in Encinitas.
5 comments
Mayor Bruce Ehler’s spoke out against Save Encinitas Now’s “rat” post and called for them to take it down. This is encouraging news and I am so grateful that Bruce reiterated the councils SUPPORT of the CRC!
Let’s not mince words, John Van Cleef , like any CEO, was bought on board to the CRC to grow the business. He’s a corporate animal and his dollars come from the misery of others, specifically the chronically homeless. The more misery, the more funding.
It’s the way of the modern homeless non profit. Since 2019 California homeless non profits and their developer partners have received over $30 billion dollars. The money making business of keeping your biggest customers homeless is very profitable indeed. Why solve such a lucrative problem?
It seems that California’s wasteful homeless spending, along with its lack of accountability and results, has come under the eye of the federal government. The CRC and other non profits like it, may soon be facing a harsher reality than their chronic clientele.
Let’s persuade the CRC to expand in an area that doesn’t include families, tourists and small businesses. Once gone, it’s guaranteed their chronic clientele will go with them.
I’d also like to call out our mayor. Bruce Ehlers campaigned on safety and cleaning up our homeless problem. You’ve been in office 4 months mayor Ehlers. What gives?
What an incredibly cowardly article. First, if you’re going to attack someone publicly in an OpEd, have the guts to put your actual name on it. Second, CRC has been here decades, providing a vitally important service to our city’s food insecure populations, both those with and without homes. The obscene callousness of people like “S. Garcia” reflect the very worst of what has come to Encinitas, but it will never define us. We are a community that cares about our citizens and our neighbors, and we recognize that we are lucky to live in such an amazing place, most of us without the uncertainties faced by those served by CRC. There is a homeless epidemic in our country, and to believe that it is only here in Encinitas, or that those who give their time and effort to serve the most needy among us are actually the problem, is uneducated, illogical, and heartless. Shame on you, S. Garcia.
We have those numbers thanks to Catherine Blakespear, who needed to fill Hotels for the Grant she accepted to house them. We didn’t have enough tp even fill 1/2 a Hotel so she brought them in from surrounding Cities, then dumped them onto our streets after the Grant ran out.
SaveEncinitasNow has written crude, demeaning comments on their instagram page and blocks people when they even politely disagree with them. When volunteers from the CRC have shared their experiences with SEN, they are ridiculed and insulted, When they create a post likening unsheltered human beings to rats, they really crossed a line.
SEN also makes claims they cannot back up. They have repeatedly claimed that the CRC advertises on the trains and trolleys and they absolutely do not. They have written untruths about the expansion that will allow the CRC to address the problems SEN raises.
The SEN uses fake buzz words like “Homeless Industrial Complex” (there’s no such thing.)
There is a problem downtown, but CRC has been there for 46 years and is working to address problems that SEN can only jeer at. SEN are a group of elitist individuals who hide behind anonymity (S. Garcia? Not even brace enough for a first name?) And shares instagram screenshots in this post which could be completely fake. Where is the journalistic integrity. I suggest the Coast News do some actual reporting and share the good work the CRC is doing. There are people in this town who remember eating meals there as children. There are landscapers and cleaners and people who serve you ever day that get assistance there. Maybe pay them more? There are victims of domestic violence who have found peace thanks to the CRC. SEN spreads hate and they are strongly connected to Ehlers and the new council members. Ehlers needs to condemn SEN’s rhetoric and support the good work of the CRC.
Th