At the June 24 Encinitas City Council meeting, the council majority voted to reject a staff recommendation to apply for a $4 million grant from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
Turning away this economic support, especially as federal funding for housing and homelessness declines, is unconscionable.
This decision demonstrates a reflexive hostility toward state agencies and nonprofit partners, driven by an “us vs. them” worldview that demonizes service providers and rejects proven, effective solutions.
Encinitans are witnessing a dangerous trend: the rebranding of essential community support as an “industrial complex.” Let us be clear about the alternative. A city that treats vulnerable residents — seniors on fixed incomes, our essential workforce and those facing temporary hardship — as outsiders is not “protecting its character”; it is eroding its foundation.
This is a shift toward exclusionary policymaking that narrows the path for our neighbors to remain in the community they helped build.
The history of Encinitas tells a different story. Tak Sugimoto, the first Japanese American to graduate from San Dieguito High School after World War II, often spoke of the hospitality shown to his family by Magdalena and Paul Ecke Sr.
During the Great Depression, the Eckes supported their workers by providing land to grow food and resources to support their families.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the Sugimoto family was forced into internment camps, the Eckes stored their possessions and supported them through that harrowing process. The Chevy truck saved from confiscation became a lifeline for the Sugimoto family once they returned home.
At a 2017 City of Encinitas Housing Task Force meeting, Sugimoto summarized what community character means: “Big house, little house. It doesn’t matter. It is the character of the person inside that matters.”
The council’s decision to reject an opportunity to supplement our limited city budget with $4 million in state funding for homelessness resolution ignores this legacy. By refusing resources tied to the “Housing First” model — despite the recommendations of our professional Homeless Services staff and the San Diego Rescue Mission — our leadership has prioritized rigid ideology over practical, urgent needs.
When the council treats state partnerships with hostility, it is not protecting Encinitas; it is dismantling the infrastructure needed to manage our housing crisis.
True fiscal responsibility is not found in isolationism, but in the human-centered infrastructure that keeps our neighbors stable and housed. When we ignore our current economic reality, we don’t protect our past; we only ensure that our future becomes a place where the people who built this city can no longer afford to live.
The refusal of this grant signals that our leadership is comfortable sacrificing our city’s long-term economic health to satisfy a narrow ideological agenda. A city that rejects proven, fiscally responsible solutions for the sake of performative defiance will inevitably pay a higher social cost and lose the diverse, resilient fabric that has defined Encinitas for generations.
It is time for our City Council to abandon these exclusionary tactics and implement the bold, realistic policies necessary to ensure that Encinitas remains a vibrant home for all.
Theresa Beauchamp
Encinitas
4 comments
Theresa Beauchamp is right to question what this decision says about the direction of our city.
The criticism below does not actually identify the supposed “strings” that made this grant unacceptable. The requirements discussed publicly were things like outreach, case management, interim shelter, housing assistance, fiscal reporting and a pathway toward permanent housing—not importing people into Encinitas or promising indefinite hotel stays. City staff believed the program was a fit, and the San Diego Rescue Mission indicated it could work within the framework. Yet the council majority rejected nearly $4 million without presenting a funded alternative.
The claims about a previous grant “bringing in homeless people,” filling three hotels and then “dumping them into our streets” are also presented without documentation and appear to conflate entirely different programs. Repeating a dramatic story does not make it part of the public record.
And comparing this grant to Santa Fe Drive avoids the actual issue. This funding would have paid for services and housing support for people experiencing homelessness. Rejecting it does not save taxpayers money; the state funds will be spent elsewhere, while Encinitas may now have to use its own General Fund if it wants to provide comparable services.
That is precisely the ideological governance the op-ed describes: rejecting professional recommendations and outside resources because of hostility toward Housing First, HCD and nonprofit service providers, then calling the rejection fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility requires weighing the actual proposal, the actual costs and the actual alternatives—not relying on slogans and unsupported anecdotes.
The only ideology is coming from the writer of the article and that entire group.
Rejecting a Grant with strings attached has nothing to do with empathy.
Those folks believe that anything that makes THEM feel good is good Governance.
Good policy is good policy, they label anyone that disagrees with them as ideologically based and label people as racists, lacking empathy and worse.
It’s grown tiresome.
Bruce and the majority of the Council want to find another way since whatever has been done so far is clearly not working.
Beauchamp is either ignorant of the facts or chooses to mislead. The grant per the agency that funds confirmed for Encinitas staff that it is indeed a “housing first” grant despite those words being stripped out to make it sound more attractive to cities. As Encinitas does not participate in housing first programs, along with other SANDAG cities, we would be lying on the application if we applied for it. Is that what Beauchamp supports – misrepresenting ourselves?
She also neglects to question why Kranz’s city manager pulled Encinitas’ grant application the day before her last with the city. Why wasn’t she outraged then? Smells like dirty politics at work here. No surprise as her husband, Bob Ayers, was caught doing the same in the November 2024 election: https://thecoastnews.com/letters-lies-conflict-and-dirty-politics-fuel-ehlers-hit-piece/. Quite the pair.
We now have a Mayor and Council that actually looks at the terms of a Grant before just accepting it.
Encinitas would have been better off without the Grant Blakespear took for Santa Fe, which is such a mess we now have to spend money to fix it.
Last time Blakespear accepted a Homeless Grant she ended up bringing in Homeless from neighboring Cities since Encinitas didn’t have enough homeless to fill half a Hotel, let alone three.
When the Grant ended Blakespear just dumped them out into our Streets where they remain.
Bruce Ehlers and the Council (except for Lyndes) are doing the right thing in rejecting the strings attached Grant.