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
1 comment
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.