December was the second-straight month when San Diego County’s homeless population shrank, marking the crisis’ longest contraction since officials began publishing these statistics in late 2021.
Nine hundred and twenty homeless people countywide found housing last month while 903 individuals lost a place to stay for the first time, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. November similarly saw the number of residents who were housed exceed how many became newly homeless.
Leaders expressed cautious optimism after more than two-and-a-half years where homelessness only grew. “The recent trend is encouraging,” Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement, “and to ensure we keep it heading in the right direction, I will continue to prioritize getting people off the streets, into care and on a path to housing.”
The task force publishes its monthly reports using the Homeless Management Information System, a database that’s regularly updated by 140-plus organizations. The HMIS numbers are still likely an undercount — someone recently evicted from their home could remain hidden, for example, by couch surfing with friends — but they offer a more accurate portrayal of how many are asking for help than some other methods of quantifying local homelessness.
That includes the county’s annual point-in-time count, happening next week, that relies on volunteers and gives only a one-day snapshot of the crisis.
Tamera Kohler, the task force’s CEO, was so surprised to see the positive numbers that she had staffers double check the last two months to make sure the database wasn’t missing information from key programs or shelters. That review only confirmed a decline in new homelessness throughout the region and across demographics, including among families and older adults, she said.
Kohler offered a number of theories as to why this is happening. The holiday season may have meant that landlords were less likely to evict people and families more willing to take in relatives, she said. The rental market is also less brutal than it has been. (One recent study found that rents countywide are still going up but at a slower pace.)
Furthermore, it’s possible that decreased border crossings are playing a part.
The U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended significantly fewer migrants coming from Mexico since former President Joe Biden in June limited access to asylum. While aid workers have long said that the vast majority of new arrivals quickly leave San Diego, some immigrants do end up having nowhere else to go. Alpha Project shelters, for example, currently have only about 80 undocumented residents, down from a high of 220, according to Bob McElroy, the nonprofit’s CEO.
Yet the homelessness services system generally doesn’t track how many participants are asylum seekers, making it difficult to say if there are fewer migrant encampments today than six months ago.
Deacon Jim Vargas, head of Father Joe’s Villages, said the improving numbers didn’t mean the county had turned a corner. If anything, the region needed to invest more in shelter and affordable housing, he argued. “The strategies of prevention and diversion, which are working to keep people from falling on to the streets, need to be intensified.”
San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava largely echoed that sentiment, as did county Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe. “We cannot become complacent when we are still faced with triple-digit levels of homelessness,” she wrote in an email. “This data must serve as a call to action, driving us to develop and implement more effective solutions.”
The task force began publishing monthly reports in October 2021. From that period to the most recent November, there have been only two other months when the crisis contracted. Each was immediately followed by long stretches where far more people ended up homeless.
