Lemon Grove is getting $8.4 million from the state to find and house more than 100 people living along a highway, significantly boosting homeless outreach in a region that historically has had fewer services.
California’s Encampment Resolution Fund money will be directed toward an approximately two-mile stretch of State Route 94 along the northern edge of the city.
Officials estimate that the effort, which includes connecting homeless residents with support services such as mental health aid and temporary rental assistance, will last two years.
Lemon Grove Mayor Alysson Snow grew emotional Monday talking about those who’d slept outside during the previous night’s storm. “Our city’s collective heart cannot take leaving these people, leaving our residents — people with families — out in the rain,” she said at a press conference near the highway. “This is not a community of NIMBYs, this is a community of people who care.”
Snow’s reference to NIMBYs, an acronym for “not in my backyard” that often refers to residents opposed to new housing and shelter, served as an implicit rebuke to some individuals who are up in arms about another homelessness project in the pipeline: building 70 small cabins near the intersection of Troy Street and Sweetwater Road.
Proposals for new shelter often receive pushback, yet the opposition to the cabins appears particularly strident. NBC7 reported that hundreds of attendees at one community meeting last summer grew so angry that county Supervisor Monica Montgomery-Steppe couldn’t even finish a presentation about the project.
Some of those critics were present Monday to demand that the mayor and rest of the City Council, who were also present, lobby the County of San Diego to scrap the cabins.
Ken King, a 56-year-old Lemon Grove resident, said after the press conference that he was glad to hear a grant would expand outreach and hoped that was reason enough to rethink the shelter. The project’s proximity to Mount Vernon Elementary School made him nervous, he said, especially if any program participants were struggling with mental health or addiction.
The Lemon Grove City Council scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday evening in the Roberto Alvarez Auditorium to discuss the shelter plan.
Lemon Grove’s homeless population has certainly been on the rise. An annual one-day tally found 111 people sleeping outside or in vehicles at the start of 2024, dozens more than the previous year. While results from January’s point-in-time count are still being calculated, this year’s total may have again gone up since homelessness countywide continues to grow.
There are few shelters in East County and none in Lemon Grove.
The state grant should be enough to get 102 individuals into some form of permanent housing. “It is not about moving people around,” Tamera Kohler, CEO of the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, said Monday. “It is about ending homelessness.”
The task force partnered with the city of Lemon Grove to get the grant, and Kohler said she hoped the state would deliver the money within the next three months. The California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, has already signed off on outreach teams working on state land.
The city additionally plans to chip in more than $257,000 for cleaning and sanitation services, although officials cautioned that homeless people’s belongings would not be unilaterally thrown out, according to the grant application.
Lemon Grove leaders added that neighboring La Mesa, which has also seen an increase in street homelessness, should benefit from additional outreach as some homeless people move back and forth between cities.
The overall effort will be similar to what the city of San Diego did several months ago while clearing a large riverbed encampment near Sea World known as “The Island.” Yet cities may not be able to count on state grants for much longer. California is facing a budget deficit and homelessness services could soon face cuts.
Monday’s press conference took place behind a Food 4 Less. Just down the sidewalk was a cluster of shopping carts and a small tent. Two people sat inside.
“This is not the retirement I dreamed of,” remarked Craig, 63, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be published. Craig said he spent years working as an electrician but had struggled to find jobs since the pandemic hit. He started receiving Social Security checks early and estimated that out of a monthly allotment of around $1,000, he could devote $750 to rent. But there weren’t a lot of $750 units on the market.
Rental aid was definitely of interest, he said. Barring that, just a place to store stuff would be nice. Craig said that more than once he’d returned to an encampment only to find that everything he owned had either been stolen or trashed.
“Nobody’s happy with the situation,” he added. “I’m no happier being here than Food 4 Less is or Home Depot or any of the neighbors.”
