How San Diego’s Safe Sleeping Sites Are Faring on Housing

It’s now been more than 10 months since the city opened the first of two large-scale campgrounds offering homeless residents an alternative to shelters. The relatively new model, which the city has dubbed safe sleeping, is now grappling with the same challenges moving residents into housing as the city’s longstanding shelters. 

Yet safe sleeping providers and city officials say they are also serving a larger volume of unsheltered people reluctant to enter traditional shelters who may need more time to stabilize before they seek housing. They acknowledge they have also confronted staffing kinks and confusion as they ramp up – and are continuing to adjust as they learn more about their operations. 

Here’s what I found after digging into housing outcomes at the two safe sleeping sites now filled with more than 400 tents and other amenities. 

By the Numbers 

When Mayor Todd Gloria announced the opening of the city’s first campsite for homeless San Diegans last summer, he emphasized that the program would put those who moved in “on the path toward permanent housing.” 

Since then, at least 82 people have moved from the city’s two Balboa Park campsites into permanent homes. That equates to about 10 percent of the hundreds of residents who left the sites since the first lot opened about 10 months ago. 

By comparison, 18 percent of people who departed homeless shelters overseen by the city’s housing agency landed permanent homes from July 2023 through March.  

Both percentages reflect a punishing local housing market – and differences between the two approaches designed to give homeless San Diegans a refuge from the street. 

Dreams for Change, the lead operator at the city’s safe campsites, argues they shouldn’t be compared to traditional shelters.  

Voice of San Diego chose to highlight the housing outcomes for city shelters to provide a benchmark for the safe sleeping program’s housing track record thus far. 

Dreams for Change describes safe sleeping as a service program rather than a shelter one and says it tries to meet homeless San Diegans who enter it where they are. 

Dreams for Change CEO Teresa Smith and others including Sarah Jarman, who leads the city’s Homelessness Strategies and Solutions Department, say that the safe sleeping sites can be an initial landing place for homeless San Diegans who ultimately move onto a more intensive shelter or treatment program – or even just take steps to access services they have been apprehensive about in the past.  

“The biggest joy next to a client obtaining their own place is the client who we have been told has been shelter and service resistant for many years asks us to help them take that first step, be it detox and rehab, healthcare or simply willing to explore what it will take to move forward,” Smith said. 

But a handful of homeless San Diegans who have stayed at the two sites told Voice of San Diego they received minimal support from service workers they expected to help them find housing. There’s also been confusion about who’s providing case management for clients at the campsites. 

Mayor Gloria was initially reluctant to pursue safe campsites. After the city temporarily opened a tent village at a city maintenance yard at 20th and B Street during the 2017 hepatitis A outbreak, a former federal official Gloria later hired to advise him on homelessness argued the program wasn’t focused enough on moving people into permanent homes. 

Gloria’s perspective shifted as homelessness surged and advocates lobbied for tent villages. About a year later, after Gloria and downtown Councilmember Stephen Whitburn announced they’d push a homeless camping ban that was ultimately approved, Gloria said he’d open two large-scale campgrounds to provide another option for unsheltered San Diegans. to provide another option for unsheltered San Diegans. 

The first campsite at 20th and B Street, operated by Dreams for Change, opened in late June, a month before the camping ban took effect. The O Lot behind the Naval Medical Center on the edge of Balboa Park, operated by Dreams for Change and the Downtown San Diego Partnership, opened in October. The two sites have since collectively welcomed more than 1,000 homeless residents, including many who have since left. As of last week, 485 people were staying at the sites. 

The campgrounds differ significantly from the city’s traditional shelters.  

Residents sleep in tents rather than in rooms packed with cots or bunk beds, giving them more privacy and the ability to stay with people they once lived with on the street.  

More Reliance on Outside Providers 

The city also opted to staff the programs differently.  

The safe sleeping program often relies on outreach workers who helped their clients get into the safe sleeping program to keep working with them. At city shelters, outreach workers get their clients in, but shelter workers take over.  

Dreams for Change and the city have argued their approach keeps clients more connected with outreach workers and builds on trust that’s already been established. Outreach workers also have an easier time finding their clients when they’re not forced to move from place to place on the street.  

This has also meant the new program is increasing the caseloads of already-busy outreach workers and has fueled confusion among some safe sleeping residents, and at times between providers, over who is responsible for aiding specific clients. 

As of last month, Dreams for Change reported that outside providers were handling case management for 60 percent of the clients staying in their campsite areas. The Downtown Partnership, which has its own outreach teams, reported that outside providers handled case management for 9 percent of residents staying in its area of O Lot. Healthcare in Action, which has a contract to provide medical services at both sites, also provides some case management to residents with Molina Healthcare insurance. 

The unique staffing model has come with cracks, even for a client who ultimately moved into housing. 

What Safe Sleeping Residents Say 

James Swann, 64, moved into O Lot in late February with the help of a PATH outreach worker and secured his own apartment in early April.  

Yet Swann said the PATH outreach worker didn’t seem to have much time for him once he moved to the safe sleeping site. The situation changed when Swann found an East Village apartment on his own. He said that’s when a Dreams for Change program manager swooped in to help with paperwork and secure temporary assistance to cover his initial couple months there. Swann is adamant he couldn’t have moved into the apartment without that last minute help from Dreams for Change – or his own initiative. 

“I got my life back,” Swann said. “It wasn’t easy.” 

In separate statements, Smith of Dreams for Change and PATH spokesperson Tyler Renner wrote that some clients who move in with the help of PATH, the city’s foremost outreach provider, are handed off to Dreams for Change for case management depending on the outreach team that is assisting them. 

Smith also said relying on clients’ initiative is a feature, not a bug, of its safe campsite operation. She said it’s an example of the program “right-sizing services” to clients.  

“By building upon a client’s strengths and capacities, the client is in charge of their progression, with staff supporting where needed, allowing staff to provide a higher level of focus on those who need greater support,” Smith wrote in an email. 

O Lot resident Joseph Caraveo, 56, said he’s watched a number of former safe sleeping clients secure housing but like, Smith, emphasized the importance of initiative.  

“You can go through this place five years and not ever see a case manager if that’s what you choose to do,” Caraveo said. 

Caraveo’s own experience underscores the challenges of housing homeless San Diegans who often have to make tough choices about what will work for them. Earlier this year, Caraveo learned he could access temporary rental assistance for two months to move into housing, but he declined the offer out of fear he wouldn’t be able to cover rent on his own when it expired. He decided it’d be better to remain at the safe sleeping site, work to increase his income and save money. 

Daniel Corvalan, 41, who stays at the 20th and B Street lot, said he didn’t get much support at the safe sleeping site until recently despite moving in last October. Corvalan said he didn’t hear from a case manager for months though he noticed that seniors and people with disabilities got more attention. 

More recently, after Voice inquired about his situation, Corvalan said he was assigned a new case manager. 

“It appears to me they stepped their game up regarding case managers,” Corvalan said. 

Lessons and Adjustments 

Smith acknowledged the city and Dreams for Change pulled clients’ files soon after the first site opened after hearing a wave of people say they didn’t have a case manager or know who their case manager was. They determined the issue affected 94 clients who were brought in by outreach providers not contracted with the city. Smith said Dreams for Change assigned new case managers to work with those clients.  

There were early disconnects at the Downtown Partnership’s space at O Lot too. 

Craig Thomas, an Alpha Project outreach supervisor, said his teams were excited to move clients into O Lot after it opened but soon heard from some that they weren’t getting the assistance they expected. In those early months, Alpha Project was focused on other commitments and Thomas said he told some clients who approached him with concerns to call 2-1-1 to seek street-based case management and get housing aid he couldn’t provide. He was disappointed he didn’t have the bandwidth to help. 

“I’m an outreach worker, not a case manager,” Thomas said. “We wear many hats but technically my job and title is an outreach specialist, so I focus solely on documentation, building a rapport, getting them into shelter. It’s only because I absolutely love what I do that I’m even interested in the case management part of this.” 

In a statement, Downtown Partnership spokesperson Sarah Brothers wrote that the business group learned from early challenges and has bolstered both its outreach and on-site staffing. 

“As we continued to intake clients working with both our outreach team and other outreach providers, we discovered that a sustainable path for this new model would be complemented by both on-site case management and staff support, and the growth of our Unhoused Care Team who provide outreach services in downtown,” Brothers wrote.  

Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the city’s safe sleeping program would likely benefit from increased staffing and focus on securing housing for residents. He argued that outreach and housing navigation work are both full-time jobs in a city with significant street homelessness and a competitive housing market and that the city should approach staffing accordingly. 

“If they want to see better housing outcomes in those sites, then adequately resourcing housing navigation would be important,” Visotzky said. 

Jarman acknowledged the city is learning and adjusting as it pursues a model that’s still relatively new throughout the country. 

“There’s not a lot of benchmarking across the nation of how it should or shouldn’t be run and we constantly have to learn by doing,” Jarman said.  

Jarman said the average length of time it’s taking homeless San Diegans staying in shelters to move into housing – now up to 189 days, according to the city’s housing agency – mean that it will take time to truly assess the campsites’ performance. 

Josh Callery-Coyne, the Downtown Partnership’s vice president of policy and civic engagement, struck a similar tone. 

“I think we’re working on an investment that frankly hasn’t paid off yet,” Callery-Coyne said.