3 weeks ago
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Encinitas may not replace the overnight parking lot program for homeless people, which operated at the city’s Community & Senior Center until the end of 2025.
“There are other ways to better serve those same clients,” Mayor Bruce Ehlers said as the City Council discussed the latest version of the city’s five-year, homeless planning document during a special meeting Wednesday.
Ehlers said he knows that some homeless people, particularly women, say they would prefer to sleep in their vehicles for safety reasons rather than going to the Buena Creek Navigation Center — a regional facility with 48 beds that opened in Vista in 2024. Considered a “low-barrier” housing facility, Buena Creek admits people who may have substance abuse or mental health issues and then allows them to work toward recovery.
However, the mayor said, people who don’t want to go there would be better served with hotel vouchers, rather than being allowed to sleep in their vehicles in an Encinitas city parking lot each night for many weeks while caseworkers attempt to find housing for them.
Established by Jewish Family Service at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the former Encinitas Safe Parking Lot program was originally located on the Leichtag Foundation property. It relocated to the lower part of the community center parking lot in 2021.
When it was established, proponents said it would help the community’s “hidden homeless” — people who had recently lost the...
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