The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will vote on a new budget Thursday that is expected to include a shift in funding for homeless services. While the volume of homeless services and programs won’t be reduced, some one-time grants that fund homeless programs are set to expire.
Some of the grants coming to a close support permanent housing solutions, temporary housing vouchers and outreach workers in the Plaza Bonita and San Diego Riverbed areas.
The San Diego Riverpark Foundation conducted the research that helped the county secure the Encampment Resolution Program grant money. The Foundation’s Chief Operating Officer Sarah Hutmacher said that since this funding has been implemented, her team has been able to connect more people experiencing homelessness in the riverbed to outreach workers and services.
“We've built a lot of great infrastructure, but the work continues,” Hutmacher said. “And it would be a real shame for the river to have everything go back to the way it was.”
Her team of environmentalists help refer people experiencing homelessness to outreach workers. When she started working in the riverbed in 2019 she said there were no outreach workers, but now there’s almost a dozen helping people daily.
Hutmacher estimates there’s currently around 200 people who call the San Diego Riverbed home. This community of people rely on the services partially funded by the county.
Amanda Digirolamo lives in the riverbed in a large tent with all of her belongings and a dog named kitty cat. She said she became homeless after fleeing domestic violence.
“I just want to go home to my youngest kids, my oldest son, my two nieces,” Digirolamo said. “I just want to go home. I'm tired of being homeless and dirty.”
While some of the grants that support people at risk of or experiencing homelessness are ending, the county is not set to cut any homeless services or programs.
While the budget appears to have a net decrease in homeless services, County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said that’s because some of the funding is holding over from the previous year to maintain current levels.
“We actually, we have no reductions to services or programs in the next fiscal year,” Montgomery Steppe said. “(The funding) does appear lower, because of how certain allocations were recorded this fiscal year.”
While they don’t always see eye to eye, she said the entire Board of Supervisors can agree they want to keep people off the streets. Montgomery Steppe told KPBS they consider how many people each program serves every budget season.
While funding for all homeless services and programs is guaranteed this year because funding was allocated in last year’s budget, Hutmacher warns of the dangers of losing resources.
“It's very concerning whenever those resources start to go away, because unfortunately, when people move out, there are new people moving in and new people experiencing homelessness, and those people are also in need of resources,” Hutmacher said. “So we are really committed to continuing the data collection so that we can help secure additional grants and additional investment from the community to continue this work.”
She said the Riverpark Foundation will continue using their research to help the county apply to more grants in the future.
