The number of people experiencing homelessness in the San Diego Riverbed this April dropped nearly 23% compared to the same time last year, according to a new census survey of the area.
Along the banks of the San Diego Riverbed from Ocean Beach to Santee, the San Diego Riverbed Foundation counted 195 people experiencing homelessness during their Spring Census this month, a decline from 252 people in April 2025.
Rachel Downing, the Foundation’s Clean River Program Manager, said at the highest over 400 people were living in the riverbed. While she said this spring’s results show significant progress, “it's still 195 people too many.”
“We do strongly believe that people shouldn't be living in the riverbed, but we just have a deep compassion and understanding for circumstance,” Downing said.
During the foundation’s Spring Homeless Census, 18 teams of volunteers, interns and staff members cover the riverbed from Ocean Beach to Walker Preserve in Santee. The goal is simply to count the number of people experiencing homelessness so they can share that information with policy makers and service providers across the county.
Service providers like PATH, contracted by the city of San Diego, also assist during the count. PATH Associate Director of Programs Jayna Lee said that the organization has case managers and a program manager at the riverbed daily with the goal of getting people into permanent housing.
According to data from PATH, from April 1, 2025 to April 23, 2026, teams oversaw 71 entries into permanent housing. Lee said this data does not include exits into transitional housing and only reflects the portion of the riverbed in the city of San Diego.
“To bring that number down, yes we're moving people out and we're getting them into the right places,” Lee said.
Lee said the number of people moved into permanent housing over the past year is higher than the decrease in the number of people living in the riverbed because census counts might not find everyone and new people move in and out throughout the year.
Downing’s team works with service providers like PATH to build trust with people experiencing homelessness in the riverbed and help connect them to services. She said her team helps case managers keep in touch with their unhoused clients.
Lee said that people living in the riverbed have formed their own, very strong community, which she said is often a reason many choose to live along the river and not closer to more resources. But she said that a lack of trust in the system and not knowing how long it will take to get into permanent housing is the main reason some chose not to engage with case management.
“Not having faith in the system is one of the big, big things, and it's just a lack of resources,” Lee said. “If we could place everyone into housing, I'm sure that would make our lives a lot easier. But the city just doesn't have that.”
In addition to engaging with the community of people living in the riverbed alongside service providers, Downing's team is also working to map and clean up pollution almost everyday. She said they’ve found in any given year, 65-90% of trash in the San Diego Riverbed is associated with homelessness.
“If we want a healthy river, we have to make sure that nobody's living down here and disposing of their waste down here,” she said. “However, we understand that everybody experiencing homelessness is living in a different situation, and they deserve our respect because they're part of our community.”
Downing said that before unhoused census counts began including the riverbed population, many of those people never had access to a service provider before. Now the data collected at census counts are able to bring more resources to the community that live here.
The San Diego Riverbed Foundation counts the number of people experiencing homelessness in the riverbed three times a year, during Fall and Spring Census counts and the annual Point-in-Time Count during the winter. Downing said that the spring count is the most accurate, because flooding in the fall and winter forces people away from the river.
