DC Explained: Can San Diego Tackle Homelessness with Less Help from Washington?

On July 24, President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” Although its name may indicate otherwise, the order focuses on how the United States tackles the growing challenges of homelessness.

The order signals the Trump administration’s intent to direct federal support away from states and cities that seek to put unhoused individuals into housing first, and toward places that adopt more punitive measures. Those measures include forcibly hospitalizing homeless people who are experiencing mental illness, conditioning housing assistance on sobriety, and cracking down on urban encampments.

Experts have responded with concern.

“This order represents the most harmful policy proposal on homelessness in my career,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in a statement.

This executive order, like many others issued since January, is likely to face significant court challenges. At the same time, however, it may obscure the wider impacts that changing federal policies could have on efforts to address one of San Diego’s thorniest challenges.

Homelessness in San Diego

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the federal agency in charge of homelessness programs, about 10,000 San Diego County individuals lacked housing in 2024. The county’s rate of 324 homeless persons per 100,000 residents was higher than the rate in most major U.S. cities, and about 50 percent higher than the U.S.-wide average. While a range of factors contribute to the region’s homelessness challenge, most researchers agree that the unaffordability of housing—a problem across the state of California—is the most important one.

The panoply of policies and programs to address homelessness mirrors the complexity of the problem itself. The county of San Diego administers 46 different local programs that primarily serve individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness, while approximately 60 different programs operate within the city of San Diego. These programs support outreach, temporary shelter, permanent supportive housing, legal aid, and access to rehabilitative services. And a vast array of local government agencies and nonprofits implement them, from child welfare offices, to police and parks departments, to hospitals, to shelter providers such as Father Joe’s Villages and Alpha Project for the Homeless.

In a bit of good news, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness reported that an annual January count registered a decline in homeless individuals in San Diego County for the first time in several years. The region’s overall rate of homelessness remains high, and the data showed a few worrying signs, such as a rise in the number of people living in their vehicles. Yet the overall trend suggested that expanded funding and enhanced provider coordination may have started to turn the tide against a stubborn problem.

The Trump Administration Takes Aim at HUD

No sooner had local officials conducted their latest count of the unhoused in January, than the Trump administration assumed office, and a new set of challenges emerged.

Between January and March, federal officials froze grants that the Biden administration had already committed to homelessness service providers. They subsequently attempted to impose new conditions on grant recipients relating to, among other things, “gender ideology” and illegal immigration. A federal judge has blocked those actions for now, and HUD has unfrozen the dollars, but access to future funding remains uncertain.

At the same time, the Trump administration began an aggressive effort to downsize HUD. By April, nearly one-quarter of HUD’s workforce had been laid off or accepted a buyout, while HUD also moved to close its field offices around the country. And DOGE effectively shuttered the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. These cuts and closures could eventually hamper San Diego’s ability to access federal resources and guidance for combatting homelessness.

Compounding the challenge, the White House this spring proposed a HUD budget for the coming year that would slash the agency’s funding by 44 percent. The proposal included steep reductions in services and long-term supports to the homeless, and new time limits on assistance. Cuts of that magnitude would be catastrophic for entities like the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC), which administers most of those programs for the city of San Diego, and receives more than 70 percent of its annual dollars from Washington.

A Likely Federal Funding Reprieve, but Lingering Gaps

Fortunately for local providers, the White House doesn’t have the final say on the federal budget. Congressional committees in the House and Senate that oversee HUD dollars used the agency’s existing funding levels, rather than the administration’s proposal, as a starting point for negotiations. Even in this rosier budget scenario, however, San Diego will face tough decisions and trade-offs in maintaining progress against homelessness.

Most federal spending on homelessness in San Diego comes from federal housing vouchers, which pay landlords the difference between rents and what low-income families can afford. In San Diego, officials have dedicated approximately one-third of these vouchers to people experiencing homelessness. Vouchers enable unhoused individuals to get housed, and prevent housed individuals from becoming homeless. Even if Congress preserves or slightly increases funding for vouchers, SDHC projects that it will face a $17 million rental assistance shortfall next year, due to the growing gap between rising local rents and stagnant family incomes. That shortfall could mean that 900 local households in need go without assistance.

On top of that, Congress appears unlikely to renew support for the Emergency Housing Vouchers program created during the Covid-19 pandemic, effectively terminating assistance for another 460 households already at high risk of homelessness. Over time, stagnant or declining HUD funding will also slow the development of new apartments affordable to the neediest families, financing for which usually relies on vouchers.

Time to Step Up?

Ultimately, the San Diego region won’t be able to sustain progress at fighting homelessness without more affordable units, more assistance for low-income renters, and continued support for evidence-based approaches. And Washington looks to be an increasingly unreliable source for all three.

Fortunately, the state of California has begun to step up. The city and county of San Diego received about $60 million from Sacramento in the latest round of the Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention program, and local governments are now eligible to apply for a portion of the Proposition 1-funded $2.2 billion commitment to permanent supportive housing.

Now, it may be time for San Diego’s local governments to do more. Over the last several years, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Alameda counties, among others, have adopted new tax measures that generate significant local resources for homelessness alleviation and prevention. San Diegans have the ability to follow their lead, but the local public sector and its partners will have to demonstrate continued progress to secure voters’ trust. The region may need to act soon before Washington’s hostility at worst, or neglect at best, exacerbates the crisis.

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