The Learning Curve: San Diego Unified (Finally) Inks Agreement for Safe Parking

After more than two years of bureaucratic wrangling, funding fiascos, a premature obituary, an improbable resurrection and a whole lot of ruffled feathers, officials have finally inked a deal to open a safe parking site for homeless families at San Diego Unified’s old Central Elementary. 

On Wednesday morning, officials from the district, the San Diego Housing Commission, nonprofit Jewish Family Service and San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera gathered at the City Heights property that once housed Central Elementary. The school was relocated to a newly built campus a couple of blocks away. 

Seven months earlier, some of the same officials staged a similar gathering urging the city of San Diego to prioritize the long-talked-about creation of a safe parking lot at the now-vacant campus. This time they were there to celebrate the project passing its last technical hurdle. 

“In a couple of weeks now, after developing and pursuing this idea for a couple of years, some families with students in our district will have a little bit of a better night than they would have otherwise,” said Trustee Richard Barrera, one of the project’s most consistent advocates. “Having access to a safe place to spend the night with support could mean the difference of getting onto the path towards permanent housing, and especially for our perspective students being able to focus on succeeding in school.” 

The deets: San Diego Unified trustees voted unanimously at Tuesday’s board meeting to approve a licensing agreement with the San Diego Housing Commission for a safe parking site at the campus. The agreement runs until Nov. 2026. The site will be open to at least 40 homeless families with children living in their cars who need a place to park and sleep overnight. 

 When it comes to operations, the commission plans to vote next week on whether to approve a $593,000 contract with Jewish Family Service paid for via city and grant dollars. The nonprofit already runs five other safe parking sites for the city of San Diego and will provide additional services to families, like assistance locating more permanent housing. 

San Diego Unified’s Children and Youth in Transition department, meanwhile, will handle referrals to the safe parking lot. District students will receive priority, but the site will be open to all families with children. Those families will also have access to neighboring classroom trailers – where case management sessions will be conducted and students will be able to complete homework – appliances for meal prep and handwashing stations.  

San Diego Unified Trustee Shana Hazan said district officials are optimistic that the safe parking lot will be operational before the end of the year. 

“It took too long, but I think it’s the ending we were all looking for,” Hazan said. 

The background: District officials first offered the campus to the city for free as a potential site for safe parking in June 2023, and even given early excitement, the project was plagued by setbacks.  

A $342,450 Regional Task Force on Homelessness grant secured by the city of San Diego only covered a portion of the safe parking lot’s estimated nearly $1 million price tag. City officials then attempted to reallocate that funding to its planned H Barracks safe parking site. As a result of the attempted funding switcheroo, the Regional Task Force ultimately pulled the grant back. 

Faced with a mounting budget deficit and the rescinded grant, city of San Diego staff concluded the project wasn’t viable. 

Months later, as the city’s budget snaked its way toward approval, some eleventh-hour budget maneuvering by Councilmember Elo-Rivera eventually secured $250,000 city funding for the safe parking site. That rescinded task force grant was also reacquired for the project and a new estimate brought down the original projected cost significantly.  

For Elo-Rivera, it was personal. He lived in his car during law school and said no child should have to deal with that. 

“Moms and their kids shouldn’t be sleeping on the streets in their cars when there’s a safe place they could be,” he said. “It’s literally not more complicated than that.” 

The hold up: Even with funding secured, the project faced months of delays as stakeholders worked their way through tricky timeline and liability insurance questions. Elo-Rivera credited district officials, city councilmembers, the housing commission and Jewish Family Service staff for refusing to let the safe parking lot die. That collaboration stood at odds with the “petty politics” Elo-Rivera felt dominated the negotiations early on.  

The project’s delays came with a cost. San Diego Unified plans to raze the old Central Elementary site to build affordable housing at some point. That’s why the lease agreement includes an early termination option should the district begin its planned redevelopment.  

So, every day the project was delayed was one fewer day it could serve families. 

“This could have happened quicker if we weren’t having a tug of war within the city as to whether or not this could happen or should happen,” Elo-Rivera said. “When we come at these problems from a sincere place of wanting to address problems, then we can do things.” 

What’s next: Despite the difficulties, Elo-Rivera said the site is serving a larger purpose. Yes, giving families a place to stay is important, but he thinks this project could serve as a template for future efforts. 

“If we can figure out how to do it here, we can figure out how to replicate it and build on it,” he said. 

Building on it is likely necessary, because student homelessness is on the rise. As of last school year, 7,492 San Diego Unified students were homeless – about eight percent of the district’s enrollment. The number of homeless students shot up about 16 percent from the year before. Those students face steep challenges to success in school. 

Hazan also thinks it should just be the beginning. Officials have heard from dozens of families living in their cars who are interested in using the Central Elementary site, Hazan said. But she has a hunch that figure may be an undercount but said it’s still too early to be sure. 

“Our work over the next year is to identify who needs services. What about this model works? What might need to be tweaked? And then are additional sites needed?” Hazan said. “We have lots of parking lots that are either not used or underused. There are a lot of options that we could explore.” 

Reality check: Ryan Clumpner is the vice chair of the San Diego Housing Commission’s board. He said because of the scale of the region’s homelessness crisis, leaders of every agency need to ask themselves how they can contribute – even those that haven’t traditionally played a role. Those not trying to contribute, he said, aren’t fulfilling their obligation to the public.  

For Clumpner, safe parking lots are an example of the tiered system of interventions needed.  

Homelessness is like a ladder.  

Near the top are people who may be struggling to pay rent and at risk of losing their homes. At the bottom are people actually living on the streets, often the most visible aspect of the crisis. As people descend that ladder into homelessness, getting them out becomes progressively more challenging and expensive. So, interventions like safe parking, which can provide people with services and support before they end up on the street, are vital. 

But Clumpner said the Central Elementary project’s long winding road to reality underscores a sort of crisis within the homelessness crisis – how difficult it is to get even popular projects off the ground. 

 “We have to come to grips with the reality that we need to find better, faster and more efficient ways to generate interventions into homelessness, because if this is the path that has to be taken at every site where land is available to assist families who are experiencing homelessness then we are more or less doomed,” he said. 

What We’re Writing 

In case you haven’t heard, Voice of San Diego turned 20 this year! To celebrate, we’ve been revisiting some of our most impactful work over the past two decades, like Mario Koran’s graduation rate series. In those stories, Koran revealed that San Diego Unified often counseled struggling students to leave district-managed schools, which padded its sky-high graduation rate. 

Students at about 20 schools across the county staged walkouts earlier this month to demonstrate in support of the California Polluters ay Climate Superfund Act. The bill would require the largest oil, gas and coal companies to pay fees based on the amount of pollution they’ve unleashed and the damage it’s caused the climate.  

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