This week the City Council approved a grant to enhance clinical services at Carlsbad’s only emergency homeless shelter, another step in the city’s work to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness in Carlsbad.

• The nonprofit Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego operates the La Posada de Guadalupe emergency shelter, which provides emergency and transitional shelter services to homeless men, including farmworkers.
• The city has worked with the nonprofit for many years, helping to identify a location for the shelter and contributing money to help develop and operate it.
• Both the city and Catholic Charities want to expand the shelter to serve more people, but doing that requires some changes, including hiring more staff with clinical expertise. The agreement approved by the City Council on Tuesday will allow the shelter to hire two more clinicians.
• The shelter provides services including medical screenings, drug and alcohol counseling, language instruction, money management classes and other tools to help shelter residents find jobs and permanent housing.
• The grant won’t exceed $155,000 in the first year and the City Council gave the City Manager the authority to extend the agreement twice, for one year each, at up to $165,000 per year.

Homeless work plan
Last year, the City Council made addressing homelessness one of its top priorities for the 2021-22 budget year and committed significant resources toward that goal.

In May 2021, the City Council adopted a work plan outlining several long-term strategies for reducing homelessness, including enhancing clinical services at La Posada. So far, the city has implemented several new programs and initiatives laid out in the plan, including

• Adding new city staff focused on homeless solutions, including homeless outreach officers.
• Updating Carlsbad’s quality of life ordinance, giving the city more tools to address issues like illegal camping and obstruction of property.
• Creating a limited-stay hotel voucher pilot program, to offer homeless individuals and families an immediate shelter alternative and connect them with additional social services
• Creating a rapid-rehousing program operated by Community Resource Center for households in Carlsbad at risk of or experiencing homelessness.

Recent data

• So far, this fiscal year the city has helped 31 people experiencing homelessness transition into permanent housing, according to a quarterly report on reducing homelessness presented to the City Council in February. The next quarterly report will be presented in June.
• On May 19, the region’s annual Point in Time count was released. It showed the number of people experiencing homelessness in Carlsbad had decreased by 20% since 2020. The count is coordinated by the San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness.

More information
Carlsbad’s homeless response efforts
2021-2022 homeless work plan

Staff contact
Chris Shilling, Senior Homeless Program Manager
chris.shilling@carlsbadca.gov, 442-339-2284