![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Balboa-Park_0015-1024x683.jpg\")
Jeff Elsasser, 64, at Balboa Park on March 24, 2025. Elsasser has been homeless since July 2024. He stays nearby and goes to the park almost every day. \/ Ariana Drehsler for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\nSan Diego\u2019s homelessness crisis has spiked over the past decade as hundreds of San Diegans lose their homes each month. The region could step up preventive measures over the next two decades and significantly reduce that suffering.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What the region likely can\u2019t do: fully stem the tide of people falling into homelessness without drastic changes to the housing market and federal policies outside the bounds of local control.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The past several years, the city and county of San Diego have ramped up programs that offer subsidies to keep people from losing their homes, collectively serving hundreds of seniors and families each year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
These programs, for example, might pay landlords $500 a month to keep a vulnerable tenant in their rental and also support that resident with case management and referrals to other programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the process, officials and researchers have gotten a better handle on how prevention programs work and what they cost. Yet, for most of the last three years, the number of newly homeless San Diegans has eclipsed the number of newly housed ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jeff Elsasser, 64, at Balboa Park on March 24, 2025. Elsasser has been homeless since July 2024. He stays nearby and goes to the park almost every day. \/ Ariana Drehsler for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n
To change that trend and visibly reduce homelessness, San Diego would need to keep hundreds more people from falling into homelessness each year. Experts agree that San Diego could do that \u2013 with more money and analysis that helps the region target that money to those most in need.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Housing Commission projects that it would cost about $12.8 million a year to help city residents who might otherwise become homeless for the first time avoid that outcome. This total includes both financial support and services.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team behind the city\u2019s homelessness plan<\/a>, which was updated in 2023<\/a>, estimated at the time that the city could help a third of newly homeless people avoid homelessness with prevention, which translated to about 1,425 people and 60 families.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the past couple years, public support for prevention programs \u2013 including among politicians and philanthropists \u2013 has spiked.\u00a0<\/p>\n The funding for those programs, however, hasn\u2019t kept up.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The city\u2019s existing homelessness prevention programs served 740 people and families last year, far shy of what was recommended in the city\u2019s homelessness plan.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the political will is very high, but the financial resources aren\u2019t there yet,\u201d Housing Commission Senior Vice President Casey Snell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most traditional government funding for homelessness programs don\u2019t support prevention ones due to longstanding policies so city and county leaders have looked to philanthropists to help.\u00a0<\/p>\n The county is doing a deep dive into the results of a county program serving seniors on the brink of homelessness with an eye toward increasing political will and philanthropic support.\u00a0<\/p>\n The program focused on low-income seniors provides $500 a month in rental assistance for 18 months and the county estimates it would cost about $3 million annually to continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n Spencer Katz, a spokesperson for County Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, said county officials are studying how a random sample of its 382 participants fared while they received aid and whether they maintain stable housing at higher rates the year after they stop receiving aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Katz said Lawson-Remer pushed the study with the hope the results will build support to expand the program. After all, he said, about 2,400 households expressed interest in the program \u2013 far more than the 382 who got into it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe theory of change here is that we have to be able to demonstrate to potential funders and taxpayers that these are effective solutions,\u201d Katz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The results could also guide potential adjustments to the program.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Regional Task Force on Homelessness CEO Tamera Kohler, whose organization\u2019s monthly reports have highlighted the monthly flow<\/a> of San Diegans into homeless services, thinks technological advances now and over the next 20 years could supercharge prevention efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n A key challenge with existing prevention programs is that it can be difficult to predict who is most in need. Some who seek prevention funds might stabilize on their own while others in dire need might never tap in.\u00a0<\/p>\n Liz Drapa of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, who worked on the city\u2019s homelessness plan, said that\u2019s just one dynamic that makes prevention \u2013 and meeting the need for it \u2013 especially tricky.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you target it? How much actually helps someone get back to a stable landing?\u201d Drapa wrote in an email. \u201cHow flexible can the prevention be and what are the market forces that impact how much you need \u2014 increasing rents, lack of access to services, health care access, etcetera?\u201d<\/p>\n Drapa argued that resolving these questions and right-sizing prevention and diversion services<\/a> that help people avoid the homeless service system can help ensure people don\u2019t get stuck waiting for housing in shelters and allow regions to better calibrate the number of shelter beds they provide.<\/p>\n More communities are trying to better target and tailor their resources for all of those reasons.<\/p>\n For example, the California Policy Lab has teamed with Los Angeles County<\/a> on predictive modeling to identify Angelenos most at risk of homelessness. This approach helps that county\u2019s prevention team target its services to people who aren\u2019t linked with homeless services and prioritize who is most in need.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kohler argued that artificial intelligence could supercharge predictive modeling efforts like the Los Angeles one to make prevention programs in San Diego more effective \u2013 and more likely to reach people who would otherwise fall through the cracks and into homelessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Susan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Susan_9-1024x683.jpg\")
Susan Peterson feeds her dog, Ninja, a slice of banana off a knife in a Parkway Plaza parking garage in El Cajon on Thursday, July 24, 2025. Through a program, she was able to find an apartment and hopes to move in soon. \/ Brittany Cruz-Fejeran for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n