How weather impacts the homeless
Even in sunny San Diego, the winter brings chills, rain, and occasionally floods. These changes make living on the streets a lot more difficult, and force people to find a place to take shelter. With a homeless population circa 10,000, it becomes hard for shelters to accomodate for the influx of people needing shelter to avoid the outdoors. How does San Diego adapt to this change, and what does it plan to do in the future?
What SD does now
Currently, San Diego has around 2,000 shelter beds for those on the streets to use. However with a homeless population of well over 10,000, many are left without option when dangerous weather hits. To account for this, the city has been expanding safe sleeping programs, with around 400 new beds being available in 2025. Even more promising, a transitional age youth program has opened a new shelter as well in 2025, with the shelter doubling the amount of beds availible for youth. This also comes in a year where youth homeless rates hit a record high of 900 individuals.
Putting bed unavailabilities asside, current shelter infrastructure also a problem, being outdated and unable to handle dangerous weather. On New Years Day, for example, a homeless shelter called the Bridge Shelter saw flooding due to heavy rainfall and had to evacuate over 300 individuals. With a problem in both bed avalibilites and infrastructure, San Diego needs to fix a lot of problems to help out its homeless population during the most dangerous time of the year.
What SD will do in the future
San Diego recognizes these issues, and plans to open a ton more shelters in the coming years. Most impressive is the 1000 bed ‘mega-shelter’ on Kettner Blvd, which will offer meals and case managment with its sheltering options. The city is also looking to mayble convert the old Central Library and City Operations building into long term shelting as a cost efficient solution. However only time will tell if the city can keep its promises, and up until then, thousands of individuals on the streets will continue to struggle during this weather filled season.