For the last few months, Long Beach has been exploring the idea of building temporary tent villages as a way to quickly add some kind of shelter for homeless residents who might otherwise be left on the streets or in unsanctioned encampments.
An advisory committee on homeless services has been hearing from cities like Eugene and Denver that found success with the idea, but one city closer to home might also offer some lessons:
Just like Long Beach — where more than 3,000 people were homeless at the last count — San Diego has a large number of unhoused individuals. In San Diego’s 2023 point-in-time count, out of more than 6,000 homeless people more than 3,200 were living unsheltered.
In an effort to quickly provide more shelter space for these people, San Diego built what it’s calling a “safe sleep site” in Balboa Park near Downtown.
On a hill overlooking the city, rows and rows of ice fishing tents are clustered together in an old, fenced-off auxiliary parking lot. Inside each tent, cots and sleeping bags provide a place to sleep. The ice fishing tents, an idea taken from Denver, are extra insulated, so they keep the tents cool in the summer and warm when it gets cold. All of the tents are set up on a short platform, with a wooden floor on the inside.
The city contracts with two nonprofits, Dreams for Change and the Downtown San Diego Partnership, to run the safe sleep sites. Rather than living in makeshift setups on the street, these options provide not just shelter from the elements but also access to services, care and community.
“This whole place was unpaved before they set this up,” Jose Ysea, Public Safety Media Services Manager for the city of San Diego, told me when he showed me the site last week. “The city owns all of this, and they came in and paved it and built these roads.”
I wasn’t able to see the operation up close due to the operator’s strict policy against allowing media on site (for residents’ privacy, according to Nicole Darling, Director of Communications for the City of San Diego), but the city did share a photo of the inside of the tents.
“Setting up safe sleeping sites is significantly quicker than traditional shelters,” Sarah Jarman, San Diego’s Director of Homeless Strategies and Solutions said in a Zoom call, and that the cost is far less expensive.
Plus, there are other benefits to the arrangement compared to traditional options, especially congregate and sex-segregated shelters.
“We had a lot of feedback from our clients, “Jarman said. “San Diego has a significant number of congregate and non-congregate shelter beds, but we saw an opportunity for ‘semi-congregate’ options.”
What that means is the safe sleep sites are able to accommodate different groups. Darling told me the locations are intended to have a low barrier to entry. Pets are also allowed, and people can come with partners and caregivers.“People have built these street families, and we’ve been able to move those families into the same site,” Jarman said. “At our safe sleeping sites, you can come as pods.”
Apparently, the plan is working. The first site had 136 tents that filled up within weeks, so the city expanded to have over 400 — and each tent can shelter two people.
“From July 1, 2023, through Sept. 30, 2023, 304 individuals have been enrolled in the program,” Ysea said in an Email. “And there have been 14 exits to permanent or other forms of long-term housing.”
Part of that success is because the city has been able to provide services along with shelter at these sites. “People are finding a great community there,” Jarman said. “They still have access to all of our services, they get two meals a day, breakfast and dinner, there are showers, restrooms, laundry.”
They also provide transportation and let residents come and go at the location, so they can get to mailboxes set up Downtown or other services around the city.
“We have seen a reduction in Downtown of our homeless count,” Jarman said. “Anecdotally, we have heard really positive feedback.”
Currently, Long Beach doesn’t have enough space in its shelters for everybody who’s homeless in the city. While they’re trying to build 33 tiny homes, convert a motel into supportive housing and expand the winter shelter capacity, all of those efforts are taking too long to address the problem on the street today.
A safe sleep site wouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all fix for Long Beach, especially with the high demand for mental health and case management services that will be crucial to moving people into permanent housing, but with more than 2,000 unsheltered people on the street, it’s a solution that could help deal with encampments while the city works on finding more permanent options.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with the correct spelling of Sarah Jarman’s name.