SAN DIEGO — San Diego County has killed a plan to create 150 tiny homes for homeless people in East County after pushback from neighbors, creating new uncertainty about how the region plans to care for growing numbers of people living outside.

The Board of Supervisors had only signed off in March — in a bipartisan 4-0 vote — on spending millions of state and federal dollars on construction in Spring Valley before reversing course Tuesday.

County officials pledged to lock down a new site, potentially in Lemon Grove, but in the meantime leaders will have to continue relying on a hotel voucher program that costs taxpayers significantly more. Similar projects in Lakeside and Santee have also died amid local opposition.

“It looked like a great place for us to do it at the time,” Chairwoman Nora Vargas said from the dais, “but there needed to be more community input.”

May was the 26th straight month the crisis grew countywide, according to the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. East County has long needed more beds for people on the street, yet the area is hardly alone. Even the city of San Diego doesn’t have near enough spots for everybody asking, and officials are currently wrestling with whether to create more short-term shelters.

The San Diego City Council met again behind closed doors Monday to discuss leasing an empty warehouse near the airport, by Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street, but no deal has yet been reached on a facility that could eventually hold 1,000 people. Mayor Todd Gloria and Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said in a statement that they’d soon hold a public hearing on the proposal.

The sleeping cabins would have been at 8534 Jamacha Road on land owned by California’s transportation department. The property borders several backyards and both Avondale Elementary School and Mt. Miguel High School are short walks to the north.

The tiny homes could have taken up to two years to create and officials had promised to include a number of services, including case management and security. The supervisors budgeted $8.5 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to help cover construction and planned to accept an additional $10 million from the state of California.

A number of people objected in the weeks following the project’s initial approval, and in June, Vargas released a statement saying she’d “rescind” the plan for “health and safety reasons.” Spokesperson Meghan Breen later clarified that the full board would have to fully cancel the measure.

More than two dozen people spoke Tuesday, almost all of whom were opposed to the Spring Valley site. Many residents said in both English and Spanish that they were already dealing with threats and drug use from some living in nearby encampments and were concerned about what more permanent structures could bring. A few wondered if their neighborhood had been chosen because it wasn’t as wealthy as other communities.

Finding a spot for shelter or low-income housing almost always creates a Catch-22. Those who already live in the area may fear the arrival of neighbors who could struggle with addiction or mental health issues, but the more isolated the land, the further residents will be from the very services they need.

The vast majority of people on the street have repeatedly reported losing a place to stay in San Diego County, which has become one of the most expensive places to live in the nation, and the most recent point-in-time count found almost 130 individuals without shelter in Spring Valley.

The county had planned on using the cabins to replace 150 beds currently offered through the Regional Homeless Assistance Program, which is best known for offering vouchers that cover rent at local hotels. Paying for 150 of those spots annually costs about $9 million, according to county records. The tiny homes would have required between $5 million and $6 million.

Tuesday’s vote was 3-1, with Jim Desmond absent. The only supervisor wanting to stay the course was Terra Lawson-Remer.

“This feels like a big loss,” she said in a statement. “Clearing homeless encampments and moving people into tiny cabins is a better option than having people continue to sleep on the street.”

While the county can find other uses for its American Rescue Plan Act dollars, the $10 million could stay with the state if another location isn’t found.

Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe recently wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom proposing an alternative in Lemon Grove, on Troy Street, and her colleagues agreed to explore that option.

That site already has at least some local buy-in: Both Lemon Grove Mayor Racquel Vasquez and Councilmember Alysson Snow spoke Tuesday to say they’d welcome tiny cabins in their city.

A separate county proposal to create a safe parking lot in Lakeside, where homeless people can sleep in vehicles, remains on track. The Willow Recreational Vehicle Senior and Family Parking project should eventually have 17 spots by the intersection of Willow Road and Ashwood Street.

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