The money will be used over the next three years for outreach and case management, rapid-rehousing assistance, limited-term motel vouchers, medicine and health care coordination, and to expand operations at the La Posada de Guadalupe shelter, city officials said.
"Pine Park was our main focus based on community concerns," said Chris Shilling, senior homeless program manager, in a presentation Tuesday to the Carlsbad City Council. "We were also able to expand the area out to include Holiday Park, City Hall and the Cole Library as well as the freeway areas headed into the Village."
The city will use the money in its work with regional service providers including Interfaith Community Services, Community Resource Center, Southern California Care Community and Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego.
It will expand existing programs and hire a new peer support specialist and an additional licensed social worker, Shilling said. That will bring Carlsbad's homeless program to a total of three social workers with one peer support specialist.
Also, the money will allow the La Posada shelter to hire its first "housing navigator" and to set aside three additional beds for Carlsbad's needs, he said. And it will enable the city to begin a "street medicine program" to relieve some of the emergency response burden from the city's police and fire departments.
The state recently awarded a total of $199 million to 23 projects in 22 jurisdictions, of which only two were in the San Diego region, said Mandy Mills, housing and homeless services director.
"We're doubling down on our investment to ensure that thousands of individuals in communities up and down the state move out of encampments and into housing where they can get the services and help they need," Gov. Newsom said last month in Long Beach.
"It's not enough to simply clean up encampments; my administration will continue to work with local leaders and community members as they serve their unhoused neighbors and remove dangerous and unsightly encampments throughout California," he said
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