OCEANSIDE, Calif. (KGTV) – Four walls, a roof over your head, and running water. There are many things that many of us take for granted.
“I am so grateful. I don't really have any troubles these days. I mean, what can I complain about? I have a house,” Melissa Sides said.
Sides told ABC 10News she’s waking up as the luckiest person in the world to be inside this North Park Apartment. That’s because about a month ago, she was staying in a tent in a ravine in Oceanside.
Oceanside and Carlsbad are teaming up to get people out of homeless encampments and into housing.
“The transformation that we've seen in clients who have gone from living at the bottom of this ravine into independent housing has been incredible,” Sofia Hughes, who is with the City of Oceanside, said.
Hughes tells me Oceanside and Carlsbad got more than $11 million in state grant funding, which is called the Encampment Resolution Fund, to help an estimated more than 200 people living in encampments along the Route 78 corridor get into housing over the next two years.
“To participate in what is really a very housing first model where we get them into housing first and then we provide two years of wraparound services to make sure that their housing is sustained, like sustainable for them over the next two years,” Hughes said.
It’s using the same type of grant, that San Diego used to help get people out massive homeless encampments.
Last November, ABC 10News told you about the City of San Diego starting phase one of the same type of grant to support those in encampments along the San Diego River and get them connected to housing and other resources.
A city spokesperson told ABC 10News that 91 people received some type of services from the City of San Diego during that first phase, with 36 households getting shelter or transitional housing, and 31 got housed and remain housed to date.
It’s in the tail end of phase one of helping people in its first location over the course of those two years. Hughes said Sides is one of the 54 out of 65 that have been housed so far in it’s first phase which will end on July 15th.
“90% of the clients that agreed to participate in the service and are on the data list of residents have been housed or will be housed by the 15th. I think that kind of success speaks for itself and how effective this model and the funding are for Oceanside and Carlsbad,” Hughes said.
It’s a practice and use of grant funding that the Regional Taskforce on Homelessness said is getting better and better each time.
“We're housing more people, and it's more targeted, which is what's great about having this funding around for a couple of years. Like anything else, we get better at this work, the more we're able to practice it,” Tamera Kohler, CEO of the Regional Taskforce on Homelessness, said.
Something that’s made Sides’ life for the better.
“I just want to do everything I can to keep it, and I'm working on getting a job right now and all of that. But I'm super excited,” Sides said. “I’m just really grateful. I didn’t think I was going to get another chance.”
