ESCONDIDO, Calif. (KGTV) – There are new numbers detailing the homelessness crisis in San Diego County.
“We saw decreases across the region in almost every city, in every jurisdiction,” Tamera Kohler, CEO of Regional Task Force on Homelessness San Diego, said.
Kohler’s organization conducts the annual Point In Time Count, which is a snapshot of the homelessness crisis in the region.
One of the cities with a drop in people living on the street is Escondido.
“I knew there was going to be a reduction. I wasn’t anticipating nearly a hundred fewer people off the streets,” Mayor Dane White with the City of Escondido, said. “This is great news, and I think it’s a testament to the things that we are doing here.”
Escondido saw 307 people living on its streets in the 2025 Point In Time Count, compared to 401 last year.
It also shows that 238 people entered a shelter compared to 148 in 2024.
White credits the clearing of a long-standing creek-bed encampment known as "The Jungle," which ABC 10news covered, and Escondido's encampment enforcement.
“But that’s only half of it,” White said. “You have the other side, which is that I think we’ve done a really good job at renewing our partnerships with organizations like Interfaith [Community Services], who are the ones actually doing the work. You’re seeing that through the work of their family shelter we opened two years ago.”
ABC 10News spoke with the CEO of Interfaith, Greg Anglea, who praised the partnerships for the positive numbers in the North County community.
"We need to create more places for them to go. In the last year, we've been able to do that here at our recuperative care center and also, more recently, at our new drug and alcohol addiction programs. We need to create more of those places throughout all of our communities,” Anglea said.
However, some communities didn’t see a decrease in those on the streets with the 2025 Point In Time Count and are pretty shocked by it.
“I never expected a jump like that and frankly it made me question the methodology to some degree,” Mayor Bill Wells with the City of El Cajon said.
El Cajon saw its number of unsheltered people go from 283 to 344 from last year to this year in the 2025 Point In Time Count.
However, it saw 695 people go into a shelter this year compared to 517 in 2024.
He felt the numbers could be misrepresented by people being recorded in unincorporated El Cajon, which technically is a part of San Diego County, and being counted towards the city of El Cajon’s numbers.
“We don’t have any safe parking lots in El Cajon, and the county has them just outside of our borders. And the county has a history of allowing encampments just outside of our borders,” Wells said. “So, I think a lot of this is the Point In Time Count not really understanding what’s in El Cajon and what’s in the county."
