The Faster, Cheaper Way Homeless People Are Getting Housed

By Tessa Balc, the Voice of San Diego

August 19, 2025

For the first time in nearly three years, San Diego had more people exit than become homeless – advocates are crediting diversion as the reason why.

When Susan Peterson went back to living in her car in San Diego, she was embarrassed to reach out for help again.

After years of sleeping on and off in her car, homelessness caseworkers had arranged for her to move to North Carolina. The 75-year-old managing a leukemia diagnosis was going to move in with her daughter. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.

In February, Peterson was back in town, sleeping in her car at a parking garage near the El Cajon library. Her former caseworker, Vani Melei, called her by mistake looking for another Susan and learned the sad news.

“I told Susan it was fate that I called her on accident,” said Melei, a safe parking program manager at Crisis House. “I reassured Susan that I’m back on her support team and that I will make some phone calls on her behalf.”

So began the work of diversion, a strategy gaining traction in San Diego thanks to its success rate in getting homeless people in permanent homes.

Diversion is an approach that focuses on helping people come up with solutions to their own homelessness. It is often coupled with financial assistance to help resolve a one-time expense. People who have recently become homeless and have a job, a car or relatives who could take them in are ideal candidates.

Caseworkers with homeless serving groups identify an area of need, like a security deposit or the cost of car repairs, that if covered, would help someone remain housed. They also help individuals comb through their connections and evaluate their options. Once the caseworker knows what would help, they pull the one-time expense from a fund backed by the county and philanthropists.

The goal is to divert people from the existing and overrun homeless response and shelter system and help them find stable housing as soon as possible.

In Peterson’s case, her caseworker, Melei, connected her to a caseworker with People Assisting the Homeless, or PATH San Diego. From there, the county’s Office of Homeless Solutions enrolled her in a Safe Parking program.

Susan Peterson takes Ninja to the parking garage at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon to cool him down on Thursday, July 24, 2025. / Brittany Cruz-Fejeran for Voice of San Diego

Peterson told Voice of San Diego she never considered staying at a safe parking site. She said she felt safe already with her 13-year-old pit bull Ninja and didn’t see why she should move elsewhere. But county case managers told her enrolling in a safe parking program could open doors to other housing opportunities. After learning that, Peterson said the decision was a no-brainer.

She started spending the night in the safe lot in Valencia Park.

Days later, Peterson received a Section 8 housing voucher. The federal program provides rental assistance for low-income people, allowing Peterson to afford a roof over her head.

“I don’t want to let this get away,” Peterson said.

In 2018, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, which leads San Diego’s homelessness response, contracted Ed Boyte, a nationally recognized educator in conflict resolution and diversion training, to help train San Diego service providers.

He helped train people across the county in diversion tactics and taught them to teach others. At that time, diversion was a pilot project with little funding.

In 2024, the task force ramped it up after the county, city of San Diego and philanthropists pulled together $1.5 million to support it.

The data shows it’s working.

According to task force’s report on diversion from that year, 93 percent of the near 600 people who accessed diversion strategies got permanent housing. And almost all of them remained housed for the next year.

The task force credits the program as the reason why in November and December 2024 more people exited homelessness to permanent housing than became homeless for the first time in almost three years.

In 2025 the task force’s annual census of homeless residents made note of about 9,900 people experiencing homelessness in San Diego county. The year prior, while diversion was being scaled up, it counted around 10,600 people.

When someone enters a shelter it’s more difficult to have them exit to permanent housing. One family shelter in San Diego, run by Alpha project and the San Diego Housing Commission since 2023, reported that in the second year of being operated by Alpha it reported a 50 percent positive exit rate, helping 18 household get into permanent housing.

Diversion was able to serve 489 households in 2024, with an exit rate forty percent higher.

“It gives us a chance to get ahead, so that resources can actually make a dent in the chronically homeless population,” Sofia Cardenas, data and compliance manager at Alpha Project said.

Diversion has proven to work fast.

Typically, caseworkers will be able to have a solid plan for someone’s housing in about 30 days when taking a diversion approach. Usually, it takes nearly six months for someone in a homeless shelter to find housing, according to the task force.

Peterson said she couldn’t believe how quickly they were able to help. She connected with Melei in early July. By July 31, she was about ready to move into her new place.

“It gives our case managers another set of options when usually so much of our answers are telling people to wait,” said Cardenas.

Diversion typically costs $3,150 per person in the form of a one-time payment, according to the task force. Compare that to the average 169-day stay at a homeless shelter which costs the organization running it around $20,080.

The reason diversion can be cheaper is because caseworkers are trained to look for candidates who would stay successfully housed if they got one of these one-time payments, Cardenas said.

Tamera Kohler is the CEO of the task force. She said they initially thought the sweet spot was when someone is initially about to fall into the shelter system, but it can also be once they are past that point of crisis from initially becoming homeless.

Cardenas at the Alpha Project said about 30 percent of their clients fit that mold of someone who is about to be homeless.

Historically, Kohler said by allowing people to take ownership of their own journey out of homelessness there’s a motivation to make the solution last.

“You can imagine, for someone who feels very unseen and unheard, how incredibly valuable it is that someone believes that maybe you’re also working hard to end your homelessness, and maybe you got a good idea,” Kohler said.

Peterson knows this well. She fell back into homelessness once before after trying to get out. Eventually, through diversion, Peterson said she received the help she needed to get herself out of homelessness. She could finally tell a caseworker what she really needed to get out – help finding an affordable place – and the caseworker listened.

Homelessness advocates are happy with the results so far, but it’s not baked into the larger, traditional homelessness response the county relies on. The program needs more and consistent funding to keep going.

San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer helped secure money from the county for diversion, and she wants to see it used more often.

The supervisor’s spokesperson, Spencer Katz, said they are looking to get more investments from philanthropy to keep the momentum going.

Cardenas said more money means more and better-trained case workers. Training is key to a successful program. Caseworkers need to know how to identify people who would benefit and let them lead in coming up with solutions to their homelessness.

For Peterson, after about four years without a home, she described it as “surreal” to know she will have a place of her own soon. All she’s waiting for is the apartment complex to do some final processing of her application and to drop the keys in her hands.

She feels lucky her building has a laundry room, and that the location is close to the doctor who monitors her leukemia.

The thing she’s most excited about is having air conditioning. Right now, she parks on the second floor of a parking garage because there’s a nice breeze to keep her dog cool, who suffered from heat strokes as a puppy. She keeps a cooling towel for him and cranks up her car’s AC just for him while she wears a hoodie.

“It’s not his time to go,” Peterson said, her eyes welling up, “I’ve had him for eleven years. I can’t imagine life without him.”

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