Last fiscal year, the City of Carlsbad’s homeless response team transitioned 89 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing.  

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the team presented its annual report on reducing homelessness and its impact on the community.

• The report outlines progress in the city’s Homelessness Action Plan, which includes the programs and initiatives the city will carry out over the next several years and measures that will be used to track progress.
• The report reflects data from the last fiscal year, July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024, and the 2024 Point-in-Time Count results. 
• Reviewing this data together helps the city broadly assess its efforts. 

Here are some highlights: 

The report shows continued improvements in reducing the impacts of homelessness on the community when comparing the same period from the last fiscal year.

• Overall, the number of total Police calls for service related to homelessness decreased by 16%.

• Dispatched calls for service, or calls initiated by community members, dropped 22%.  

Looking ahead 

On Tuesday, the City Council also accepted $3 million in grant funding that will help address increasing concerns about people living in their cars in the downtown Village and Barrio areas. This grant, along with two others the city has received, are included in a proposed funding plan presented to the City Council for next fiscal year’s implementation of the Homelessness Action Plan.

• People living in their vehicles has been a growing concern throughout the region.  

• According the 2024 annual Point-in-Time Count, the number of people living in cars and RVs in Carlsbad has nearly doubled from the year before, with most in the downtown Carlsbad area. Regionwide there was an increase of 44% over the previous year. 

One of the actions in the Homelessness Action Plan focuses on helping people living in their cars get into stable housing. With the new grant funding, this effort can begin earlier than planned, while freeing up city funds to be spent on other important community needs.  

Reaching people living in cars is challenging because they are often on the move during the day. Over the next three years, the city will use the grant funding to expand outreach efforts to include early morning and late-night hours, when they have the best chance of making contact with people sleeping in vehicles. 

2025 Point-in-Time Count 

Today, city staff and volunteers were up before dawn completing the annual Point-in-Time Count. This is an organized, nationwide effort to collect data on homelessness on the same day over a four-hour period.

• In Carlsbad, community members are invited to participate alongside members of the city’s Homeless Response Team.
• The data collected in Carlsbad is one of several metrics we use to gauge the success of our Homelessness Action Plan.

• It also helps us better understand the population experiencing homelessness and how we can best direct resources to address the problem and the effects on our community. 

We expect to have the results from the count in a couple of months. If you’d like to stay updated on the city’s efforts to reduce homelessness, you can sign up for email updates.