Homelessness in San Luis Obispo

Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness

The SLO County Board of Supervisors approved a “10 Year Plan to End Homelessness” to begin in January 2008, “aimed at ending homelessness in ten years.”

Homelessness having not ended by 2018, the County approved another five-year plan (“The San Luis Obispo Countywide Plan to Address Homelessness”) in 2022. As the title suggests, this plan is more modest in its aspirations: “to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness to 50% of the current level within five years”.^1:p5

Shelters

There is one day center and a handful of overnight emergency shelter options in San Luis Obispo County. These represent enough beds for 20–30% of those who are known to be homeless on any particular night.^1:p5 In part because of this shortage of shelter, San Luis Obispo county has the third highest percentage of unsheltered homelessness in the United States.^1:p6

Point-in-Time counts

San Luis Obispo County is coextensive with the CA-614 “Continuum of Care” (CoC) district, which is used by the federal government in various programs concerning homelessness. One of these is the semi-annual "point-in-time" census, in which field workers attempt to count and gather information about people experiencing homelessness in these various regions every other January. Each CoC must periodically conduct such a census in order to qualify for federal funding. The point-in-time counts have methodological shortcomings that make them at best imperfect undercounts of the number of people experiencing homelessness, but, for what it's worth, these are the numbers for SLO county since 2007:

Year	Total Homeless People	Sheltered, in Emergency Shelters	Sheltered, in Transitional Housing	Total Sheltered	Unsheltered
2007	2408	133	54	187	2221
2008	850	172	109	281	569
2009	3829	173	69	242	3587
2010^*		173	69	242
2011	2129	159	69	228	1901
2012^*		156	72	228
2013	2537	169	66	235	2122
2014^*		172	72	244
2015	1515	337	25	392	1123
2016^*		145	100	245
2017	1125	260	43	303	822
2018^*		248	25	273
2019	1483	290	21	311	1172
2020^*		228	23	251
2021^†		276	21	297
2022^†	1448	258	34	292	1156
2023^*
2024	1175			375	800
* = field survey not conducted
† = postponed to February 2022 due to Covid-19 safety concerns

TIn addition, the 2024 PIT survey found::

Ages:
Under 18 18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–66 65+
8% 4% 15% 23% 22% 20% 9%
Duration of homelessness:
0-3 months 3-6 months 6 months-1 year 1-5 years more than 5 years
6% 1% 1% 20% 15%
42.9% said that they were experiencing homelessness for the first time
24% met the definition of “chronically homeless” (one definition of which is that “have been experiencing homelessness for at least one year and have a disabling condition.”). Of those, 80% were unsheltered.
46 were military veterans
Among the homeless surveyed were 43 families with children. In addition there were 28 “unaccompanied children”.
30% of those surveyed reported having at least one disabling condition (defined as “a developmental disability, HIV/AIDS, or a long-term physical or mental impairment that impacts a person’s ability to live independently but could be improved with stable housing.”). 46% had post-traumatic stress disorder. 23% had experienced traumatic brain injury. 11% were developmentally disabled.