A safe parking lot for homeless schoolchildren appears to be back on track

A plan to create a safe parking lot where homeless schoolchildren can sleep in their vehicles appears to be back on the table as the number of families lacking stable housing continues to rise.

The project, which may open as soon as this month, would offer up dozens of spaces at San Diego’s old Central Elementary School in the City Heights neighborhood, according to city and school officials.

Space is to be initially reserved for kids and parents within the San Diego Unified School District. If spots later remain, leaders could extend invitations to families from other districts in the county.

“Every night this is not open, someone is sleeping in a less safe space,” said San Diego Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera. “We’ve already lost a year on this.”

The long-discussed project has been hampered by disagreements over money. Voice of San Diego reported that some city leaders walked back their support after it became clear that a grant wouldn’t cover the lot’s full cost, and for a time it looked like the initiative was dead — and that was before local deficits and a second Trump administration threatened to shrink a range of social services.

The window of availability is also closing: The property has been slated for an affordable housing complex since the elementary school moved in 2023 to a different campus.

Yet representatives of the San Diego Housing Commission and San Diego Unified now say the two agencies are actively trying to hammer out an agreement.

As in previous versions of the plan, the school district would offer up the land, district spokesperson Samer Naji wrote in an email. Meanwhile, the City Council set aside $250,000 from San Diego’s general fund for the effort, an amount that Elo-Rivera believes will cover about half of what’s needed.

Elo-Rivera said negotiators were discussing launching up to 60 parking spots in September and having the nonprofit Dreams for Change, which has overseen similar initiatives in the region, manage the site. (Housing commission and district officials declined to discuss specifics about the proposed agreement.)

Additional funds should come through the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, according to spokesperson Gary Warth. Their exact contribution wasn’t immediately clear.

The need is certainly there.

While some methods for quantifying homelessness show the crisis easing for the first time in years, records kept by local schools have instead found increasing numbers of families on the edge. The discrepancy may be due to the fact that housing questionaries handed out to school families are able to capture when kids are couch surfing or sleeping in motels, segments of the homeless population easily missed by other tallies.

Families sometimes begin living out of vehicles after draining their savings at hotels.

In the last academic year, San Diego County had 19,841 homeless students, according to the California Department of Education. That was an increase from the year prior when there were fewer than 17,900. Both numbers only include children. Parents are not included.

Safe parking lots generally have bathrooms, security guards and case managers, and several exist around the region. The massive H Barracks project near San Diego’s airport continues to take in vehicles, including RVs. Twenty parking spots in the Grantville neighborhood became available last month while county officials just re-opened another lot in unincorporated El Cajon.

Staff writer Kristen Taketa contributed to this report.