Oceanside officials are moving to build 17 tiny homes for homeless residents, racing to get the small, quickly built dwellings in place before El Niño storms arrive this winter. The project would likely rise in the parking lot of the Oceanside Navigation Center on Oceanside Boulevard, adding a new layer of shelter capacity to a city that already runs North San Diego County's largest unsheltered homeless population.
The effort is anchored by $3 million in funding secured from the 2026–27 state budget for Oceanside, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Blakespear announced the funding in a press release on October 6, and the city learned of the budget line item only after Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law, Assistant City Manager Michael Gossman said, per the same report. Because the money arrived as a state budget earmark rather than a standard grant application, Oceanside must first identify which state department will oversee the spending and what process it requires before the City Council formally votes to accept the funds.
Tiny homes are small, private dwellings that can be prefabricated or built more cheaply and quickly than permanent housing, and they have become a go-to tool for cities trying to curb homelessness. Oceanside's housing and neighborhood services director, Leilani Hines, said city departments are still determining the scope and design of the units, and officials have cautioned that many project details remain too early to pin down, including whether the build will require a competitive bidding process, the newspaper reported.
A Navigation Center Already Growing
The tiny homes would likely sit alongside the Oceanside Navigation Center, which opened in July 2023 inside a former Ocean Shores High School campus the city purchased and renovated with $3.3 million from San Diego County and $2.25 million in federal funding, according to KPBS. The center expanded from 50 to 75 beds this past summer.
Interfaith is expected to also run the tiny-home project once it's built. During the 2025/26 fiscal year, the Navigation Center served 190 individuals, with 19 people exiting into permanent housing and 24 moving into other temporary housing, per the same account. Referrals to the center are coordinated through city libraries and community resource centers.
Modular Builder Eyes the Site
DignityMoves, a modular housing developer that has expressed interest in the Oceanside project, uses prefabricated units designed by Gensler architects for underutilized parking lots, offering private rooms and case-management services, according to DignityMoves. The organization has built similar interim tiny-home villages in San Jose and Santa Barbara. DignityMoves founder Elizabeth Funk and Interfaith Community Services CEO Greg Anglea both attended the project announcement and Blakespear's End Homelessness Summit, which took place in Carlsbad on October 7, the Union-Tribune reported.
At that summit, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said building interim housing quickly helped his city lower its number of unsheltered homeless people, according to the newspaper. Blakespear said that building small individual shelters at scale can dramatically reduce the number of people forced to live unsheltered. Blakespear has steered state budget earmarks toward multiple North County shelter projects, including $2 million for the Buena Creek Navigation Center in Vista and $1.67 million for San Diego County's veteran landlord incentive program, per the California State Senate, and she has convened the regional summit annually since 2023.
The Scale of Oceanside's Unsheltered Crisis
The push comes against a backdrop of persistent need. The 2025 Regional Task Force on Homelessness Point-in-Time Count recorded 318 unsheltered people in Oceanside, giving the city the highest unsheltered population among North San Diego County cities even after an 11.9% year-over-year drop, according to Voice of San Diego. The city has also been awarded an $11.3 million Encampment Resolution Funding grant from the California Department of Housing and Community Development to support outreach and shelter placement in high-density encampment areas.
Measure X funding is also part of the city's broader strategy. In May, the City Council approved the HEART program and allocated $200,000 for startup; the program shifts street outreach from police officers to social workers, replacing the police department's former Homeless Outreach Team.
A Regional Project Hits Real-World Snags
Oceanside isn't alone in testing this model, and a neighboring effort shows how quickly costs can shift. San Diego County's plan to build 60 sleeping cabins on state land in Lemon Grove ran into higher costs because the county would have to purchase the Caltrans lot, which was appraised at $955,000, rather than lease it for $1 a month, KPBS reported, as the county negotiated to purchase the site, with the California Transportation Commission set to review the purchase agreement in March. It's a reminder that even fully funded interim-housing projects can face unexpected regulatory and real-estate hurdles before a single unit goes up. For now, Oceanside officials say they intend to move quickly and efficiently to get the 17 tiny homes built before El Niño storms arrive.
