How new housing, homelessness plans will change North County in 2026

Expect California’s clashes over housing to continue in 2026, at the State House in Sacramento and in courthouses and City Halls around the state.

Many will materialize in North County.

This year, inewsource will be watching to see what and where housing gets built or blocked; how significant reductions in federal funding will affect the region’s housing stock and whether and how cities address unhoused populations, especially large encampments of homeless people. 

Construction to keep an eye on

Both the North County Transit District and the Legislature agree that a good place to build housing is near public transit, and the transit district has 11 “transit-oriented development” projects in the works. 

Officials say that these projects will generate retail space, 275 hotel rooms and 2,341 housing units (37% of which are considered affordable).

In November, the Oceanside City Council approved the first of these projects, which will renovate the city’s current transit center and the district’s nearby headquarters, creating 750 housing units, 15% of which are slated to be offered at affordable rents. The project will head to the California Coastal Commission for final review in 2026 before building begins. 

The transit district also entered into an agreement to redevelop the Vista Civic Center Station with 131 apartments, but it has yet to submit plans or timelines to that city. Another upcoming project is slated for Escondido.

More projects like these could pop up thanks to a law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in October to spur more housing near transit. Housing and environmental advocates contend that building near transit is better for the environment and for communities, but many North County city leaders opposed the bill, arguing it impedes local control. 

The local impact of the law in 2026 is unclear. Amendments excluded North County’s Coaster line, so it will apply only to the Sprinter line, which connects Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos and Escondido, with 15 stations along the way.

Other developments are already in the works across North County. 

In Vista, construction could begin on the 176-unit apartment Park Avenue Project as early as March, spokesperson Fred Tracey said. 

Oceanside approved replacing the Regal Cinemas with a seven-story development with restaurants, shops and nearly 330 apartments downtown. That project still needs to go through a permitting process, and after that, city officials say, it will be six months before building begins. 

Other high-profile housing developments like the nearly 200-unit Clark Avenue apartments in Encinitas and the 450-unit Harmony Grove Village South near Escondido face lawsuits over fire safety concerns.

Those will be important to watch in a region where housing affordability and availability drive debate.

Federal funding implications 

This month brings the annual point-in-time count of the unhoused populations in U.S. cities, a requirement for federal funding decisions. After an uptick in recent years, most North County cities saw a drop in the number of unsheltered people in 2025. 

In early 2026, Carlsbad and Oceanside will begin the third phase of a grant-funded encampment cleanup and outreach effort along the State Route 78 corridor and Buena Vista Creek area along the cities’ border. The program began in spring 2025 after the cities got an $11.3 million grant from the state’s Encampment Resolution Fund. 

The program has served 126 clients thus far, according to Sofia Hughes, management analyst for Oceanside’s Housing and Neighborhood Services Department. She said the city will spend the next year doing “exactly what we did in the last year” — bringing services into areas with high amounts of unsheltered homeless populations.

More than 60 people have been permanently housed thus far, according to Sarah Lemons, a Carlsbad spokesperson. 

Salvador Roman, senior management analyst for Oceanside’s Housing and Neighborhood Services Department, called the program a “blueprint” that could be replicated across North County.

Greg Anglea, CEO of homelessness nonprofit Interfaith Services, said that funding has been essential to the program’s success. 

“It’s a rare success because often those programs aren’t effectively funded,” Anglea said. “Most of what we do is underfunded and unfortunately, often piecemealed together. But when things are actually resourced, we really can help overcome and reduce homelessness in big, big ways.” 

A drop in federal funding will contribute to challenges this year. 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to reduce the amount of funding for permanent housing by two-thirds. That could eliminate more than 1,200 units of permanent supportive housing in San Diego County, and 45 units at Interfaith Services, Anglea said. He called it a seismic shift.

“It’s going to be very harmful to marginalized people who are using these resources now, and it’s going to be very noticeable throughout the entire community when we’ll likely see a significant increase in unsheltered homelessness,” he said. 

Competing city priorities

Something else to keep an eye on this year is each of the camping bans that various cities have implemented across San Diego County to target homelessness. Encinitas and Carlsbad both made changes in 2025 aimed at restricting people from sleeping in vehicles. 

The policies expand to target people living in vehicles. The number of people living in cars and RVs in Carlsbad has more than doubled since 2023, with most in the downtown Carlsbad area, Lemons said. 

Another change in Encinitas is that it enters 2026 without the safe parking program that has served 306 people at the Encinitas Senior Center over five years. The program offered 25 people per night a secure lot where they could sleep in their vehicles. But Jewish Family Service ceased operations on Dec. 31 after it couldn’t negotiate a funding extension with the city.

Jewish Family Service has a similar safe parking program in Vista, where it services 25 people per night. 

Any signs of compassion fatigue amid a crackdown on homeless camps bear watching in 2026 as cities with limited funding make decisions about housing, homelessness and other priorities.

“The challenge of heavy enforcement is that it can create more obstacles for people to get housed,” said John Van Cleef, CEO of Encinitas’ Community Resource Center. “Increased accountability also creates a necessity for resources, so that if we’re going to say, ‘You cannot sleep in your car and here’s a ticket,’ then the other part of that is, ‘Here’s an alternative for where you can sleep.’”