Oceanside volunteers complete yearly count of homeless residents

Hours before the sun rose on Thursday morning, dozens of volunteers tiptoed through Oceanside’s parks, riverbeds and train tracks, shining flashlights as they sought to locate and count unhoused people in their city. 

The 67 volunteers in Oceanside were part of the 1,700 dispersed around San Diego County for the annual Point-in-Time count. Although widely considered an undercount, the tally is the closest thing to an accurate representation of the number of unhoused individuals living in the region. That data is then used to determine funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

inewsource joined a group of volunteers in Oceanside at 4 a.m. Thursday as they went around Fireside Park and a nearby riverbed. The area was designated a “priority one” spot by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness due to the number of people found the year prior. But the scene looked different this time: There were next to no unhoused individuals in sight. 

Shawn Zanco, a Bridge Outreach Manager at Interfaith Community Services who was volunteering Thursday, described the locations as “hit or miss.” 

“There’s pockets,” Zanco added. She said where people reside changes with time, and the Oceanside homeless outreach team had recently cleared the riverbed. 

Many of the unhoused people were asleep in the early hours of the morning, as volunteers entered information about their whereabouts into an app. Sometimes, though, volunteers had to make a judgement call for themselves: Was someone living in that boarded up van, or was it just an empty vehicle? 

When the volunteers encountered people who were awake, they approached them and asked survey questions about their situation: How long had they been on the streets? Did they have a disability? They also offered socks, hand warmers, 7/11 gift cards and sanitary products.

Homelessness numbers decreasing

The group of three volunteers inewsource accompanied on Thursday was not the only group who saw lower than expected numbers of unhoused people. 

Sofia Hughes, a management analyst for Oceanside’s Housing and Neighborhood Services Department, said after the count that many volunteers reported seeing fewer people than they had in previous years. But Thursday’s observations were just guesses: The official data is expected in May. 

“We try to not have very many expectations going into the count because it always surprises us, but we do know that we’ve made a lot of headway in reducing the unsheltered homeless count this year,” Hughes said. 

Oceanside, home to typically one of the highest populations of unhoused people in North County, has seen a two-year decrease in its unhoused population. North County as a whole made up 1,712 of the 9,905 unhoused people counted in San Diego County in 2025. 

In spring 2025, Oceanside and Carlsbad began a grant-funded encampment cleanup and outreach effort along the State Route 78 corridor and Buena Vista Creek area along the border dividing the cities. The program, funded by $11.3 million from the state’s Encampment Resolution Fund, had served 126 people by the end of the year. 

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.

Despite that program’s success, there are still many challenges for tackling homelessness in the region. Locally, several cities have strengthened their camping ban aimed at targeting homeless people, which providers say can make it more difficult to serve those in need. 

There’s also federal funding changes, like HUD’s 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.

“I always walk away from these days feeling a mixture of devastation because we haven’t done more, and hopeful because we can’t help but walk away with hope when you talk to people who are so resilient,” Deputy Mayor Eric Joyce said. 

Oceanside also saw more volunteers this year than in 2025. Neighbors, homelessness providers, law enforcement, and city and county staff all woke up in the early hours to help out with the 4 a.m. count. Other volunteers took evening shifts later in the day to count people in shelters.  

Volunteers show support

Carlsbad resident Kelly Desselle was one of the 30 or so volunteers who was there for the first time on Thursday. She said she saw on the news that they were looking for volunteers and wanted to help out. Deselle was partly motivated by a disconnect: Though she’d seen homelessness covered on the news and observed people struggling in her community, she’d never interacted with them personally. 

“That’s what kind of intrigued me about this, because I had never really gone up and talked to people,” Desselle said. “I’m interested in seeing why we’re there, and what we can do to maybe get them out of there.”