Two shelters in the city of San Diego should soon begin using a new app that connects homeless people with open beds as leaders push every facility in the region to adopt the technology.
The Shelter Ready program, which is already in use by more than a dozen groups in North County, lets outreach workers search for open spots in the same way that tourists book hotel rooms.
The app’s long-term success will depend on how much buy-in it gets from other shelters in the area.
“Picture if hotels.com only had 10 hotels in it,” San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said Monday. “We need all of you.”
Stephan was speaking to more than 130 people representing dozens of organizations around the region who gathered this week at the County Operations Center to learn more. The district attorney sees the app as a way to both get people off the street faster and collect better data about who’s not getting shelter — which in turn could guide decisions surrounding what types of beds need to be created — and she’s thrown the full weight of her office behind the effort.
In addition to bankrolling the initiative (with around $162,000 spent so far) and half-joking promises to buy lunch for new participants, Stephan said she’d eventually publish a list of every shelter using the app, partially to highlight who wasn’t on board. “For the shelters who don’t even try to pilot this, or give it a chance, questions, I think, need to be asked as to why,” she told the group. “Why wouldn’t you give this a chance unless, you know, there are things being hidden.”
Thousands of people countywide sleep outside each night and there are not enough shelter beds for everybody asking.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved the app’s creation in 2023 and officials hired Caravan Studios, a division of the nonprofit TechSoup, to develop the program. Caravan then began meeting with local service organizations about what they wanted, and around half the attendees at Monday’s event raised a hand to show they’d already been consulted.
Emiliano Cerda, program manager for Catholic Charities, said he used to spend 10 to 15 hours a week making phone calls to try and fill open beds. He and other staffers would start working through a binder filled with names at 7 a.m. and the group might not lock down a match until noon. Even then, move-ins sometimes had to wait until the next day. “I would not call it a system,” Cerda said about the old workflow.
Now, because of the app, he spends only 1 to 2 hours a week on the same task, which has allowed him to devote more time to the people in the shelter.
“If there is a little bit of headache, it’s gonna be worth it,” Brian Wilson, director of the Rescue Mission’s North County Lighthouse, said about Shelter Ready. “It’s going in the right direction.”
The San Diego Housing Commission, which oversees most shelters in the city of San Diego, will first ask two facilities to participate, according to Casey Snell, a senior vice president at the agency. Once any kinks have been worked out, leaders plan to expand the app to others.
Police officers, outreach workers, nonprofit leaders and at least one economic development group viewed a demonstration of the program Monday before peppering the developers with questions. Representatives from UC San Diego Health and Scripps Health were also there as the app could be especially helpful for social workers in emergency rooms. (Homeless people are sometimes discharged from hospitals to the street.)
Participating shelters will be able to control when they’re open for move-ins and what geographic areas they’ll serve, among other parameters.
Officials noted that only “vetted” organizations would be allowed to use the app. After the presentation, the district attorney said that vetting process would likely include her office and the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
In addition, Stephan shared an updated analysis covering most of 2024 that showed how homelessness can intersect with crime.
Homeless residents were 70 times more likely to steal something than those with housing, according to the district attorney’s office. The odds of someone committing arson were even higher. But people living outside can also be easily victimized. Sixteen homeless people were murdered last year, making them 64 times more likely to die in a homicide.
Organizations interested in the app can sign up at www.shelterready.org.
Shelter Ready is modeled after a similar system, the Safe Shelter Collaborative, which launched in San Diego in 2020 and helps crime victims find places to sleep.
