Contentious homeless village project in San Luis Obispo approved by supervisors

A partnership between the county and the city of San Luis Obispo to help ease homelessness throughout the city was up for approval on Tuesday.

The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 to approve the Welcome Home Village at the site of the county’s Health Agency campus .

Supervisors John Peschong, Jimmy Paulding and Bruce Gibson voted in favor while Debbie Arnold opposed the estimated $13.4 million project.

Paulding said the project addresses their five-year county plan against homelessness.

“I look at this project as being the next step in the implementation of our strategic plan," Paulding said.

Peschong addressed the neighborhood concerns over safety, saying that the project will in no way resemble the Oklahoma Avenue safe parking site that shut down earlier this month.

“From what I've heard today, there's no possible way that this could turn into the same open-air drug market that Kansas Avenue was,” Peschong said.

Kansas Avenue safe parking site was the original name for what eventually became the Oklahoma Avenue safe parking site.

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The planned site will be across the street from the county’s Health Agency campus off Johnson Avenue and Bishop Street.

Welcome Home Village would be able to house 80 people but county staff did say they would work their way up to full capacity over time and not right away.

They are expected to break ground in the fall. It will be completed in 2025.

The development is being funded by a grant from the California Interagency Council on Homelessness that will cover the costs through June of 2026.

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