San Diego Emergency Housing Plan

Following the success of the emergency housing projects in the City of Los Angeles, Kadre Architects was requested to lead the creation of the County of San Diego’s Emergency Housing Implementation Plan. The plan combines requirements from numerous governmental agencies into a cohesive document outlining design guidelines across eight different housing typologies. It embeds a sense of place through design vision and honors the human spirit with sustainability and resilience at the forefront of the plan.   

The plan provides design guidelines for the following emergency housing typologies: safe parking, safe camping, sleeping cabins, tiny homes, congregate shelters, safe RV parking, and adaptive reuse for bridge and permanent housing.   

The daunting task was initially tackled by gathering general requirements for site planning from numerous county departments including the Office of Homeless Solutions, Department of General Services, Planning and Development, Public Works, Parks and Recreations, Flood Control, Fire Department, as well as utility companies and state agencies such as Caltrans. After several months of gathering information and meeting with various departments, the architects established an easy-to-follow graphic format depicting site planning strategies for each emergency housing typology. Although not usually found in these types of government documents, a placemaking design sensibility, affirmed by the success of previous projects, was embedded in the plan. To illustrate the importance of placemaking, the architects provided numerous diagrams for each typology.  

In addition, San Diego County Emergency Housing Plan strives to embed sustainable and resilient strategies, both in design and delivery within the design document. Instrumental to the successful implementation of these strategies are partnerships with a network of healthy building supply providers and solutions such as PV panels, battery storage, above-ground cisterns, permeable surfaces wherever possible, beekeeping, and gardening which provide onsite job training for residents.  

Currently, the plan is being realized through five initial projects on scattered sites throughout San Diego County.