State Sen. John Laird visits site of future cabin village in SLO: ‘We need temporary shelter’
San Luis Obispo County’s representative in the California State Senate paid a visit to the future site of the Welcome Home Village transitional housing project on Thursday.
District 17 State Sen. John Laird and top county officials including Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Dawn Ortiz-Legg met Thursday afternoon to discuss the housing project and the county’s efforts to tackle homelessness.
Laird said he supports projects like the Welcome Home Village — located in the Bishop Medical Center parking lot at the corner of Johnson Avenue and Bishop Street — because they provide a direct response to the problem of homeless encampments such as the ones the new project will target along the Bob Jones Trail.
Having attended the opening of many of the county’s homelessness response projects in recent years, Laird said he’s proud to see the county continuing to dedicate time and resources to the issue.
“I had an exchange with the governor last week with our caucus where I really tried to impress on him that locals are stepping up,” Laird said. “This project shows locals are stepping up.”
Laird: ‘We need temporary shelter’
Gibson said he and the Board of Supervisors were glad to host Laird near the conclusion of a long development process for the Welcome Home Village, which has spent the past two years in and out of hearings and community meetings.
In Jaunary, though the board voted 3-1 to approve the project in May 2024, it had to reconsider the project’s approval due to financial issues related to the project’s size.
As a result, the project site toured by Laird and the supervisors will host 54 transitional cabin homes rather than the 80 originally planned for the site.
Laird said with federal funding freezes potentially interrupting the development of future projects, it’s important for the state Senate to be proactive in ensuring state funding streams such as the $13.1 million Encampment Resolution Fund grant the project is based on.
“The governor sort of held back in his budget on the most flexible homeless funding sources, and I know in my caucus in the Senate, we are going to fight to restore it, because it’s the one flexible item that you can use for any of a number of things,” Laird said. “The federal money doesn’t let you do temporary shelter, but we need temporary shelter.”
While projects such as the Welcome Home Village are necessary to the long-term goals of reducing homelessness, Laird said he recognized that the location of project sites has posed — and will continue to pose — challenges along the way to getting local approval.
Laird applauded the county’s efforts to keep neighbors in the loop and said that building and maintaining the community’s trust would be important as the project gets closer to opening later this year.
“It has to go somewhere, and the question is, can you do it in a way that mitigates against all the consumers?” Laird said.
The project is slated to break ground in May, and three workshops are planned to continue communications among the county and residents of the Johnson Avenue neighborhood, Bishop Medical Center employees and service providers, on the following dates:
- Workshop 1: Tuesday, March 18, 6-7:30 p.m.
- Workshop 2: Tuesday, June 17, 6-7:30 p.m.
- Workshop 3: Tuesday, Sept. 30, 6-7:30 p.m.
- Site tour: December 2025 (date to be determined)
