Innovative Welcome Home Village officially opens in SLO. Here’s a look
After years three years of development, a village of cabin homes for homeless San Luis Obispo residents is officially open and ready to put roofs over heads.
The Welcome Home Village on the corner of Bishop Street and Johnson Avenue, which consists of 40 3D-printed permanent supportive housing units and 14 interim supportive housing units with wraparound supportive services onsite, was initially approved by the county Board of Supervisors in May 2024, but the road to Monday’s opening was long and winding.
Deputy director of homeless services Linda Belch, who’s been with the project since its inception, said its opening represented a “watershed moment” in homeless services in San Luis Obispo County, which has marked a 42% reduction in unsheltered homelessness since 2022.
County leadership “recognized early on that the status quo was not acceptable, and they committed to building real solutions for some of our community’s most vulnerable residents,” Belch said. “It also reflects the dedication of county staff across departments who worked tirelessly to move this vision from an idea into reality — countless hours of planning, coordination, and problem-solving.”
As the Welcome Home Village takes in its first residents in the coming weeks, it will significantly expand the county’s ability to address homeless people where they already are, project manager Margaret Shepard-Moore said.
Each unit ranges between 100 and 400 square foot depending on model, with interim supportive units relying on shared bathroom facilities and private bathrooms for the permanent cabins. The units have a bed, table, microwave and mini fridge.
Outside the individual units, shared amenities include laundry facilities, a community room, landscaped open space with a pet relief area and multiple community spaces, including work-study areas and private offices for meetings with case managers and other service professionals, according to the county.
“I’ve been doing homeless outreach for 10 years prior to this, and it’s about the people — it’s about a place where people can feel safe, rebuild their lives, and finally have a place to call home,” Shepard-Moore said. “Tonight, we get to celebrate this great accomplishment, but in the coming weeks, the residents will get to celebrate something even better, and that’s coming home.”
Village opens around 3 years from inception
The Welcome Home Village can trace its roots back to the summer of 2023, when the Board of Supervisors accepted a $13.4 million Encampment Resolution Fund grant from the state.
Originally, the site was considered for the county Department of Social Services lot on the end of Higuera Street and Prado Road, before switching to its current location because that site conflicted with both the city’s 1997 Specific Plan for the Higuera Commerce Park and the county’s Airport Land Use Plan.
That original site plan was reduced from an 80-cabin layout to the 54 units that opened Monday less than a year after the project was initially approved due to financial issues.
The project represents several firsts in homelessness services, Shepard-Moore said.
It’s the nation’s first off-site 3D-printed housing project in the nation, and Santa Maria-based homeless outreach organization Good Samaritan Shelter’s first major foray into direct homelessness response in San Luis Obispo County.
Each unit was developed by DignityMoves and fabricated off-site by Azure Printed Homes, then lowered into place by crane atop massive ground screws earlier this year, Shepard-Moore said.
Its location near the Bishop Medical Center — which houses Good Samaritan’s Sobering Center, the county’s Department of Public Health and other behavioral health services — will ensure that the people coming through the village will have easy access to the services they need most, she said.
“It’s taken three years to get here, but I think every challenge along the way has ended up being a bonus,” Shepard-Moore said. “It was originally supposed to be built (near) Social Services, but now it’s built by Drug and Alcohol Services — we’ve got the Sobering Center, we have a hospital nearby, behavioral health — so this is the coolest location.”
Local leaders in homelessness praise cabin project
At every stage and location, the project was met with mixed reactions by nearby neighbors who mainly cited concerns about traffic, parking and the safety of having newly rehoused individuals living in their neighborhood.
But District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, who lives in the neighborhoods near the village, said she was proud of the neighbors who stepped up and gave the village a chance.
“I remembered the controversy surrounding the first site,” Ortiz-Legg said. “I understood the concerns, but I also knew something else: These programs work, and if I believe they work, how could I tell staff to place them somewhere else and not in my neighborhood?”
DignityMoves CEO and founder Elizabeth Funk, whose team specializes in creating transitional communities across California, said non-congregate settings such as the Welcome Home Village give people experiencing homelessness the chance to collect their thoughts and get out of survival mode.
“I think this is my 15th grand opening that we’ve celebrated with Dignity Moves, and don’t tell anybody this, but this is clearly my favorite,” Funk said.
District 4 Supervisor Jimmy Paulding said the project is emblematic of San Luis Obispo County’s continued support for homelessness responses, which picked up steam with 2022’s five-year Plan to Address Homelessness.
“In SLO County, we’ve adopted a compassion-with-order approach — that means we are investing in high-quality housing and services for those who need them most, while also ensuring that our public spaces are safe, accessible and serve their intended purpose for the entire community,” Paulding said. “Projects like this help restore places like the Bob Jones Trail, while connecting people experiencing homelessness to real support and sustainability.”
