Welcome Home Village the third cabin housing project in 4 years to open in SLO County

A 54-cabin transitional housing village for homeless residents officially opened last week in San Luis Obispo, capping a three-year development process that saw the project shrink, relocate and overcome neighborhood opposition.

The Welcome Home Village now stands as the nation’s first off-site 3D-printed housing project, built in the same vein as two earlier cabin programs in Grover Beach.

Here are the key takeaways:

• The Welcome Home Village opened Monday, June 8, with 40 permanent supportive units and 14 interim units at Bishop Street and Johnson Avenue, marking what officials called a “watershed moment” after a 42% reduction in unsheltered homelessness in San Luis Obispo County since 2022.
• Funding traces back to summer 2023, when the Board of Supervisors unanimously accepted a $13.4 million state Encampment Resolution Fund grant — the largest single homelessness grant the county had ever received — to move up to 200 people out of encampments along the Bob Jones Trail.
• The Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 in May 2024 to approve the original 80-unit plan, with Supervisor Debbie Arnold dissenting and Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg recusing herself because she lives near the site, after hearing testimony about the need to fill a gap between emergency shelters and permanent housing.
• The project was originally planned for the county Department of Social Services lot at South Higuera Street and Prado Road but was relocated to the Bishop Medical Center at the corner of Johnson Avenue and Bishop Street. The new location drew mixed reactions from neighbors at a May 2024 community meeting, where residents raised concerns about parking, safety and the residential setting, though Police Chief Rick Scott reported that similar DignityMoves projects in Santa Barbara County saw police calls drop rather than rise.
• In January 2025, the Board of Supervisors had to scale the project back from 80 cabins to 54 — reducing interim beds from 34 to 14 and permanent supportive beds from 46 to 40 — after inflation, new Wildland-Urban Interface fire compliance and a sloped site eroded the $13.4 million budget’s purchasing power.
• The village broke ground in June 2025 as California’s largest 3D-printed community, with Gardena-based Azure Printed Homes fabricating 63 modules over a 12-week period and installing them on ground screws to avoid regrading the Bishop Medical Center parking lot.
• Two Grover Beach programs paved the way for the SLO village: the 20-unit Cabins for Change opened on Dec. 23, 2022, offering 90- to 180-day stays for South County residents, and Balay Ko on Barca, which opened in May 2024 with 30 units after the Balay Ko Foundation covered the full $2.6 million in permitting, development and construction costs plus first-year operations. Balay Ko on Barca more than doubled 5CHC’s interim bed capacity in South County.
• State Sen. John Laird visited the SLO site in February 2025 and pledged to fight federal funding freezes, telling officials the state needs flexible homelessness funding because federal money doesn’t allow spending on temporary shelters.
• The first tiny homes were craned into place in early February 2026, and project manager Margaret Shepard-Moore said an outreach worker from Good Samaritan Shelter had already made contact with enough Bob Jones Trail residents to fill all 54 cabins by the onboarding date.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.