Solutions for Change announced Friday that it has “signed a contract” to purchase Green Oak Ranch, the 110-acre property in Vista that the County of San Diego was considering as the future location to house multiple substance use and mental health care treatment programs.
A nonprofit that works principally with unhoused families in North County, Solutions for Change uses a 700-day vocational training program that it calls Solutions Academy. If the sale goes through, Solutions says it will expand the endeavor at Green Oak and also establish Solutions Institute, “A training program to help other nonprofits stand up similar models across the country.”
Chris Megison, Solutions for Change’s founder and director, said Saturday that the negotiated price for the property is $10.5 million, about $1.5 million less than the county’s appraised value. The executive said that he envisions that Solutions will sell most of its residential properties in North County and consolidate operations at Green Oak, a process that would require additional city approval.
“I think our plans are going to show somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 people there,” Megison said, referring to consolidated operations housed at Green Oak.
County supervisor Jim Desmond, who proposed having the county purchase the property and received unanimous support from his colleagues to move forward, said in a community forum on June 30 that Solutions for Change winning the right to buy Green Oak would have his support.
“There is an opportunity, I think, for the city, Solutions for Change, Green Oak Ministries and the county to work together on this,” Desmond said.
Megison said the property will not embrace “housing first” as is the case for existing Solutions properties. The nonprofit previously gained notoriety for refusing millions in government grants that would have required the embrace of the policy that emphasizes permanent housing for unhoused residents, even if they continue to use illegal drugs, as housing is seen as the factor that makes progress on other issues, such as sobriety, more likely.
“Housing first does work for some, but it clearly doesn’t work for everybody,” Megison said. “You know, we’re client-driven, and some of our clients are saying, ‘you know, I need to have this place clean, I don’t want my kids around drugs.’”
The executive said his connection to the ranch is deep, having worked there as a case manager with Green Oak Ministries in the early 1990s. The program runs a successful residential treatment program at Green Oak that will continue operating on its own adjacent parcel after the sale. As Solutions grew, he said, he always thought that the ranch could be the key to helping the organization grow its model.
“I really think there is an opportunity here to help spread the Solutions model across the nation,” Megison said. “I’m just kind of pinching myself, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought or said ‘man, if only we had Green Oak Ranch, just watch what we could do.’”
As the county’s bid for the property garnered significant pushback from neighbors, some worried that an existing RV park on the property would disappear, making some who now live there homeless. Megison said that, as was disclosed in a recent community forum, the plan was to move the RV park to the Green Oak Ministries property.
“We’re in the business of solving family homelessness, ending it forever, so any concerns of us going in there and making people homeless, we’re the last entity that would do that,” Megison said.
Solutions for Change said that it intends to “take possession of the land in the first quarter of 2025.”
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