San Diego County breaks ground on long-delayed Lemon Grove tiny cabins

Fencing and dirt moving at Troy Street and Sweetwater Road marked the moment San Diego County’s long-delayed tiny-cabin plan turned from argument into construction. The site in Lemon Grove will hold 60 sleeping cabins for people experiencing homelessness in East County, with each cabin sized for one to two people and paired with restrooms, laundry and onsite case management.

The county says the build should take about a year, with the village expected to open in summer 2027. The price tag is about $11.1 million to construct the site, plus roughly $3.6 million a year to operate it, a cost that underscores how far this project has moved beyond a temporary pop-up and into a permanent part of the county’s housing-and-services landscape.

What changed after the delay was the land deal. Supervisors approved the Troy Street Sleeping Cabins project on July 16, 2024, when the county still expected to lease the Caltrans parcel. A later federal land-rules change forced the county to buy the property instead, and the California Transportation Commission approved that purchase on March 20, 2026, clearing the way for construction to begin on the Caltrans-owned corner in Lemon Grove.

The county says it has been exploring emergency housing options since 2022 under its Compassionate Emergency Solutions and Pathways to Housing Implementation Plan, and Troy Street is being framed as a non-congregate emergency housing program, not just a row of beds. Beyond sleeping cabins, the site is planned with housing navigation, behavioral health services, public-benefits access, employment or disability-benefits support, credit repair and other supportive services, with priority for residents from Lemon Grove and nearby communities such as Spring Valley and Casa de Oro.

That makes the project look less like a one-off and more like a county model finally catching up to the scale of need. The Office of Homeless Solutions says its Regional Homeless Assistance Program has served 2,661 people since January 2020, with 36% exiting to more stable housing, while East County safe-parking programs provide 43 spots. In a county where the fight over this site has already run through a March 4, 2025 Lemon Grove City Council meeting and months of public workshops, the groundbreaking is not the end of the debate, but it is the first real sign that the cabins are becoming part of the ground itself.