SAN DIEGO — El Cajon is seeing an influx of people experiencing homelessness arriving to the city and using hotel vouchers.
Mayor Bill Wells said the police department reached out to every hotel and motel in the city over the weekend. That's when they learned about 1/5th of hotel rooms are being occupied by someone with a voucher.
"We're not happy that no one contacted us and told us they were going to be dumping a massive number of homeless people in El Cajon" said Wells.
He said at least two motels are fully occupied by people experiencing homelessness.
"They're telling us that people are brought by sheriff's deputies. If that's the case, I want the sheriff's department to tell me where these people are coming from and why they're coming to El Cajon. Why not Del Mar or Solana Beach?" he said.
WATCH: El Cajon mayor and city manager address influx of homeless in city’s hotels
“Not only did we notice an increase in crime and need for medical responses around some of these motels, our police officers started noticing new homeless individuals, along with drug dealers who prey on them, and open drug use,” noted City Manager Graham Mitchell.
El Cajon has about 1,000 hotel rooms citywide, the mayor found 185 are being taken by hotel vouchers. CBS 8 reached out to a homeless advocate to further explain the influx.
"The vouchers are not given out in the city of San Diego. Only in East County. That has been very complicated. We've seen some folks tell locals in San Diego go to East County and you'll have better luck," Amie Zamudio said.
Jose Jacinto coaches boxing up the street from one of the hotels housing people experiencing homelessness.
"We've always had homeless but the last three months have been really bad. A lot of homeless. There's kids at our gym all the time and there's people doing drugs, smoking pills out of aluminum foils," he said.
The mayor says the added influx of people is hard on the city.
"It' not fair to the people that live in El Cajon. We have our own problems and homeless population, and we work very hard to try to give them treatment and options," Mayor Bill Wells said.
On Tuesday, a fire safety inspection occurred at one of the motels being used as a shelter and it was discovered that about 60 percent of the rooms had no operating smoke detector, some had unsafe propane stoves, many living in deplorable living conditions.
Supervisors Nathan Fletcher and Joel Anderson released statements saying:
“The Board of Supervisors is taking action in a bi-partisan way to do the difficult work of getting people off the streets and into permanent housing. Mayor Bill Wells and the City of El Cajon want to push them back onto the streets. The public expects us to take action and El Cajon is playing a tired old blame game that does nothing to address the problem of homelessness in our region. We stand ready to work with anyone who is willing to do the tough work to get people off the streets but will not be deterred or distracted by those trying to drag us backwards,” said Chair Nathan Fletcher.
“To say that County is secretly using El Cajon as a dumping ground is misinformed. In the future, I believe our shared constituents would be better served if we worked together, rather than through press conferences,” shared Supervisor Joel Anderson, who represents El Cajon in the Second Supervisorial District.
The supervisors added that of the 121 individuals using vouchers at El Cajon hotels and motels, roughly 64% of them are from El Cajon, and approximately 94% of them are from East County.