ESCONDIDO —— North County elected officials, along with advocates for the homeless, met Thursday to begin forging a plan to end homelessness in San Diego County in 10 years. Meeting in a Escondido City Hall room that provided a view of Grape Day Park, where the homeless often gather, the conference was intended to generate new ideas and strategies to bring an end to homelessness.

"I think it's pretty exciting," Escondido Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler said of the conference. "I think it reinforces that you can solve the problem as a region."

Attendees heard success stories from housing officials from Atlanta and Philadelphia as well as ideas from the top official of a federal agency working on homeless issues.

When the local group next meets, its first goal will be to develop strategies to eliminate chronic homelessness.

The county's Regional Task Force on the Homeless defines a chronically homeless person as one who has no place to live and has a dual diagnosis of a mental illness and a substance abuse problem.

That group of people, which officials said comprise 20 percent of the homeless population, will be the first focus of the effort because it consumes about 50 percent of the financial resources available to address the problem, attendees said.

The chronically homeless routinely get turned away from programs, and therefore require emergency health services and law enforcement intervention, attendees said.

Eliminating the repeated need to serve those individuals would free up resources for those who are "situationally homeless," such as those whose primary problem is economic.

According to the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, Escondido has 762 homeless people, 228 of whom are not being served by a shelter. An additional 250 of the 762 are classified as farmworkers.

Those numbers mandate new, creative approaches to begin solving homelessness, said Hannah Cohen, a consultant with the United Way and an Escondido resident.

"We want out-of-the-box thinking," she said. "I think we are missing the boat. There has to be something wrong with this picture if (existing programs are) not working."

Among the agencies present was North County Community Services, which provides low- to no-cost child care for low-income families and operates a food bank. Community Services board member Tim Ensman said the agency is in the beginning stages of adding a homeless program.

"We're considering where the need is and how we can fill that need," he said. "(Homelessness) won't be solved tomorrow so having a regional 10-year plan is significant."

Philip Mangano, appointed by President Bush as executive director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness, said the homeless population continues to grow because services aren't working.

Examples of programs that are working were shared during the session.

Philadelphia developed a plan in 1997 which included pulling money away from temporary shelters and putting it into permanent housing, said Rob Hess, Philadelphia's managing director of special-needs housing.

Hess said the city began to see success by implementing a different approach as opposed to trying to run the homeless out of town or make them feel like they needed to hide.

"In Philadelphia, we don't push (homeless) people out of view," he said. "We want to know where people are."

Hess said many programs are just helping those who are the easiest to help, such as those who are temporarily homeless. He pretended to be homeless one day to see how hard it would be to qualify for services and wound up being turned away.

"We create a tremendous amount of barriers, to get into these programs," Hess said. "It makes no sense."

Mangano said homelessness is also a moral issue and that society must help people with no place to live.

"You have to be tolerant of homeless people and intolerant of homelessness," he said.

Thursday's session was sponsored by the city of Escondido, San Diego County, the United Way and the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Attendees included Encinitas City Councilwoman Maggie Houlihan, Vista City Councilman Bob Campbell, Escondido City Councilmen Sam Abed and Ron Newman, and San Marcos city official Karl Schwarm.

Also in attendance were representatives from the YMCA, Operation Hope, the Community Resource Center, Escondido Housing Advisory and Palomar Pomerado Health.

Staff writer Adrienne A. Aguirre can be reached at (760) 740-3526 or aaguirre@nctimes.com.