In what could be seen as a positive step in establishing a relationship between the Escondido City Council and Interfaith Community Services, the nonprofit homeless service provider has agreed to new conditions that will allow it to continue operating in the city. Following months of meetings between the two sides, Interfaith CEO Greg Anglea said the nonprofit will register all people who come in for meals, cut back its sack lunch distribution to just mornings and mark every lunch bag with an identifying marker that can be traced back to the nonprofit if it becomes litter. Interfaith clients who are caught littering within 200 feet of its headquarters on Washington Avenue will be denied services under the new conditions, and businesses in the area will be ask to directly contact the nonprofit if they have any issues with clients. Anglea also agreed to return to the council in six months for a progress report. The move comes 16 months after the city diverted $50,000 away from Interfaith, which Escondido Mayor Dane White had called at the time a “drain on that area and the businesses around them.” White also said the city’s relationship with Interfaith was “beyond repair” for the foreseeable future. That icy relationship appeared to have thawed a bit Wednesday. “I’m definitely open to finding some sort of compromise,” White said. Interfaith was founded in 1979 and operates under a conditional-use permit issued by the city in 2000. The new modifications to the CUP were proposed by the city in response to concerns and issues from the Escondido Police Department’s Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving unit. In March 2024, the COPPS issued Interfaith a notice of violation of the CUP, including loitering and littering near the nonprofit. Interfaith also ranked in the top 20 calls for service in 2023, rising as high as seventh in February and March, according to a city staff report. “We took this very seriously, and we really appreciate the opportunity to work with staff and elected leadership to address the concerns that were raised in that notice of violation,” Anglea told council members Wednesday. The COPPS unit and city staff members from the Planning Code Compliance Division and City Attorney’s Office began working on new conditions to place on Interfaith last year, and representatives from Interfaith attended the city’s Homelessness Subcommittee meeting in November and agreed to the revisions. As part of the new conditions, Interfaith will provide take-away sack lunches only in the morning rather than twice a day. When asked by White, Anglea said he did not know how many sack lunches had been served daily, but 6,000 meals had been served in December. Interfaith already has begun registering people who receive take-away meals, which Anglea said involves collecting demographic information that can identify programs they may have already accessed and allows for the ability to identify what has been effective and where there are service gaps. The information also will be used to identify if a person needs housing, employment or addiction treatment to help connect them with services, he said. New conditions also call for Interfaith to provide a security and operations management plan and a public right-of-way mitigation plan to address how it will respond to nuisance behavior. Signs that state that no loitering is allowed within 200 feet of the Interfaith campus also will be posted at its entrance. If three of more notice of violations are issued to Interfaith within 90 days of the CUP’s adoption Wednesday, the city’s director of development services and police chief will review the violations to determine if the CUP should be suspended or referred to decision makers such as the City Council or Planning Commission. If the CUP is not revoked, any subsequent set of three violations within any 90-day period would trigger a return to decision-makers for review. If there are fewer than three violations within the first 90 days, the city would have a less-intensive process and require a review only if five or more violations occur within any 90-day period.