SAN DIEGO - The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is scheduled this morning to consider whether to push for changes to formulas used by the federal government to determine funding levels for local homeless programs around the country.

A proposal by Supervisors Greg Cox and Ron Roberts says the current methods are obsolete and penalizes cities like San Diego, which receives less money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development than it needs.

"These formulas were originally crafted to service high-density populations on the nation's East Coast," the supervisors wrote in their motion. "As West Coast urban and homeless population densities increased, the formulas were not amended to adequately address the growing homeless population in San Diego County."

They said the 10,000 or so transients in San Diego County gives the region the third-highest homeless population in the country Advertisement

[ Christ the King Lutheran Church ] behind New York City and Los Angeles, but it ranks just 18th in receipt of federal dollars to spend on the problem.

HUD money is used for transitional housing, rental assistance, data tracking services and rapid re-housing to protect citizens from falling into a deeper state of homelessness, according to Cox and Roberts.

The supervisors will consider whether to direct the county's chief administrative officer to lobby for changes to the formulas.

Also on the agenda is a proposal to require 4-H and Future Farmers of America members to submit written plans if they wish to keep more roosters on their property than allowed by county ordinance.

The county limits the number of roosters, on a sliding scale according to property size, to discourage cockfighting. But county staff says the 4-H and FFF exception was abused in three cases last year.