Tens of thousands of struggling San Diego families are vying for Section 8 vouchers to help them pay the rent, yet the city’s housing agency hasn’t handed out tenant-based vouchers to families on its waiting list for nearly two years.
Surging San Diego rents and insufficient funding mean this startling reality is unlikely to change anytime soon – barring a major influx of federal dollars.
The San Diego Housing Commission doles out and oversees thousands of Section 8 vouchers in the city. In recent years, its list of families seeking rental subsidies has soared along with housing costs.
As of earlier this year, nearly 58,000 families were seeking Section 8 vouchers to help cover their rent and about 17,000 were already relying on that assistance. Hundreds jump onto the Housing Commission’s waiting list each month. Most of these families are seeking or counting on so-called housing choice vouchers that require them to find a landlord who accepts Section 8 and to pay about 30 percent of their income in monthly rent.
But the Housing Commission hasn’t had the capacity to hand out tenant-based Section 8 vouchers to families on its waiting list since August 2022, said Azucena Valladolid, the agency’s executive vice president of rental assistance and workforce development.
“Federal funding for housing choice voucher rental assistance is insufficient to assist all the households with lower income that need it,” Valladolid wrote in an email.
This is a national problem. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which disperses Section 8 voucher funding, estimated last year that just one in four families eligible for rental assistance across the nation receive it.
The situation is especially dire in high-rent cities like San Diego.
In the past four years, Valladolid said the Housing Commission’s average per-family subsidy for housing assistance has spiked 49 percent – from $876 a month to $1,300.
Federal support coming in to help cover families’ rents isn’t keeping up with those amounts or the need.
The Housing Commission reported spending $226.2 million on housing assistance payments during the current fiscal year but had only received $210.5 million in HUD funding as of mid-April. It’s unclear how much the housing agency will receive in the upcoming year.
The commission says it’s serving more families than it’s receiving money to support.
These mismatches are forcing difficult decisions at the Housing Commission.
For the past seven years, the agency has annually increased the maximum monthly rental assistance for families – known as payment standards – to try to keep up with skyrocketing rents.
There’s a tradeoff here. If the Housing Commission hands families who already have vouchers more money to help pay the rent each month, it’s got less cash to allocate for additional families desperate for the same support.
Jeff Davis, the Housing Commission’s deputy CEO, said the Housing Commission is focused on ensuring families who already have vouchers don’t lose their homes.
“Our priority is to raise payment standards to minimize the rent burden SDHC’s rental assistance participants experience and prevent them from potentially being priced out of their rental homes,” Davis wrote in an email.
The agency’s increasing Section 8 voucher allocations to house homeless San Diegans and commit vouchers to specific housing projects have only increased the pressure on the city’s limited supply of vouchers – and the increasing demand for them.
The Housing Commission has usually had to rely on the same pool of HUD funding to support those efforts. Valladolid said that’s meant the Housing Commission has needed to reduce the number of Section 8 vouchers it’s given families on its waiting list to fulfill those commitments.
The nearly 1,900 vouchers awarded to specific projects over the last five years, namely supportive housing facilities for formerly homeless people, have meant fewer vouchers are available for families on the Housing Commission’s waiting list.
And Valladolid said increasing per-family costs for those who do have vouchers mean the Housing Commission needs to dial back future commitments to housing projects so it can keep supporting families who already have vouchers.
“Without additional federal funding for rental housing vouchers, SDHC will not be able to continue to award or commit project-based housing vouchers for these populations in coming years at the same level we have in the recent past,” Valladolid wrote.
Housing Commission Chair Mitch Mitchell said the agency is considering those tradeoffs as it refines its budget for the upcoming fiscal year and talks with Mayor Todd Gloria’s team about its needs after a dispute over homelessness funding.
“Our agency, the Housing Commission, is looked at as a resource and it is easy to understand why people would become more disappointed as the list and the length of time to get a voucher grows,” Mitchell said. “This is a period where we really have to focus on ruthless prioritization.”
This is the kind of thing that is so upsetting to many Americans. We have a housing crisis because of inadequate funding , yet our own Federal government is sending out “Billions” for foreign aide so they can fight a war ?! It seems counter productive to me at the very least, however, being a military veteran , I understand our country is obligated to uphold democracy and freedom for us and our allies at all cost. And that cost is high, we all get it. But we should take care of internal problems and get stabilized first . In other words , “if a tree is rotting from the inside , then , it won’t be long before it falls”
This is the kind of thing that is so upsetting to many Americans. We have a housing crisis and other problems with inadequate funding to boot , yet our own Federal government is sending out “Billions” for foreign aide so they can fight a war ?! It seems counter productive to me at the very least, however, being a military veteran , I understand our country is obligated to uphold democracy and freedom for us and our allies at all cost. And that cost is high, we all get it. But we should take care of internal problems and get stabilized first . In other words , “if a tree is rotting from the inside , then , it won’t be long before it falls”
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Right? Our own vets and citizens can’t get the help they need, the are gutting programs for the poor and mentally ill but yeah lets focus on Isreal and Ukraine! Oh wait, I have a problem giving money to a movement founded by the same Jihadists that once followed Saddam so I guess that makes me a fascist… This white guilt garbage is getting ridiculous.
We can do both.
Section 8 is a great housing program. People live where they want, pay 30% of their income, and receive a subsidy for the remainder of the rent.
It’s more sensible to pay a subsidy of $1300 per month, rather than pay $840,000 to build a new apartment. (That’s the cost per unit of the Cuatro project in City Heights).
Seems there are a lot more immigrants coming who need a home. I’ve been on section 8 waitlist now for 13 years. I guess my last name is not correct for the help.
You forgot to mention transgenders. Immigrant transgenders!
The system it’s broken, the government sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine and Israel to support the war, while their own citizens struggling with housing and other basic services. I am one of thousands of Americans waiting on section 8, I been waiting for 22 years and still on top of the waiting list according to them (4/30/2024), bureaucracy and a broken system, the government doesn’t care.
How do you know your place in line on the wait list? I’d like to know mine so that’s why I’m asking 🙂
Oh cheeses con crackers!! You waiting for 22 years……uhm 🤔
I am calling BS on all of it. If you are a disabled veteran, San Diego ignores you. 11 years waiting and still waiting on the wait list.
Bryan Sanders if you are a disabled vet then you can get on the VASH program for veterans it is a lot quicker !
Yet, illegals’ keep walking through the porous Biden border everyday to receive free goods and services. More Democratic FAIL. Tragic!
I’ve been on the waiting list since
April 2011.
Hello my name is Jasmine Gibbs,
I am a single mother of two children 14 and 4 we have been homeless for the past 3 years staying in hotels and as well as in my car. I am looking for any help possible because I am out of options. I am currently on the section 8 waiting list and have been for the last 12 years. I am on a number of other list but I have applied and been on so many that I’m not sure which ones I have done. With this time on all of the list I have not received any help and I am desperate for anything right now.
My phone number is 6194512166
And this is the best email to reach me if I can not answer my phone because I am also in school.
Where is everyone from?
I came to San Diego in 1991, I was smuggled through the border at age 5.
When a landlord wants you out, they will raise the rent. If you are a lowlife renter, they will raise your rent to evict you because they know you cannot pay. Its a way to discriminate. A former slumlord practiced it all the time. Its also a way to ensure increased profits because government is willing to pay the rent increases.