Wait lists for rental aid are getting so long that some cities may close theirs down

The last time Oceanside pulled anyone off its waiting list to get a housing choice voucher, which helps low-income residents pay rent, was December 2023.

The delay has been even longer in San Diego: Nobody’s made it off that city’s Section 8 list since August 2022.

And when it comes to San Diego County, which serves more than a dozen other cities as well as unincorporated communities? July 2022.

“We see no time in the future at which we can pull from our wait list,” Lisa Jones, president and CEO of the San Diego Housing Commission, told a small crowd earlier this week. “Even if we get to a point where we’re in a different federal administration and some of the funding comes back — I mean, that’s years away.”

Local officials gave the dire update during the Regional Task Force on Homelessness’ annual conference, which took place Wednesday and Thursday at the San Diego Convention Center. Many of the panels centered on the federal government’s ongoing overhaul of the rules governing homelessness spending.

Just in the weeks leading up to the event, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that billions of dollars worth of funding would soon prioritize treatment programs over housing initiatives, a change that was suddenly withdrawn after California and other states and advocacy organizations sued.

“This is a really weird moment,” Darlene Mathews, a housing policy consultant, said during one panel. “Literally, on a daily basis at the federal level, policy is changing.”

The vouchers

The problems surrounding the federally funded housing choice vouchers, however, began long before President Donald Trump returned to office. The amount of money cities get from the federal government has often not kept up with the rising cost of housing, leaving local officials scrambling to plug budget holes.

San Diego has more flexibility to deal with this than most. Years ago, the city received what’s known as a “Moving To Work” designation from the federal government, making it easier for area leaders to change how much voucher recipients pay. As a result, the housing commission’s board recently approved a plan requiring thousands of households to spend more on rent. In some cases, families who’ve only had to devote 24% of their income to housing are to eventually give 40%.

Other leaders are in a tighter bind.

Oceanside’s voucher program, for example, risks a budget shortfall of about $1 million, according to Housing and Neighborhood Services Director Leilani Hines. That money covers 47 households. If the federal government doesn’t step up — Oceanside lacks a “Moving To Work” designation, so participants are locked in at paying 30% of their income on rent — some families could be kicked out completely, Hines said.

She noted that around 70% of the people using vouchers in the city were elderly or disabled.

To make matters worse, the need seems to only be growing. Oceanside receives about 100 new requests for housing vouchers each month, officials said. Its wait list is now 5,100 households long. San Diego gets around 1,000 monthly pleas to join a list with nearly 78,500 households. An additional 121,200 wait in other San Diego County communities.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the city of San Diego plans to stop adding names to its list next year. Oceanside’s considering the same. “Having an open waiting list for us means having a false expectation,” Hines said.

Officials spent some of the conference brainstorming possible workarounds, including asking donors to expand separate homelessness prevention programs.

Other panels unpacked how Father Joe’s Villages was able to launch a detox program in downtown San Diego, the reconciliation between city and nonprofit leaders in Escondido and successful housing programs in North and East counties.