As rent vouchers run out, S.D. faces tough choices

Finite resources and a lack of affordable homes leave leaders with few options.

SAN DIEGO — On a fall Saturday, shortly before her 60th birthday, Allison Blanks received a letter.

It had four typed sentences. She read them in her El Cajon apartment, where she moved almost two years ago after a long stretch living out of motels and a Chevrolet Spark.

“The Housing Authority of the County of San Diego has made a decision to terminate your participation in the Local Rental Subsidy Program,” the letter said. Starting in February, “you will no longer receive benefits and will be responsible for paying the entire rent.”

The news wasn’t entirely a shock. Blanks remembered being told that the assistance was temporary. Still, she started to shake.

As the homelessness crisis grows, vouchers that help cover rent have emerged as a key tool for keeping people off the street. But the rising cost of housing, lack of affordable homes and finite resources often leave leaders with limited options about who should receive aid.

Some programs growing.

San Diego County recently announced that it was receiving nearly 50 new vouchers for young adults and families affected by the foster care system.

“This is great news, as we’re trying to create our framework to really end homelessness,” San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Nora Vargas said in December.

The Family Unification Program, which is federally funded, can help parents who have lost or are about to lose their children primarily because of a lack of stable housing, officials said. Young adults at risk of homelessness may also be eligible, if they’ve been in foster care.

The vouchers don’t expire for families, while individuals in their late teens or early 20s will generally see the assistance end after three years.

Homeless veterans have similarly benefited. Leaders have credited the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program with reducing homelessness among people who served in the military, although multiple factors, including a tough housing market, have kept hundreds of those vouchers from being used. Members of Congress are pushing local officials to boost participation.

Then there’s Section 8, the Federal Housing Choice Voucher program that offers rental assistance that can be used in communities nationwide. But San Diego County estimates that getting a Section 8 voucher may take at least a decade; the average wait in the city of San Diego can be closer to 15 years.

“We need more,” Eugene Mitchell, board chair of the San Diego Housing Commission, said last year at a public meeting.

The Section 8 program is the commission’s largest; more than 17,200 people in San Diego were taking part as of October, according to staffers.

A voucher’s value varies depending on the size and location of the home, and the number of recipients could increase if leaders reduced the dollar amounts. Yet doing so could further concentrate low-income residents in poorer areas or make the vouchers effectively worthless in expensive Southern California.

“We’re paying more for vouchers that people can use,” Commission Vice Chair Ryan Clumpner said from the dais, meaning “we don’t have as many to go around.”

As it stands, several groups tend to be prioritized, such as homeless people with disabilities and the elderly.

Blanks, in El Cajon, tried applying for more help. She got another letter from the county in December. It said she is on a waiting list — she thinks it’s Section 8, although the paperwork doesn’t specify — but no vouchers were immediately available. Her annual income of almost $31,000 meant she earned too much for someone living alone, the letter said; others were in far worse shape.

Blanks is a cashier at a Speedway convenience store. She makes $15.91 an hour, around $2,500 a month. She said rent is $1,550, meaning she’ll soon have less than $1,000 for everything else. She hopes to find a second job cleaning houses.

Blanks looked around her one-bedroom apartment on a recent Wednesday. Shelves were lined with mermaid statues. Photos of her three children hung on the wall. A brother recently died, and Blanks had placed his reading glasses next to a commemorative candle.

She’d put everything in storage the last time she was homeless. She wondered if she was headed there again.

“I’m not planning for the future, just day by day,” she said. “I’m terrified.”

The county’s Local Rental Subsidy Program should pay most of Blanks’ rent through January.

The voucher was meant to last two years. However, the first letter she received didn’t mention the time limit, saying only that the “reason for this termination” was “limitations on program funding.”

Tim McClain, a county spokesperson, said future letters will be rewritten to “better reflect” that a voucher is ending because the “maximum amount of assistance months” had been reached.

In many cases, participants were connected to other aid, McClain wrote in an email.

One hundred and fiftyseven households were taking part in the program as of mid-December, he said. Around 28 will hit the limit in the next six months.