SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Rising rents and a lack of funding are threatening Sacramento’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8.
As ABC10 reported earlier this month, Sacramento’s Housing Choice Voucher program is in need of more money, and the waiting list for tenant-based vouchers has been closed, among other changes.
One solution, however, is in the works.
It’s hard enough being homeless. But for nearly 200 unhoused people, a glimmer of hope was shattered earlier this year.
“This is a really difficult time for everybody,” said MaryLiz Paulson, director of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency’s Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, formerly known as Section 8.
With federal dollars from HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, people in Sacramento County can apply to SHRA for a rent subsidy.
“The voucher program is a very large, very complex program,” Paulson said at a May 7 meeting with Sacramento City Councilmembers.
She reported SHRA had decided to close the voucher waiting list and go back to the pre-pandemic policy of not allowing voucher extensions. In other words, if someone hasn’t found housing within four months, SHRA will no longer grant extensions.
Paulson cited uncertainty about how much money HUD would grant them this year and the rising cost of rent throughout much of Sacramento County.
“The fair market rents increased 55% between 2020 and 2024,” Paulson said. “On a monthly basis, we pay out to landlords in this community between $15 million and $16 million a month. And that continues to go up.”
When SHRA made this change back in March, about 700 families had a voucher but had not yet found housing and would no longer be granted an extension. Of them, 175 were experiencing homelessness.
“We got 175 people out there that have vouchers. Why isn't that a priority?” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg asked at the May 7 meeting. “It must be a priority.”
“It's a huge punch in the gut,” Vice Mayor Caity Maple said. “Especially for, you know, a lot of the community members that I represent because, you know, they're very reliant on these (vouchers). And then especially as we think about homelessness and our need to get folks into housing that they can afford is a huge challenge.”
Since that May 7 meeting, Steinberg tells ABC10, the city, SHRA and the county have met twice to come up with a plan to support these nearly 200 unhoused voucher-holders.
“SHRA has agreed that they are not going to have those vouchers expire; they're going to extend them for the people at least who are in the latter part of their 60-day process,” Steinberg said. “They've committed to me that nobody's going to lose their voucher who's unsheltered as long as they're engaged in a real intensive process with all those who are responsible to help find them housing... We cannot allow an expiration date to have them lose that voucher."
Councilmembers asked SHRA if the agency can share the information of the unhoused voucher-holders, so the city and county can help them expedite the housing search. SHRA’s attorney said a federal privacy rule barred the agency from sharing that information unless the voucher-holder signs a waiver.
“And so we have a workaround,” Steinberg said.
At the time the unhoused voucher-holders request an extension on their voucher, SHRA will ask them to sign a wavier, which will allow the city and county to aid in the search for housing.
ABC10 asked about the other, housed voucher-holders who have not yet found housing.
“Our first priority are the people who are actually out on the streets without anything,” Steinberg said. “We're going to try to work on behalf of everybody, but our focus has been to make sure that up to 200 people get off the street as quickly as possible.”
ABC10 reached out to SHRA to confirm this. Spokesperson Angela Jones sent a statement, saying:
“SHRA takes seriously its mission to house homeless families and will assist eligible families who have found a rental unit. SHRA is looking forward to partnering with the City and the County to provide housing search support for families with vouchers.”
As for the people who have a voucher and are actively using it, Steinberg told ABC10 SHRA is not kicking anybody out due to funding concerns.
And at that May 7 meeting, SHRA was clear: the reason they’ve frozen the waiting list and have stopped extending unused vouchers is so they can put the money toward continuing to subsidize the rent for people in the program who already have housing.
Since that May 7 meeting, HUD announced how much Housing Authorities nationwide are getting. Sacramento has been allotted $185,103,221 for calendar year 2024. That’s about a 19% increase from the previous year’s allotment of $155,132,420. And in 2022, SHRA got $129,437,236 for its Housing Choice Voucher program.
Steinberg pointed out there remain tens of thousands of people on the now-frozen waiting list for a voucher here in Sacramento County.
“There is much more need and demand than there is supply, there's no question about it, and nothing that the federal government has done, even increasing the allotment, changes that fact,” Steinberg said. “What's missing is a more robust federal commitment to housing.”
He said the Biden Administration has made infrastructure a federal priority and he’d like to see housing included in that.
“We have a national housing crisis, and we're doing everything we can in Sacramento, and the federal government is not absent; I mean, certainly, we benefit from the vouchers, and we're very grateful for all the support that we get,” Steinberg said. “But I'm talking about a national priority in terms of dramatically increased funding for more vouchers to deal with this 50,000-person waiting list, to be able to do more project-based vouchers so we can increase the supply.”
WATCH ALSO:
