The Santa Barbara City Housing Authority issued a red flag alert this past week, announcing that it would not be issuing any new Section 8 housing vouchers for the foreseeable, but still indefinite, future.
Rob Fredericks, Housing Authority director, explained the escalating rate of rents at the local level has created a funding shortfall for his agency even though federal funding for his program has been increased somewhat by the stop-gap budget measure just approved by Congress.
As it is now, Fredericks said, there are 7,732 people who have qualified for Section 8 housing and have been awarded housing vouchers but who are still waiting to find an available apartment leased by a participating landlord. “The wait time is far too long,” he exclaimed. “The average wait time if people don’t give up is about five to six years!”
Of those voucher holders on the waiting list, Fredericks noted 1,111 are people 65 or older. Another 2,400 involve families with kids. To qualify for Section 8 vouchers, one cannot make more than 80 percent of the area median income. In Santa Barbara, for a single person, that qualifying threshold is $91,200. For a family of four, it’s $130,000.
Federal funding formulas have long put low-vacancy, high-rent communities like Santa Barbara at a disadvantage. As rental rates continue to rise, the pinch in finding additional landlords willing to participate becomes more pronounced. In a written statement, Fredericks said that people on the waiting list can expect longer waits; he added that the increased financial constraints will make it harder for the Housing Authority to approve rent increases.
Although Congress just raised funding for the program by $3.6 billion nationwide, Fredericks said, that’s not enough to offset rising costs. Statewide, he said California had been allocated 359,099 vouchers last year, but because of funding shortfalls and high rents, 40,430 qualifying households had not secured housing.
