Jeff Bard was homeless for 15 years. He now has permanent housing, but the process wasn’t quick.
"It was years that I was actually between when I signed up to get on the list and actually received housing," Bard said.
The recent Santa Barbara County Point-in-Time Count recorded 1,332 homeless people throughout the county.
Santa Barbara County Housing Authority Director Sanford Riggs says 11,000 people are currently on the waitlist for Section 8 vouchers.
"The waitlist is closed, and we don't have enough funding to really open it again," Riggs said.
KSBY News reporter Juliet Lemar asked, 'When you have a county with a growing need and lack of vouchers, what happens?'
"The residents aren't served," Riggs said. "We’re seeing more seniors contacting us saying, 'I’m homeless, I’m living in my car, I need assistance, ' and we don’t have the vouchers for them."
Riggs says the county is only issuing emergency housing vouchers for domestic violence survivors, homeless veterans, or foster youth.
"They're from a separate tranche of money but for general vouchers, no, we're not issuing any new vouchers," Riggs said.
One big reason is the cost of rent.
"The rents keep going up and there's not enough money to fund that, so we get to the end of the year and we're short about $7 million," Riggs said.
In addition to restricting vouchers, the Housing Authority will also prevent tenants from moving to higher-priced units except in an emergency or to accommodate for disability. In the meantime, Bard hopes more people can connect with services to eventually find housing.
"The majority of unhoused people who come into a subsidized housing arrangement vastly improve their lives," Bard said.
Michelle Pedigo, Executive Director of the Housing Authority of San Luis Obispo (HASLO), explained how the Section 8 voucher program works.
"The housing choice voucher program is a program where individuals get these vouchers to take out into the regular rental market, rent a standard market rate unit, but they're guaranteed to only pay 30% of their income towards the rent and then we make up the difference so the landlord still gets the full market rent. The tenant is not rent-burdened, they're only paying 30% of their income," Pedigo said.
She adds that while HASLO expects to receive the same amount of federal funding as last year, they are also unable to issue more vouchers because of the rising cost of rent, which increases the cost to issue vouchers.
"I think the biggest concern we've heard is from our partner agencies that support homeless services," she said. "They really rely on those vouchers to be able to get the very, very low-income families into housing. There's really not a lot of other options for them."
HASLO conducts its voucher program by lottery, selecting 200-250 names each time it opens a list. Pedigo said they hoped to open the list again this summer, but they still have 168 names on the list from the 2024 opening.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, estimates that approximately 40–50% of Housing Authorities across the U.S are in a shortfall.
