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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dollars worth of funding would soon prioritize treatment programs over housing initiatives, a change that was suddenly withdrawn after California and other states and advocacy organizations sued.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,” Dar...
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