SLO’s emergency housing voucher program outperforms much of California, officials say
Nearly 90% of the federal emergency housing vouchers issued to San Luis Obispo over the past 18 months have been used by people in need — one of the highest success rates in the state, according to a local homeless services official.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law.
That stimulus bill included 70,000 Section 8 emergency housing vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to be used by local public housing authorities to address rising homelessness and housing insecurity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Housing Authority of the City of San Luis Obispo (HASLO) initially received a total of 156 emergency housing vouchers, according to HASLO housing director Elaine Archer.
Forty more vouchers were granted to HASLO and its local partners shortly after, which include the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County (CAPSLO), CAPSLO homeless services director Jack Lahey said.
According to the HUD EHV dashboard, 171 of SLO’s 196 vouchers have been leased, with just 16 left to be used by voucher holders.
Those figures are some of the best rates in California, the dashboard data showed.
SLO’s emergency housing voucher program outperforms other California cities
Only four other public housing authorities performed better in terms of emergency voucher distribution and turning those vouchers into housing for holders, Lahey said.
Generally speaking, housing vouchers have a success rate around 40%, she said, and part of HASLO’s success stems from casting a wide net for finding people to use the vouchers.
“If we got 156 vouchers, we knew we needed over 400 referrals, because not everyone was going to be successful,” Archer said. “We worked with Salvation Army and The Link (Family Resource Center) and the school systems because they all come in contact with people who are couchsurfing, homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.”
Local organizations including the Five Cities Homeless Coalition, Transitions-Mental Health Association, Lumina Alliance, El Camino Homeless Organization and CAPSLO all agreed to memorandums of understanding with HASLO to help find homeless or at-risk people who could receive the vouchers, Archer said, giving the group reach across SLO.
Finding housing is all about talking to people “in the right place at the right time,” she said.
Currently, the federal EHV Dashboard data shows a success rate nationally of 45.4% — though California falls short of that mark with a statewide success rate of 36.37% from a pool of 17,174 vouchers.
SLO’s 87.24% success rate currently ranks fifth overall in California out of 155 public housing authorities that received vouchers — trailing only the Housing Authority of San Mateo County (95.95% unit utilization), the Housing Authority of Redding (95.31%), the Regional Housing Authority (89.76%) and the Housing Authority of Marin County (89.74%).
Landlord incentives help voucher holders get housing
Part of the success of SLO’s emergency housing voucher efforts is the widespread acceptance of the vouchers by local landlords, Lahey said.
Each of the vouchers comes with a $4,000 incentive for landlords who might otherwise be hesitant about leasing to Section 8 tenants, Lahey said, noting that some landlords consider that “more trouble than it’s worth.”
While there are state laws against discrimination against voucher holders, Lahey said, some landlords circumvent these laws by citing poor credit or rental history instead of the fact the renter holds a voucher as their reason for refusal.
Even the presence of a public housing authority can be enough to sour a landlord on taking on a Section 8-holding tenant, Lahey said.
“If I was a landlord (and) I didn’t care about social services or anything, and I just wanted to be able to rent my units and not worry about it, I would be a little freaked out that a nonprofit is trying to advocate for this person to come in,” Lahey said. “I see both sides, and I’m not trying to say like one side is wrong or right. (But) I do think that housing discrimination is real, and it’s wrong.”
Lahey said the emergency housing were able to “fill a gap” financially for many unhoused community members.
“All of a sudden, we were able to apply these to our folks that no solution really worked for,” Lahey said. “That’s why it was really effective for us, because we’ve had this pool of folks who traditional vouchers don’t work for.
“They don’t have enough income to get their own units, or their rental history or credit is spotty enough where they can’t really qualify in the market.”
On average, each emergency housing voucher pays for $1,297 in rent each month.
Emergency vouchers have less strict criminal background requirements
The new emergency housing vouchers’ flexibility was thanks in part to less strict criminal background standards, Archer said.
According to Archer, there are two “absolute no’s” in the world of federal housing assistance: being a registered sex offender and manufacturing methamphetamine on a federally subsidized property.
With those two exceptions, public housing authorities are allowed to make their own rules on what disqualifies a person from voucher programs.
“At a national level, there’s growing recognition that persons of color are disproportionately impacted by arrests and convictions, and that it could be another form of discrimination if you have a very strict criminal screening process,” Archer said. “We also know that homelessness is often criminalized, and so if you’re looking at a pattern of arrest, those arrests could be because of their homeless status.”
In SLO, public housing authorities rolled back some restrictions that would normally prevent people from applying for Section 8 housing — such as having a historyof violence within the past 12 months, owing debt to the housing authority or having a housing authority lease terminated in the past three to five years — in the case of emergency housing voucher applicants.
Loosening criminal background regulations can allow previous offenders to have a chance at stabilizing their lives and thus avoid future run-ins with the law, Archer said.
While most emergency housing vouchers have already been distributed, applications for standard Section 8 vouchers can be found on HASLO’s website.
This story was originally published September 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
