Encinitas announced in February that it would stop taking people off of its 1,137-person waitlist for Section 8 vouchers. That means that for the foreseeable future, no new people in the city will receive rental assistance.
It’s the latest in what has been a domino of closing waitlists for housing vouchers across San Diego County. Most of the people receiving such aid locally get it through the county or the city of San Diego, which both closed their waitlists in February. Carlsbad, Encinitas, National City, Oceanside and San Diego each have their own housing authorities.
An inewsource review found that most housing authorities in San Diego County have either closed their waitlists or stopped accepting people off of their waitlists into housing assistance due to increasing costs of rent subsidies.
Oceanside remains the only housing authority with both an open waitlist and an ability to take people off. But that may not last long.
For context: San Diego County’s waitlist for federal rental assistance closed to new applicants late February.
Amid soaring rents and shifting White House priorities, it had grown to 124,000 people, adding 27,000 in the last two years. No one is expected to move from the list into affordable housing for years.
The city of San Diego closed its waitlist on Feb. 1, it had 76,000 people on it.
Section 8, explained: The Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly referred to as Section 8 because of the federal code, helps low-income households pay rent in the private market. The program was started in 1983 and provides rental assistance to more than 5 million people nationally.
Picking up the slack: Kim Johnson, senior director of policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said federal funding has not kept up with rising rents and a growing need across the U.S. — especially San Diego.
“So that also means that public housing authorities are drawing down their funding more quickly because of that increase in funding to try to keep up with currently assisted households,” she said.
Only one in four households who are income qualified to receive housing assistance actually get it, Johnson said. In California, tens of thousands of households are on waitlists, according to the state Association of Housing Authorities.
A close call: Concerns mounted in recent months as Congress considered significant budget cuts to the Section 8 program overseen by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Ultimately, lawmakers authorized over $77.3 billion for HUD programs in fiscal year 2026, up $7.2 billion from the previous year. An analysis by the National Low Income Housing Coalition said that the additional funding should ensure the renewal of existing tenant-based rental assistance contracts like the Section 8 program.
Even with the increase, though, cities in expensive housing markets like the county are struggling to cover housing costs.
When the money runs out: Public housing agencies make projections on whether they will face a shortfall in federal funding which could prevent them from paying rent assistance to all households currently using vouchers.
When an agency faces a shortfall, it can implement several cost-saving measures including correcting administrative mistakes and stopping issuing vouchers to new applicants. These don’t require HUD approval.
If the shortfall persists, housing agencies can then seek HUD approval for additional actions such as denying families the ability to move within their jurisdiction and rescinding vouchers issued to applicants who aren’t yet in a contract.
As a last resort, agencies can terminate housing contracts they already have. This requires additional HUD procedures.
What the cities are saying:
Multiple authorities said that they dipped into reserves to cover the cost of rental subsidies.
Raymond Rull, Oceanside’s housing program manager, acknowledged it’s possible the city’s waitlist may close as well.
“We follow closely what the housing authority of the county and the city does,” he said. “But currently our waitlist is open. In terms of what it looks like in a few months, I really can’t predict.”
Other cities’ futures don’t look too promising, either. Take a look where each one stands below.
“Due to insufficient federal funding and the absence of additional funding allocations, we regret that we are unable to select new families from our Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher waiting list at this time,” the website reads. “As a result, we cannot provide an estimated waiting period and do not anticipate selecting new families in the near future.”
Around 100 households receive the vouchers each year.
The waitlist sat over 1,000 five years ago, then briefly dipped down to the 400-500 range in the following years after the city removed applicants who were no longer interested, ineligible or could not be reached. It was back to 988 by June 2025.
The average monthly rental subsidy was $1,470 in 2025, up 54% from $952 in 2021.
On average, people spend at least eight years on the waitlist before getting into subsidized housing, Rull said.
Upwards of 1,300 families received vouchers in each of the past five years. In 2025, the city provided an average rental subsidy of $1,771. That’s up 44% from the $1,233 it provided in 2021.
A funding shortfall in 2025 means the city has no plans of reopening its waitlist in the next year.
“While our goal is always to align spending with projected funding, a housing agency’s budget is a moving target as rent levels, contract rents and other subsidy costs continue to rise,” Gutierrez said. “HUD funding has not kept pace with the cost of living in higher cost markets like ours, which contributes to these funding gaps.”
The housing authority has provided around 500 vouchers in each of the last five years. The city’s waitlist saw a 42% drop in those five years, from 495 in 2021 to 289 people in 2025.
Meanwhile the average rent subsidy increased to $1,761 in 2025, which is up 41% from $1,250 in 2021.
The average monthly rent subsidy the city provides is $1,360, and it provides 1,131 housing vouchers each year.
The average waiting period to get off the list is seven to 10 years, Rios said.
