The California Housing Partnership has released its annual Affordable Housing Needs Report.
State and federal funding for housing in San Diego County fell this last fiscal year by almost 10%.
Still, thousands of rent-restricted units were constructed or acquired – a 90% increase from the year before.
It’s needed. Almost 80% of the county’s extremely-low-income households pay more than half their income on housing, according to the report, and nearly 130,000 low-income renter households don’t have access to an affordable home.
Those numbers are down slightly from the year before.
Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, attributed that to a slight increase in wages and a cooling rental market. But he warned against thinking that signals an end to the housing crisis.
“I wouldn't call these reports necessarily positive. They indicate that maybe we've hit the bottom of the depth of the crisis, but we're still underwater,” Russell said. “We have a long ways to go to bring people's wages up to where it's appropriate and to build enough housing that is affordable, especially for folks like seniors, like people living with disabilities, who are challenged, who are not going to see increases in their wages.”
Russell said San Diego hasn’t built enough housing to meet demand since 2004. He estimated about 150,000 more homes are needed to balance the city’s market, and thinks San Diego’s largest employers should get involved in the effort.
There’s also a measure on the ballot he thinks could help – a tax on vacant homes. San Diegans will vote on the measure in the upcoming June 2 election.
“There is no one silver bullet,” he said. “We need to do all of these things if we're going to see the other side of this crisis.”
