Thousands of formerly homeless people whose housing subsidies will expire in December are no longer at risk of eviction, local housing officials announced Thursday.
An infusion of new funds approved by Congress this year and a waiver of eligibility procedures have staved off a potential crisis that would have left 4,200 back on the street.
“We are now able to ensure that every household that is participating will be able to stay housed,” said Lourdes Castro Ramirez, president and chief executive of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
Castro Ramirez and Emilio Salas, executive director of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, said in a joint announcement that the county’s two largest housing authorities now have the funds and administrative authority to convert all the expiring pandemic-era emergency vouchers into the permanent federal subsidy program, called housing choice vouchers.
The eviction crisis arose when federal officials announced last year that the $5-billion emergency voucher program approved by Congress in 2021 was running out of funds at the end of 2026. The rising cost of housing nationwide drained the account four years ahead of schedule, causing housing authorities across the nation to warn that some 46,000 voucher holders could face eviction by the end of this year.
In January, HACLA sent notices to its 2,760 emergency voucher, or EHV, holders and 1,700 landlords of the impending cutoff. LACDA notified its 1,500 EHV holders.
“These households have been on pins and needles over the past several months because they’ve all been notified that the subsidy was running out at the end of the calendar year,” Salas said.
At the time, LACDA had only sufficient funds to reissue housing choice vouchers that became available through attrition. HACLA was in worse shape, facing a funding shortfall that forced it to stop processing 2,000 voucher applications. With the added funds both agencies will have housing choice vouchers to replace all the expiring ones.
“At a time when the federal government is eviscerating our social safety net—Los Angeles County is moving quickly and finding creative ways to keep families housed,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said. “We are already in the midst of a declared emergency and every family we can keep from losing their home is a family spared the trauma and instability of homelessness.”
Housing choice vouchers are subsidies provided under the federal the Section 8 program directly to individuals or families. HACLA currently has about 53,000 Section 8 vouchers in use of which 29% are allotted to low-income housing projects rather than individuals.
Los Angeles County has far more eligible residents than vouchers. HACLA currently has a waiting list of 25,000 Castro Ramirez said.
The fate of about 1,200 emergency housing vouchers issued by Los Angeles County’s smaller housing authorities remains unclear.
“There are still [public housing authorities] that are trying to figure out where they are ultimately going to land,” Salas said. “We think based on our work with them, about half of them are going to be able to transition their households. For those that can’t, we’re working with them to try to identify alternative resources to try to get as many households as possible throughout the county.”
The Housing Authority of the City of Long Beach reports on its website that it does not have sufficient funding to transition emergency vouchers to the permanent ones. HACLB did not respond to an email asking for an update.
The pandemic-era emergency voucher program was a part of the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act. It was intended to quickly provide stable housing to people who were “homeless, at-risk of homelessness, fleeing, or attempting to flee, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking, or were recently homeless or have a high risk of housing instability.”
The Los Angeles County housing authorities collectively chose to focus the program on the chronically homeless, Salas said.
“For many of them the calendar was on,” Salas said. “What was going to happen to them at the end of the year? For many of them most likely would be a return to homelessness.”
The 2026 housing appropriation adopted by Congress this year boosted HACLA’s Section 8 funding by $138 million, Castro Ramirez said. That will allow it to both cover the $50-million annual cost of the emergency vouchers and resume processing the suspended applications. New funding to LACDA will include its $22-million emergency voucher costs and provide a $40-million reserve, Salas said.