Reality Check is a Bee series holding officials and organizations accountable and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email realitycheck@sacbee.com .
There are roughly 300 affordable public housing units in Sacramento sitting vacant at any given time, according to a strongly-worded letter from a federal agency obtained by The Sacramento Bee.
“The HUD San Francisco Office of Public Housing has significant concerns regarding the number of vacant public housing units,” HUD wrote in an Aug. 18, 2023, letter to the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. “(The office) is requesting that SHRA provide a corrective action plan that identifies the actions and timelines to house more families in public housing units.”
SHRA leaders say they had delays in filling vacant units in recent years due to “staff shortages, health and safety issues, supply chain delays, costly repairs and maintenance of aging housing and infrastructure.”
HUD has a goal for all public housing authorities across the country to have no more than 4% of its units vacant at any given time. For Sacramento, that would mean 120 units vacant at any given time, instead of the current 300.
“We’re focusing on achieving HUD’s goal of 96% occupancy,” said Angela Jones, SHRA spokeswoman. “Sacramento is not unlike many other public housing agencies across the country who are trying to recover from the impact of the pandemic. Nonetheless, we’re committed to improve our performance so that we can serve families in response to Sacramento’s affordable housing challenges.”
Other public housing agencies in Northern California have similar vacancy challenges for the same reasons, said Andra Higgs, a HUD spokesperson. SHRA should be at 4% by the end of the year, she added.
The housing authority in San Francisco currently has a vacancy of 11.5%, while the one in Los Angeles is at about 2%, Higgs said.
SHRA did not have to pay any penalties for its vacancy, but does have to submit monthly reports to HUD, Jones said.
The year-old letter is making waves now because in early June, someone sent the letter anonymously to all Sacramento City Council members. During a June 11 council meeting, Councilman Eric Guerra asked SHRA executive director La Shelle Dozier for a briefing on the concerns raised in the letter. That still has not happened, Guerra said Thursday.
The need for affordable housing in Sacramento is huge.
SHRA has recently redeveloped the large Mirasol Village public housing community in the River District. When it opened last year, according to SHRA, the waitlist received 9,451 applications for 300 spots.
Kristi Phillips was one of those who applied. She has been submitting applications for public housing units in Sacramento for years. Her family is currently split up, with her and her 14-year-old son staying at a shelter that’s soon closing, and her two daughters and husband staying with a friend.
When she learned from a reporter about the public housing vacancy rate, she said she was “in shock.”
“If we had housing we would all be living together as a family not three of us staying in one place and two of us staying somewhere else,” Phillips said, on break from her job of stocking shelves at Ulta. “It would be a place my whole family can call home. It would also be cheaper than trying to find a rental anywhere else in Sacramento since the rent everywhere is out-of-this-world super high.”
A rental big enough for the family of five would likely cost at least $3,000 a month in Sacramento.
Phillips faces an additional barrier to finding housing on the private market due to her poor credit score, she said.
Public housing authorities such as SHRA get the bulk of their funding from the federal government, where Republicans have the majority in the House and typically block significant increases to HUD funding. Due to the increase in rental housing costs in Sacramento, HUD recently told SHRA they cannot issue any new Section 8 vouchers to new people. Those vouchers cover a portion of rent for people to rent units on the private market.
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