County may help San Diego-area seniors at risk of homelessness with $300 for rent – The San Diego Union-Tribune

San Diego — 

Seniors at risk of losing housing could get help with rent payments under a pilot program the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday, one of three actions the supervisors took to address homelessness.

The board unanimously passed an item introduced by supervisors Joel Anderson and Terra Lawson-Remer to help low-income older adults in immediate risk of homelessness cover rental costs with subsidies of about $300.

“Instead of waiting for our seniors to become homeless to help them, we’re suggesting using a proactive, prevention program such as the shallow rent subsidy program, because it leads to a better life outcome and long-term cost savings for our taxpayers,” Anderson said.

In separate items the board also approved a plan for emergency housing solutions for homeless people, including sites equipped with safe parking, camping lots and sleeping cabins – small, separate structures where people can sleep individually instead of using cots in large, open shelters.

One in four homeless people in San Diego is over the age of 55, and 43 percent of those seniors were homeless for the first time in their lives, the supervisors reported. The problem disproportionately affects Black San Diegans, who make up 4 percent of the county’s population but about 25 percent of its homeless population, the board letter stated.

The problem stems from the growing gap between the fixed incomes many seniors receive and the increasing cost of housing. Without pensions or retirement savings accounts, many seniors spend the majority of their income on housing, supervisors said.

A 2021 survey by the nonprofit Serving Seniors reported that more than half the seniors who responded said a subsidy of $300 or less would enable them to meet their rent costs, the board letter stated.

“No senior should be sleeping on a sidewalk because they’ve lost their home,” Lawson-Remer said. “This program would prevent homelessness before it occurs.”

County officials said they don’t have a cost estimate yet but it could be several million dollars a year.

Supervisor Nora Vargas said the program would help in the short-term, but the county also needs to consider affordable housing options for seniors for the long term.

Anderson said the rent subsidies would help prevent senior homelessness while the county tackles the more complex problem of housing prices. And it would be less expensive than trying to help people after they have already lost housing, he said.

The board directed staff to develop a pilot program to provide the subsidies to a limited number of people age 55 and older who are considered at risk of homelessness and are actively seeking affordable housing or housing vouchers. The program could then expand if it’s successful.

“It’s giving us an opportunity to lift our families and friends,” Anderson said. “These are somebody’s grandfathers and grandmothers. They worked all their lives, and if we can avoid putting them in the streets and it saves taxpayers (money,) it just makes sense to me that we should be that better neighbor.”

The board separately voted to revise its homelessness policy platform to expand housing and service choices for homeless people, focus on root causes of homelessness and adopt measures to prevent it, develop emergency strategies for people at risk of becoming homeless, avoid criminalizing homelessness, create ways to measure the outcomes of those policies, and other steps.

The board also approved plans for emergency solutions for homelessness. Supervisors asked staff to solicit competitive bids for the management of homeless shelters and for equipment and facilities, such as sleeping cabins and sites for safe parking and safe camping for recreational vehicles.

The county did not state how many cabins it expects to build or how they would be constructed, but other agencies have experimented with the concept. A nonprofit group, Amikas, built a prototype structure in 2018, and Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon added six small shelters for emergency housing in 2020.

County staff are evaluating 12 publicly-owned properties for possible development of shelters. Most are on CalTrans, county or other public properties.

In the meantime, the county will extend the programs that provide hotel vouchers and local rent subsidies, said Barbara Jimenez, the county’s director of regional operations.