More than two years ago, when homeless outreach workers told Clark Inglish about a new type of housing voucher that could swiftly move her out of a tent on the Los Angeles River and into an apartment, her mouth “almost dropped to the floor.”
The help arrived just in time. She was caring for her infant son while going to rehab to stay clean from methamphetamine when she received an Emergency Housing Voucher. Without it, Inglish says, the chances of her keeping custody would have been slim.
The novel pandemic-era program helped domestic violence victims, the recently jobless and those deemed chronically homeless pay for not just rent but security deposits, utility fee debt and moving costs. Backed by federal funding administered through local health departments, the program gave cities an unprecedented amount of flexibility and funding to get people housed.
The vouchers were “the largest allocation that our housing authority has seen in probably about 25 years,” said Allison King, executive director of Long Beach’s Health Department.
By 2024, all 582 vouchers assigned to Long Beach were doled out. They were meant to pay a majority of each recipient’s rent — giving them time to get back on their feet — until 2030. It was “one of the best thought-out and well-funded voucher programs that I’ve ever seen,” said Anna Topolewski, executive director of Long Beach’s Housing Authority, which manages the vouchers.
But a problem arose. Rising rent — increased nearly monthly, according to Topolewski — drained the funding more quickly than expected.
Long Beach, now spending about $800,000 of the federal money each month, says its Emergency Housing Voucher program will be out of cash by the start of August.
Local politicians lobbied for Congress to extend more funding, but last April, the Department of Housing and Urban Development notified local housing officials it would not be renewed.
Topolewski and her colleagues are now scrambling, trying to stretch the funding as far as possible while they shepherd the roughly 500 remaining recipients onto other forms of housing assistance or risk sending them back to the street.
Lately, 3 a.m. has been “the witching hour” for Topolewski when she wakes up thinking of Emergency Housing Vouchers, wondering, “What are we going to do?”
Congress has offered some tools to try to ease the transition, increasing funding for Tenant Protection Vouchers — used to cover relocation costs for renters — and continuing funding for Housing Choice Vouchers — commonly called “Section 8” — in the recently passed budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but that money has yet to be released.
The Long Beach Housing Authority does not yet know how many it will receive. If it’s not enough to cover the remaining 500 Emergency Housing Voucher holders, the Housing Authority will have to choose which ones to cut off from rental assistance, Topolewski said.
They plan to send notification letters soon, warning of the impending deadline, and internally, they’ve developed guidelines for who may be cut off first as they try to reserve funding for needier cases. (Non-elderly, non-disabled people with no children would be among the first to lose out, for instance.)
Sending any number back to fraught housing situations would be a blow. Long Beach is already struggling to stem homelessness. It recorded a slight increase in its tally last year, something officials blamed on one more people becoming homeless, not a failure of getting people off the streets.
Inglish, at least, is safe for now. She, like all other Emergency Housing Voucher holders, was bumped to the top of a waiting list to receive Section 8 vouchers when they become available — either through new funding or from other recipients leaving the program.
So far, 82 people have made the switch, according to the Long Beach Housing Authority.
Getting into an apartment through the Emergency Housing Voucher, “really changed my life,” Inglish said.
As a former foster youth who’d aged out of the system at 18 with nothing to her name, Inglish was a perfect candidate for one. After years on the streets of Orange County, she found her way to Long Beach and learned of the program while visiting the Multi-Service Center to shower.
After learning she was pregnant, she had kicked her meth addiction, but was struggling to find a place live.
With the Emergency Housing Voucher, she was able to buy furniture, went back to school and got married. She’s now four years sober and working as a counselor for Health Right 360, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Los Angeles. Her son, now 4, still lives with her and enjoys anything dinosaur-themed.
But the transition to Section 8 hasn’t been completely smooth. She recently had to ensure the local housing authority updated her rental assistance since her new job as a counselor caused her to be cut off from Social Security.
With that change made, she went from paying $1,470 per month to $800, Inglish said. Those savings will help Inglish pay to put her son in preschool and sign up for soccer.
By this summer, Topolewski will know how many EHV participants she will be able to keep housed and how many she will have to cut off from rental assistance.
“It’s really disappointing that this is where we are now,” she said.