Sacramento Affordable Housing Wait List Hits 36,000
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Sacramento's affordable housing crisis has reached a new level.
The waiting-list for affordable housing vouchers is now 36,000-people long, the most ever.
It's creating a nightmare scenario for Sacramentans already struggling to get by.
"I can't afford to pay more than 500, maybe 600 dollars a month," Sandy Powell said.
Powell is searching for the seemingly impossible in Sacramento right now: an affordable home to rent.
"It's very, very frustrating," Powell said.
She'll soon be released from a rehabilitation center after breaking her foot.
"It's really frightening for me to even think about it," Powell said. "I spent one night out on the street and I know I can't do that."
Powell has searched on her own and through the apartments listed with Sacramento's Housing and Redevelopment Agency.
"So you can call people who are registered with them, well nobody had any vacancies," Powell said.
The waiting lists are all long.
Powell is 146th in line for the next opening at Sacramento's Greenfair apartment complex.
"So where are we supposed to go?" Powell said.
Powell is one of the many caught in Sacramento's affordable housing crisis. Rental vacancies are at a low and rents are at an all-time high.
Darryl Rutherford is with the Sacramento Housing Alliance. He says it's never been this bad.
"With rents rising, not enough development, we are in a bottleneck, a huge crisis," Rutherford said.
Mayor-elect Darrell Steinberg is pledging to push for developers to include more affordable units in residential buildings now in the pipeline for downtown Sacramento.
"You know, we have some pretty sacred duties; one is to do everything we can to end homelessness, the other is to prevent homelessness," Steinberg said.
Right now the shortage is leaving too many people locked out.
"There's no place to go, and it's not right," Powell said.