Renters criticize Sonoma County’s switch to lottery to award housing vouchers

Ron Rainville has been waiting six years for a housing voucher from Sonoma County that could help him pay for a rental unit. He slowly lowered himself into a chair in a Santa Rosa crowded conference room Wednesday to tell his story to a county advisory board considering a major shake-up to the way housing subsidies are doled out following a critical federal review last year.

Rainville, 63, said he works maintenance jobs part-time, his employment prospects hampered by chronic pain from two ruptured spinal discs. He has managed to avoid homelessness by finding work where he could through help from family and friends. Being on the waiting list for one of the county’s roughly 3,000 vouchers, about 300 of which are made available each year, gave him hope for a shot at a more stable housing situation.

His voice started to shake as he talked about the county’s proposed overhaul, which uses a lottery to create a new queue of 500 families seeking vouchers and eliminate the current list that included Rainville and more than 26,000 others.

“That hope just disappeared,” Rainville told the panel. “You just chopped my legs off from under me.”

Rainville’s reaction reflected the frustration many on the waiting list feel about the county’s pending overhaul of its housing subsidy program. In addition to scrapping the current waiting list, the plan involves eliminating a policy that gave preference to applications from families within Sonoma County’s jurisdiction, which does not include people within Santa Rosa city limits.

That policy was one of a dozen called out for criticism by federal inspectors who last year looked at the local voucher program, which distributes federal housing aid. County officials with the Community Development Commission contend they froze the problematic policy before moving to address the alleged violations in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD would likely have demanded the county make significant changes to the voucher program if local officials weren’t already making them.

CDC officials said that while their system could work if there were less demand, the waiting list’s sheer size makes it unworkable and unfair. The combination of more than 26,000 people and the local preference make it impossible to serve people waiting for a voucher or even to tell people on the list where they stand in line, officials said.

“What was designed to be perfectly in compliance over time fell out of compliance,” said Geoffrey Ross, assistant executive director of the Community Development Commission.

Some members of the Community Development Committee, the citizen advisory board, voiced concerns that they were moving too quickly, but the panel still voted 5-1 to advance the plan to the Board of Supervisors. It is set to consider the overhaul June 4. If approved, new applications for the lottery-based system would open in July.

Many who attended Wednesday to comment on the proposed overhaul told stories of desperation. Dolores Salazar described herself as a single mother with a 5-year-old trying to stabilize her family life after escaping an abusive relationship. She’s facing homelessness even as she studies at the College of Marin and said her lot in life would not be improved by the county’s proposed lottery.

“We cannot gamble with our lives,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.