SLO LIFE Dec/Jan 2020

| Q&A
HUMAN STORY
We sat down recently with SCOTT SMITH, the executive director of
HASLO—the Housing Authority of San Luis Obispo—to talk about how
things have changed in the local housing market since he moved here in
1984. Here is some of what he had to say…
Let’s take from the top, Scott. Where are you
from originally? I’m a native Californian. Second
generation. My parents were born in LA and
wanted to get out of the rat race, so they headed
to Santa Barbara. That’s where I was born and
raised. I moved around after that: Berkeley, Los
Angeles, Mexico, and Washington, DC, before
returning. And, what brought me here was a
job in housing. Honestly, I had no interest in
housing and certainly had no intention of making
it a career. I was more oriented toward wanting
to help people. I was fascinated by third world
poverty issues, so when I graduated from UCLA,
I volunteered in Yucatan, Mexico. That’s where
I met my wife. Then, off to graduate school. We
were expecting our first child, so I was at a point
where I just needed a job, and through a friend of
a friend, I found something in housing. I realized
very quickly that I was dealing with the same
thing that I was always interested in, which is
to answer the question: “How do you help poor
people no longer be poor?”
So, how do you help poor people no longer
be poor? You start with a roof overhead. We
provide affordable housing to roughly 7,000
people every month throughout the county. We
actively develop and operate housing locally. We
also tackle this issue with the Housing Choice
Voucher Program, formerly called Section 8. A
tenant pays 30% of their income toward the rent,
and we pay the rest. A lot of these folks are senior
citizens or disabled and living on a fixed income.
Many of them will get a disability check from
Social Security, which amounts to about $900
each month. So, 30% of $900 is $300, which is the
amount that the government deems “affordable.”
But, where are they going to find something for
$300? Maybe in Bakersfield, but not here. So,
let’s say their rent is $1,500. We then kick in the
balance. Those are federal funds that come into
the county to pay for this program—about $20
million each year.
And, what about people who would not be
considered poor, but who cannot afford a place
to live? My wife and I have three young adult
daughters in their twenties and early thirties.
And, we’re watching them try to make a go of it
and seeing them struggle with the same issues
so many of us struggle with as we are impacted
by housing, as they ask the question: “How can I
afford to stay here?” There are so many aspects to
this issue in addition to just the general angst it
creates. When you don’t have an adequate balance
between housing costs and wages in a community,
it has a lot of unintended consequences. It strains
families when it becomes increasingly difficult for
the younger ones coming up to find housing of
their own. And, from a business standpoint, we
know that we need workers at all wage and skill
levels. So, how do we fill those jobs and retain
people in those jobs when they can’t afford to live
here? It’s not a healthy thing for the economy
when someone has a full-time job but still cannot
afford a modest one-bedroom apartment. There is
something broken.
How do you fix it? There is not one solution to
the housing problem. We need a whole bunch
of different solutions to keep us whittling away
at the problem. And, each community is unique.
If you look at San Luis Obispo, for instance,
you’ve got Cal Poly, where many of their students
are absorbing the rental housing stock in town,
which is causing rent inflation. A working family
can no longer afford to rent a three-bedroom
house because it cannot compete with six or
seven Cal Poly students whose parents are willing
to pay whatever price. So, building more oncampus
housing will absolutely make an impact
on affordability locally. It will help open up
supply and bring rents down to the point where
permanent residents can go back into those
neighborhoods and rent a single-family home.
Can you give us an example of the need that
exists here on the Central Coast? We see it
every day. It’s a very emotional issue for people.
It can be a traumatic issue. It’s a survival issue.
Housing—permanent shelter—is a basic
human need. And, there are programs that
offer assistance with housing, but they all have
super long waiting lists. I’m not sure the general
public realizes this, but we get so many referrals
and deal with so many truly heart-breaking
cases, but there is a really long line of people
that are having tough problems. When we
opened up a new apartment complex on Broad
Street recently, we received 900 applications for
just 46 units. That gives you just a little bit of
an idea for the demand. So, we’re all there on
the day it opened, and people are showing up
to move in with tears in their eyes. That’s when
you see that housing is really about people, that
it’s a human story. SLO LIFE
32 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | DEC/JAN 2020