Long Beach is inching closer to a deadline when they’ll have to kick hundreds of formerly homeless people off of a federal housing assistance program. On Wednesday, a top homelessness official estimated 375 households will lose their benefits as of October, leaving them at risk of sliding back into homelessness.
The deadline is looming after Congress decided against authorizing new funding for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Emergency Housing Voucher program.
The pandemic-era program, launched in 2021, distributed about 70,000 Emergency Housing Vouchers — or EHVs — across the country. Long Beach received 582, and originally expected them to run through 2030, but local officials say rising rent costs drained the funding more quickly than anticipated…