The many actions the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) took in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to assist families with low income or experiencing homelessness in the City of San Diego are the focus of a special section of SDHC’s Fiscal Year 2020 Annual Report.

The report includes an update on SDHC’s programs and accomplishments during Fiscal Year 2020 (July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020), as the public housing agency seamlessly continued to provide housing assistance while a majority of the agency’s staff worked remotely due to COVID-19.

SDHC’s multimedia annual report is an important public outreach resource, which provides timelines of significant achievements, graphics demonstrating the impact of SDHC’s programs, as well as embedded videos of the stories of families SDHC serves.

The COVID-19 special section of SDHC’s annual report includes a timeline of many of SDHC’s actions, such as implementing policies in March 2020 to assist residents in SDHC’s rental assistance program and residents of SDHC’s affordable housing units who experience financial hardship due to COVID-19.

The report also details SDHC’s significant role the creation and implementation of the City of San Diego COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Through this program, SDHC disbursed more than $13.7 million federal funds to provide one-time payments to help more than 3,700 qualifying households with low income in the City of San Diego pay their rent.

Video interviews with participants in multiple SDHC programs, the majority of which were created before the majority of SDHC employees began working remotely during the pandemic, present the stories of individuals SDHC assisted.

Among those whose stories are told in the report is Sumayyah, a former participant of SDHC’s federal rental assistance program who, with help from SDHC career development and self-sufficiency programs, became a pediatric nurse, achieving financial self-reliance.

SDHC’s multimedia Annual Report has been viewed online more than 950 times since it was posted on SDHC’s website, with an Average Read Time of more than five minutes.

SDHC performs three major program functions to create affordable housing opportunities in the City of San Diego:

• Provided federal rental assistance that in Fiscal Year 2020 helped more than 16,000 households with low income pay their rent;

• Collaborated with developers on projects that completed more than 1,000 affordable rental housing units, with more than 2,900 additional affordable housing units approved and pending completion.

• Continued SDHC’s homelessness action plan, HOUSING FIRST – SAN DIEGO, which has created approximately 9,000 housing solutions since 2014 for San Diegans experiencing homelessness, with more than 600 additional affordable housing units pending completion.

SDHC's Fiscal Year 2020 Annual Report allowed SDHC to present a comprehensive account of its achievements in these programs in a format that is engaging, easy to understand, and appealing.