For years, the Yriarte family prayed for a place to call their own.
“I asked God, ‘Please God, give me something, show me something, give my kids and I some space,’ [but] I was hopeless, I didn’t have any hope that I would have my own place,” said Rachelle Yriarte, a single mother of two.
The family stayed with relatives for years because even though Yriarte works almost 50 hours a week at a San Bernardino warehouse, they couldn’t afford their own place.
“I don’t get child support; I don’t get state assistance barely. You know, how I am ever gonna be able to save and get my own place?” Yriarte asked.
After five years, they got a rent-subsidized apartment in Bloomington Grove, in San Bernardino County. Yriarte said it’s nothing short of a miracle:
“I get a call one day and I guess they pulled my name in a drawing for this apartment,” she said.
But while Yriarte and her family were able to get into the 300-unit 100% affordable housing complex, there are over 4,000 names on the waiting list. It’s a result of the nation’s 1.5 million housing unit shortfall, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge said.
“The housing crisis has not only created more people being pushed onto the streets or to live with family, etcetera, but it has also created a price rise that most people cannot afford,” Fudge said.
She, along with Rep. Pete Aguilar, toured Yriarte’s complex recently to see how state and federal dollars had been used to make the housing project come to life. At Bloomington Grove, developers used $3.5 million in HUD’s HOME Investment Partnership Program.
“That’s one of the things we do, make sure that we have CDBG money, that we have HOME money, that we have set aside money for homelessness, that we have resources, as I said tax credits, low-income housing tax credits. We are trying to start a new tax credit. The things that are going to help builders find a way to be profitable, and yet still build the kind of housing that we need today,” Fudge said.
Federal and state subsidies are the only way, and developer Stan Smith said affordable housing projects will get built. Otherwise, with the costs of land, labor and supplies, the math doesn’t add up.
“You can’t do it,” he said. “Remember, on these projects you have to have big city and big county contributions, because the rents are extremely low. So, you’re not going to have a very big permanent loan because you can only service so much of it and once it’s above that permanent loan, I need to have subsidies in order to make it work.”
Filling that gap for developers will require everyone to come to the table, Aguilar said, especially as the housing crisis intensifies. San Bernardino County’s homeless population increased 98% from 2018 to 2023, according to the county.
“We need to make sure we are building affordable housing in every community. There is not one level of government that doesn’t have a responsibility to play, so it’s on all of us,” Aguilar said.
“[Affordable housing] it’s a very hard opportunity to grab but once you do it’s a blessing and you wish for it for more people,” Yriarte said.
Because for now, Yriarte said finding affordable housing in the Inland Empire is still a miracle.