San Diego County says it just closed out a record year for affordable housing, with 13 developments completed between July 2025 and June 2026 adding 1,176 affordable homes across the region. The announcement frames the stretch as a high point in a years-long push to expand housing options for families, seniors, veterans and people exiting homelessness.
The county shared the tally in a social media post from its official account, SanDiegoCounty
, which described the period as underscoring the county's commitment to expanding housing opportunities and ensuring all residents have access to safe, stable and affordable housing.
The 13-project figure follows a separate accounting for calendar year 2025 alone, when the county says it celebrated the completion of nine new affordable housing developments that added 867 apartment homes to the region, according to County News Center. The county invested $67.9 million to support those nine developments, and four of them were built on surplus county property, the same report notes. Because the two tallies cover different time windows and measures, they should not be read as describing the identical set of projects.
A Longer Pattern Of Investment
The recent completions sit inside a broader funding push that predates this latest reporting period. Since 2017, the county has committed more than $334 million to affordable housing initiatives, a commitment that has created more than 3,445 homes and put another 2,610 homes into the development pipeline, per the county's own figures.
That same annual plan reporting notes that the county's four major federal housing programs helped more than 70,000 residents last year access safer homes, emergency shelter, rental assistance and related services. Housing production in the unincorporated area has generally climbed since 2010, the county's reporting adds, and the 2025 Housing Progress Report counted 932 new homes approved and permitted in the unincorporated area that year.
The Shortage Behind The Headline Numbers
Even with the record year touted by the county, the scale of San Diego's affordable housing gap remains stark. Nearly 130,000 low-income renter households in San Diego County do not have access to an affordable home, according to KPBS. The outlet also reports that almost 80% of the county's extremely-low-income households pay more than half of their income on housing. Stephen Russell estimated that roughly 150,000 additional homes are needed to balance the housing market in the city of San Diego, the station notes.
There are signs of acceleration in the financing pipeline that could help close that gap over time. Rent-restricted units constructed or acquired in San Diego County increased by 90% between 2024 and 2025, per the same KPBS report. But that momentum is running against headwinds, as state and federal funding for housing in the county fell by almost 10% during the most recent fiscal year, the station found. The county's latest tally of 1,176 completed affordable homes offers a concrete marker of progress, but by its own reporting, the region's underlying shortage is still measured in the tens of thousands.
