🏠 Shasta County Community Advisory Board, August 16, 2023

The Community Advisory Board, a state-mandated community Board that advises county staff and public officials on poverty-related issues, held its monthly meeting on Tuesday, August 22. Members of the CAB which include representatives of the community’s low-income population as well as business and government representatives discussed policy and manual updates and heard an update from the new Deputy Director of Housing for the county, Emily Kerr. Kerr’s update included significant details about the county’s voucher program which prompted questions from several on the Board. The voucher program distributes far more vouchers than are utilized by local residents, due to problems with finding appropriate rental properties.

The CAB discussed the possibility of increasing “lease-up” or the number of vouchers that are actually used by community members. Their ideas for doing so included improving communication with landlords, a topic that CAB member Joshua Johnson, who’s also a developer, expressed interest in helping with. As CAB member Kristen Schreder pointed out from the Housing report, about 30% of county housing vouchers are currently unused, representing about $2 million in federal funding intended to prevent homelessness that’s been, in her words “left on the table.”

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