On Monday, May 13, the Community Homelessness Advisory Board met to receive updates on how homeless efforts are going around the community.
The board is made up of representatives from Washoe County, the City of Reno and the City of Sparks.
Each jurisdiction gave presentations to the board.
The first was the Washoe County Housing and Homeless Services.
The Cares Campus has a few notable things coming down the pipeline.
"We are entering the last three months of construction of the main services building that's going to open up around August 1," said Dana Searcy, Division Director for the Washoe County Housing and Homeless Services. "We're very excited for the facility because that will off the ability to have our case management and behavioral health therapist and training and partners on site."
Since 2021, Washoe County has been able to get more people off the streets and into shelters, but the next main emphasis is getting more permanent housing.
"Permanent supportive housing is supporting our chronic homeless individuals and that is a critical piece of our work," Searcy said. "The campus itself will bring 100 units of supportive housing on sight. 50 units the county will own and operate and another 50 units from accessible space."
The first units should be completed by Spring of 2025, and the next section will break ground sometime in the coming months.
During the meeting, Brooke Page from The Corporation of Supportive Housing shared a need assessment.
The assessment was taken to see what needs to be done to narrow down the need in our community.
It suggests our area needs 654 more affordable housing units and rental subsidies for about $3,800.
According to the study, it would cost about $300 million for a one-time capital cost to build it and then $50 million a year to keep up with it.
The CSH wanted to present this need assessment, to help put this data into action.
"So, we are recommending that there be a pipeline group of people that are working together to really identify the fund sources and the resources using federal, state, local dollars, philanthropic dollars to come together to identify those fund sources," Page said.
The City of Sparks then spoke about updates regarding its eviction prevention and senior short term rental assistance.
The city was given $1.5 million for these two programs, and they have used all the funds.
They were able to help 303 households.
The City of Sparks was rewarded $2.8 million from the Home Means Nevada initiative to purchase two parcels of land for affordable housing.
"The parcels, we will advertise a request for proposal for affordable housing projects," said Amy Jones, Housing Specialist for the City of Sparks. "We will review those proposals, and the Sparks City Council will make the final selection on the project to be built on those sites."
The requirements the city is asking for those sites is that the units must serve households that earning 60 percent or less than the area median income and they must remain affordable for at least 15 years.
The City of Reno shared its short term three-month rental assistance program has helped about 1,000 households, just this year and its new senior program has helped 174 households.
While all these jurisdictions are doing their own work, they say coming together is how they will really help move forward as a community.
"Having all of us on the same page each of the three main jurisdictions in the area understanding exactly where we're going and how the funding resources need to be applied is critical to our work," Searcy said.
This is the first time the board has met since September and both Washoe County Commissioner Michael Clark and Reno City Councilmember Devon Reese suggested that they meet more often to stay more up to date on what's going on in the community.
