Executive director of Yolo County Housing shared information on upcoming improvements
By OLIVIA HOKR — city@theaggie.org
On Feb. 18, the Davis City Council held its bi-weekly meeting and Yolo County Housing (YCH) provided a presentation on its five-year Strategic Plan. YCH aims to establish sustainable and affordable housing to those in Yolo County. YCH is federally funded through the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and the State of California Department of Housing and Community Development.
YCH assists the community with finding affordable housing through Housing Choice Vouchers, which is a federal program that assists low-income families in paying for single-family homes, public housing and more.
Ian Evans, the executive director of YCH, gave the presentation on the overview of the program and how YCH intends to expand its effectiveness. The Strategic Plan has been in the works for nine months and has received feedback from staff, public housing residents, city managers and housing commissioners, among others.
The Strategic Plan is built on three pillars: people, housing and administration. Each of those pillars also has goals, objectives and tactics. The pillars and goals will be reviewed every four to five years for a new strategic planning cycle, while the tactics will be reviewed annually.
Evans highlighted a few of the goals from the plan during his presentation.
“The next goal under [the] people [pillar] is to strengthen community partnership,” Evans said. “So, our objective around this is to create cross-education opportunities between our team [YCH] and our community partners, and through those opportunities, we hope to learn about their mission, goals and strategies and share our mission, goals and strategies to create five new collaborative partnerships.”
Evans provided an example of this from the past year, when YCH created a partnership with Meals on Wheels, a non-profit organization in Yolo County, to deliver weekly meals to the senior households at YCH migrant centers.
Davis City Council Member Josh Chapman shared his appreciation for Evans’ dedication to improving the lives of our community members. Chapman also expressed interest in getting more involved with the program.
“What can the city of Davis do?” Chapman said. “What can we do as elected leaders in this community to help support Yolo County Housing? What does that relationship look like for you? We have examples of what we’re already doing, and we know it’s not enough.”
Davis City Council Member Gloria Partida asked about those who are a part of the public housing program and whether they can be supported for a sustainable amount of time.
“Often, folks who have to move out of the [migrant] housing, some of them return to their homes in Mexico or wherever it is that they are coming from,” Partida said. “But some of them remain because they have kids here. And I often hear that it becomes difficult for those families who want to continue here in our school system, and they basically end up having to double up with other families or couch [surf] and things like that. Are they eligible for any of the voucher programs to help them move from the migrant housing into something that they can afford in town? Is there a way that YCH can help in that regard?”
Evans also shared that the waitlist for the vouchers currently has about 4,700 people on it, and they are planning to adjust the time that the waitlist opens to make it more effective for those who really need it.
The presentation given by Evans is available to the public on the city of Davis website. To learn more about the Yolo County Housing resources available to community members, visit www.ych.ca.gov/.
Written by: Olivia Hokr — city@theaggie.org
