Tehama County Continuum of Care (Tehama CoC) hired Housing Tools to lead an Update to the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness (Update). Five years prior, Housing Tools led the development of the original plan which helped to prioritize activities and allowed the region to apply for No Place Like Home (NPLH) funding to develop permanent supportive housing.
The Update was developed with significant collaboration between local jurisdictions, service providers, people with lived experience, and community members. It included community-based research such as interviews, meeting facilitation, and local and geographic data to holistically consider the entire region of Tehama County.
The process resulted in an equity-focused strategy to address housing and homelessness needs in Tehama County, including concrete goals and objectives within four priority areas: 1) Permanent housing; 2) Health and human services; 3) Barriers to accessing services; and 4) Unique community needs. Each priority area has its own workgroup of dedicated members who are actively meeting and working together on implementation.
Yuba County hired Housing Tools to assist with its “ West Linda Community Needs Assessment” to inform the development of a local community hub on a vacant parcel of land owned by the County in West Linda. The Community Needs Assessment involved significant community engagement and data analysis. The results are summarized in the following iterative elements:
Existing Conditions Report: The Existing Conditions Report summarizes quantitative data, local reports, and feedback from the community, which included residents and local organizations. This involved identifying unmet need and issues, discussing gaps in services, and investigating access to opportunity for the residents of West Linda as well as collecting demographic data.
Menu of Options: The goal of this research and community engagement was to establish a set of priorities for the design of the hub and the services to be offered at the hub under the pillars of Human Services, Recreation, Facilities, and Transportation. This Menu of Options will help to inform the future development and services and activities to be hosted at the hub. This was presented to the community to receive their feedback and informed the Project Concept and Implementation Plan.
Project Concept and Implementation Plan: The Project Concept and Implementation Plan builds off the Existing Conditions Report and Menu of Options to establish a community-identified plan for the hub. This report includes a brief overview of the community engagement process, community priorities, and Menu of Options. The report discusses results from the community engagement that took place after the Existing Conditions Report and presents a Project Concept and Implementation Plan based on feedback from the community.
The HUD Consolidated Plan establishes goals and funding priorities that address the greatest needs of the City’s low-income residents utilizing CDBG and HOME funds. Our team led citizen consultation sessions with affected populations in a variety of locations to ascertain their input on greatest needs. In addition, a significant portion of the Consolidated Plan involves analysis of quantitative data to complete a Needs Assessment and Market Analysis. This process results in a Strategic Plan with specific quantifiable goals and objectives for the next 5 years. Concurrent with the Consolidated Plan, we also completed the City’s Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. The Analysis of Impediments involves: an analysis of data that describes the local conditions for fair housing choice, including the availability of affordable, accessible housing in a range of unit sizes; a comprehensive review of the jurisdiction’s laws, regulations, and administrative policies, procedures, and practices; and an assessment of how those laws, regulations, and administrative policies, procedures, and practices affect the location, availability, and accessibility of housing.
In order to prepare for an application to the No Place Like Home (NPLH) program, the County hired Housing Tools to prepare its NPLH-required Plan to End Homelessness. Our team facilitated a series of meetings with the County’s Homelessness Taskforce, community members, and stakeholders with a lived experience of homelessness. The meetings focused on the community’s existing resources, needs/gaps in services, and strategic planning sessions to develop specific goals and actions within a 10-year timeframe. The result was a written Plan which will now function as a blueprint for the community in addressing homelessness.
Housing Tools managed all aspects of the Housing Element process and wrote the Housing Element document pursuant to State Housing Element law. This effort included all public outreach and engagement, analyzing progress on the previous Housing Element and General Plan, conducting the Housing Needs Assessment, Resource Inventory, Constraints Analysis, and development of Goals/Policies/Actions. Our firm is currently under contract to complete the City of Chico’s 2022-2030 Housing Element Update.
