The Board of Supervisors unanimously authorized the community development director to seek grant dollars through a state program that addresses California’s housing shortage.

Del Norte County is eligible for up to $160,000 in grants through the Building and Jobs Act of 2017. Part of a 15-bill housing package Governor Jerry Brown signed in 2017, SB 2 addresses the state’s housing shortage and high housing costs, according to the county’s staff report.

According to Community Development Director Heidi Kunstal, staff will use grant dollars to hire a consultant who could evaluate Del Norte’s inventory of private land ahead of the county’s update to its housing element.

As part of the housing element, the county will implement a Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which looks at sites in appropriate zoning areas that can meet a range of housing needs, according to the staff report.

Those SB 2 dollars would be used to encourage additional development “at all income levels,” Kunstal told county supervisors on Tuesday.

According to the county’s staff report, the Building Homes and Jobs Act established a $75 recording fee on real estate documents to increase California’s supply of affordable homes. The County Recorder collects the fee and forwards the revenues to the state controller. The fee is projected to generate $200 million statewide.

In March 2019, the California Department of Housing and Community Development released a notice of funding availability for $123 million. Those dollars are allocated to local governments based on their population, according to the staff report.

In other matters, supervisors adopted the county’s 2019-2020 budget on Tuesday. The budget includes the appropriation of $1,000 to the Klamath Chamber of Commerce to purchase new equipment for the Klamath Volunteer Fire Department. That money had been earmarked for a cleanup of Caltrans property along U.S. 101, but hadn’t been spent.

The Board of Supervisors also approved an allocation of $41,000 to the public defender’s office for outstanding expenditures from the 2018-2019 fiscal year.

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