City of Crescent City

Crescent City will be able to help six more homeless veterans this year through Housing and Urban Development’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program.

The local housing authority will receive $52,512 in HUD-VASH grant dollars, according to a Dec. 17 press release from Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office. A total of $10.5 million in HUD-VASH grants will be awarded to more than 24 California communities for the supportive housing program, according to Feinstein’s office.

In Del Norte County, the Crescent City Housing Authority works with the Roseburg VA Medical Center in Oregon to determine who should receive a HUD-VASH voucher, authority director Megan Miller told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday.

“The HUD-VASH team will source their referrals for us and go out and find homeless veterans through different means they have,” Miller said. “”They determine whether that individual meets the criteria for homeless and veteran status. Once that’s clear, they submit a referral. That veteran bypasses the waiting list and goes directly to a batch of vouchers.”

According to Miller, the Crescent City Housing Authority received 18 vouchers at the beginning of 2017 and have since used them all. The authority applied to receive 10 more vouchers in October 2019 and was notified that its application was successful late last month, Miller said.

Miller said she will present a staff report about the HUD-VASH program to the Crescent City Council at its Jan. 21 meeting. She expects the vouchers her office will receive to be good starting Feb. 1.

The HUD-VASH program offers Housing Choice Voucher rental assistance and case management and clinical services through the Department of Veteran Affairs to homeless veterans. HUD has awarded more than 97,500 HUD-VASH vouchers to public housing authorities since 2008, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website.

For fiscal year 2019, Congress appropriated $40 million for new HUD-VASH vouchers, according to HUD.

In Crescent City, though the maximum number of vouchers the local housing authority can provide is 18, Miller said her office has been working with 22 HUD-VASH participants.

“We’re over leased by four (people),” she said. “We will only have six additional slots to fill once (the VA) starts sourcing those referrals.”

According to Miller, the VA works with the Veterans of Foreign Wars to reach out to local homeless veterans. A HUD-VASH team and the Crescent City Housing Authority will have booths at the annual Point in Time count event later this month, Miller said.

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