Roseville mayor Bruce Houdesheldt

Op-ed: Bruce Houdesheldt, City of Roseville Mayor

A key priority of the City of Roseville’s strategic plan is to ensure a safe and healthy community. This includes efforts to reduce homelessness and also to promote a community where everyone feels welcome and included.

This year we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of a driving force in our efforts to further these goals – the Roseville Housing Authority (RHA). Since 1974, RHA has helped provide reliable and affordable housing that provides a stable environment for those in need in Roseville through its Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) rental assistance program.

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Need for affordable housing

It’s no secret the need for affordable housing is only growing as real estate prices continue to climb. The median price to buy a home in Roseville is over $665,000, keeping the American Dream of homeownership out of reach for far too many people. But because this also drives up rental prices, difficulty in finding reliable, affordable housing of any kind is a reality facing more people in our community than many realize. When a household making $90,000 annually is considered lower income, we need to do more to ensure we are helping lift up our entire community.

RHA has helped thousands of families access affordable homes. Since its inception, RHA has used over $132 million in federal funds to expand its housing choice vouchers tenfold-from just 83 vouchers in 1974 to 852 in 2024. Each of those vouchers assists an individual or family with renting a home they may not have otherwise been able to access. Over the last ten years, RHA has also been able to expand its voucher program to serve even more populations in need of housing assistance, including veterans, people with disabilities, youth aging out of foster care and residents who are homeless or at serious risk of homelessness. This growth highlights both the demand for affordable housing and RHA’s ability to adapt and meet the needs of Roseville.

Among the top public housing authorities

These consistently strong efforts and results have earned RHA the “High Performer” designation from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for each of the past 20 years. This designation ranks RHA among the top public housing authorities across the country and demonstrates the agency’s continuing commitment to improving lives and strengthening our community.

Most recently, in 2023, RHA created a Landlord Incentive Program to encourage private landlords to participate in the HCV program and increase housing inventory. To date, the program has issued $141,000 to landlords and has allowed RHA to lease 109 new households and recruit 60 new landlords, benefitting both property owners and those in need of a safe place to call home.

The City of Roseville has long been a leader in providing affordable housing for residents, and RHA has followed suit, while also investing over $10 million into the local rental economy annually through monthly rental assistance payments.

As we look to the future, we can have confidence that RHA will continue to evolve with the demands of our growing community and ensure the City of Roseville is living up to its priority of ensuring a safe and healthy community for all of its residents. To learn more about the Roseville Housing Authority, please visit www.roseville.ca.us/rha.

Affordable Housing

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