Reno May Use Federal Funds to Address Housing Crisis

Reno officials are preparing initiatives to address the city’s affordable housing crisis, including potentially spending their entire allotment of federal pandemic recovery funds on housing, according to a city council member speaking at a recent forum organized by ProPublica.

Council member Devon Reese declined to provide details on plans that he described as “not fully baked” yet, but said conversations have included remodeling existing hotels or motels into housing, taxing property owners who hold vacant land and reopening a recently closed shelter to alleviate overcrowding at a new campus for the unhoused. He said about $50 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding could be brought to bear on the crisis.

“How do we spend those dollars?” he asked, adding that the ProPublica forum had provided a venue to gather public input on that question. “My absolute belief is that a large portion of that — maybe all of it — will be spent on addressing housing needs.”

He expects the city will announce its plans next month.

The forum followed an investigation by ProPublica that documented how one developer, Jeffrey Jacobs, bought and demolished more than a dozen weekly motels in downtown Reno, displacing hundreds of individuals who relied on the motels for affordable housing. While Jacobs Entertainment paid to relocate many of the people who lived in those units, ProPublica found that not everyone ended up in better conditions.

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/reno-may-use-federal-funds-to-address-housing-crisis