20 children among those accepted at Project Homekey
b'March 17,2021 \\u2014 A former motel in Ukiah is getting closer to housing more than 60 people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Last week, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a contract with Rural Community Housing and Development Corporation to manage Live Oak Apartments, which the county purchased in September with state funds under Project Homekey, a program to house the most vulnerable.\\nMegan van Sant, a senior program manager working on housing and homelessness with Health and Human Services, reported that fifteen families have been selected to live in the apartments so far, consisting of twenty children and twenty adults, three of them pregnant. Another 22 applicants who have been accepted are senior citizens, some of them veterans. \\nRCHDC, a non-profit developer and housing management company, will be paid $675,000 a year to provide a resident manager, maintenance, clerical, and bookkeeping staff to keep track of rent, taxes, and upkeep of the property.\\nThere\\u2019s an additional $1.3 million operational grant, and tenants will pay 30% of the income they get from various social services programs and housing vouchers to pay rent.\\nPeople could be moving in by the middle of next month. Right now, construction workers are remodeling the lobby and putting kitchenettes in the living units. Van Sant says that while some tenants may be short term, there\\u2019s no timeframe on how long they\\u2019ll be able to stay at the apartments. \\nHomelessness is often generational. Van Sant relayed what she learned from colleagues who have been working in local homeless services for many years: \\u201cThey recognized the names on our list from children they knew who had been homeless years ago, who are now adults parenting their own children, in some cases pregnant, and my thought was, this is an opportunity to break a cycle of homelessness.\\u201d'