Yakima County Human Services outlines 2025 priorities, launches HUD fair-market-rent study

Human Services Director Esther presented the department’s 2024 review and a detailed list of 2025 priorities, and announced the county will conduct a local study of HUD’s fair-market rents (FMR) to determine whether HUD rates match current local rental costs.

The presentation covered finance and administration, community grants, veterans services, homeless housing programs, behavioral health and affordable housing. Esther said the department will focus this year on rolling out opiate-settlement and mental-health sales-tax contracts on a calendar-year schedule, improving public dashboards for contract and performance transparency, and strengthening subgrantee performance monitoring.

Why it matters: Human Services manages several locally significant funding streams and programs that affect housing access, veterans’ emergency support, behavioral-health services and homelessness response. Changes to how the county measures and pays rent can affect the ability of case managers and housing providers to place clients in rental housing.

Highlights and program details

- Finance and grants: Esther said the department will produce more public-facing dashboards showing contract spend-downs and outcomes and will coordinate with Financial Services on cost-center tracking. She described a planned approach to separate accounting for two state fund sources commonly pooled in local bookkeeping: Fund 2060 (affordable housing development match) and Fund 2163 (homeless response system). "2060 is for affordable housing development. 2163 is for the homeless response system," she said; staff will maintain internal separation because 2060 serves as a local match for HUD HOME dollars.

- Veterans program: Esther said the veterans program has accumulated reserves relative to program size and the department plans a measured increase in spending (for example, adding a second case manager role previously filled part time). She said the program will tie some assistance to HUD fair-market rents (FMR) rather than a flat monthly amount to be responsive to local rents while avoiding becoming a permanent subsidy.

- Affordable housing and rehab program: Esther said home rehabilitation grants typically cost $75,000 per project (cap), but inflation and backlog have driven actual costs higher; staff are weighing the per-unit cost of rehab projects against using local funds to leverage larger state and federal awards for new multifamily projects. She told commissioners the county could pursue state Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) pass-throughs to sustain rehab work because the county is not a direct CDBG entitlement while the City of Yakima is.

- DOC and reentry partnerships: Human Services is piloting reentry coordination work with the Department of Corrections (DOC) and exploring People for People work-placement placements to provide job training and expand cleanup and outreach activities in collaboration with code enforcement.

- Subgrantee monitoring: Commissioners and staff agreed to add more rigorous performance monitoring for homeless housing assistance program (HHAP) subgrantees in addition to the CDBG-required closeouts.

HUD fair-market rent study

Esther said the county mailed postcards and began a local FMR study after providers reported that HUD’s FMR levels were too low to lease units in the local market. "HUD ... assess what they think is fair rent in our community," Esther said, noting that local shelters and case managers had reported that federal FMRs sometimes prevent housing placements because landlords set rents higher than HUD’s published rates.

Esther said the county will collect local rent data for submission to the state; the Washington State Department of Commerce can accept a robust local demonstration and allow the county to use a locally derived rent standard for certain programs. Commissioners asked about timing and outreach; Esther said staff will follow up on timelines and coordinate with the county assessor and other local data sources.

Questions and next steps

- Data sources: Corporate counsel and commissioners recommended coordinating with the county assessor and other local market sources to corroborate findings. - Reporting: Staff will return with dashboards, subgrantee monitoring plans and a timeline for the FMR study and any subsequent requests to the state.

Ending

Commissioners thanked Esther and staff for the report. The board did not take a formal vote on the department’s priorities but directed staff to continue refinement of policy details (including veterans policy updates tying some assistance to FMRs), add subgrantee monitoring for HHAP, and provide the FMR study results for potential state-level action.