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United Community Services highlights eviction‑record change; county maintains $500,000 property tax relief allocation
Summary
United Community Services briefed commissioners on housing and safety‑net initiatives including a new state law allowing certain old evictions to be expunged; the board kept a $500,000 one‑time property‑tax relief fund in the draft budget and discussed program design and timing.
Christie Boffman, executive director of United Community Services (UCS), told commissioners the organization has helped lead statewide housing advocacy and provided data and coordination on local safety‑net needs.
Boffman highlighted recent legislative change from the past session — House Bill 2357 — that will permit eviction records older than three years, for cases that satisfied the terms, to be expunged from public record beginning July 1. UCS said it is preparing outreach materials and working with legal‑service partners to help residents use the new process on day one.
UCS also summarized county safety‑net data, saying about 40,000 Johnson County residents live below the federal poverty level and that roughly 56,000 county residents are food insecure. Boffman described the human services fund administered by UCS (the county line in the county's revised list is $170,600) and the substance‑use continuum of care fund that pools alcohol‑tax and opioid settlement dollars to support services.
Separately during the revisit discussion, commissioners reviewed a property tax relief pilot that the board had funded at $500,000 with general‑fund reserves. Several commissioners argued the program has moved past pilot status and that prevention—keeping households housed—matches county housing priorities; others cautioned the program requires careful design so it does not create shifting eligibility based on assessed value changes.
The board left the $500,000 one‑time allocation in the proposed budget and directed staff and commissioners to refine program timing and eligibility criteria in the months ahead.
"If you have an eviction that is over three years old, and you've satisfied the terms of that eviction, you can have it expunge from your record," Boffman said, describing the new process the group is rolling out with statewide partners.
