photo by: Journal-World

The west side of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Massachusetts St.

After the city reduced its funding award to the Douglas County Housing Stabilization Collaborative, the organization that works to prevent evictions and housing instability is proposing a new need-based assistance model for 2026.

The Housing Stabilization Collaborative, HSC, was created during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide rent and utility assistance to low-income residents. Right now, it uses a lottery system once a month to distribute aid to people facing eviction or utility disconnection. But that’s expected to change because of the drop in funding, and the Douglas County Commission will hear more about the changes during its meeting on Wednesday.

County funding for the HSC has remained consistent at $330,000 for the past few years, and it will stay that way in fiscal year 2026. But the award from the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund has gone down in both 2025 and 2026. In 2025, it fell from $509,000 to $200,000, as the Journal-World reported, and in 2026 it’s falling again, to $150,000.

Part of that drop is because there’s less money in the trust than there was in the past. Affordable Housing Administrator Lea Roselyn previously told the Journal-World that 2024 featured larger-than-average awards from the trust, which is supported by the city’s affordable housing sales tax. But there’s also been discussion on the city’s Affordable Housing Advisory Board, which recommends which projects to fund, about whether the trust is a sustainable way to fund a program that needs fresh infusions of cash year after year.

Even before the drop in funding in 2025, HSC had been required to change its operations to adapt to the end of COVID-19 pandemic relief funding. From March 2021 to November 2022, HSC had distributed $1.8 million in rent and utility assistance funded by local sources, in addition to the millions in rental aid coming into Douglas County from the state. But when the COVID aid ended, it had to change its operations from a first-come, first-served approach to a lottery system with distributions of funding twice a month.

Then, in 2025, it reduced the lotteries to once per month, limited eligibility to households with active eviction notices or disconnected utilities, and stopped covering any future rent. The program was able to maintain special aid for seniors, domestic violence survivors, Spanish-speaking households and residents of smaller communities, but the changes still affected many households. A memo to commissioners says the changes resulted in delayed assistance, preventable evictions and a lack of prioritization for households at highest risk of homelessness.

Now, with funding falling again, HSC has developed a new program model that does away with the lottery system entirely. The proposed model focuses on emergency assistance and move-in assistance and replaces the monthly lottery with rolling, need-based allocations, with about $40,000 available per month.

The 2026 changes will prioritize older adults, people on fixed incomes and single-parent households — which are groups identified in local and national planning efforts as being at greatest risk of housing instability. The new approach is aiming to prevent evictions before they occur, increase equity by basing assistance on need rather than timing or chance, strengthen relationships with landlords and utility companies and align more closely with communitywide goals to reduce homelessness.

The new model is slated to roll out in early 2026, the memo said.

IN OTHER BUSINESS, COMMISSIONERS WILL:

• Hold a work session with Consolidated Fire District 1, which serves 228 square miles in the unincorporated parts of the county, to provide an update on which recommendations from a review completed in spring 2025 by Emergency Services Consulting International were implemented in the past year.

Following the review, a multi-phase “Strategic Plan Implementation Framework” was created to improve operations, capacity and long-term service delivery in the fire district. According to a memo in the agenda, the updates on Wednesday will mainly reflect what was completed in the first phase of the plan, including staffing stabilization, policy and procedure updates, training and onboarding improvements, reporting system upgrades and more.

The fire district has also already started tackling some early work in the second phase of the plan, particularly on apparatus planning, facilities coordination, information technology and capital planning. The memo said future phases will focus on staffing and leadership capacity, succession planning, community engagement, performance measurement, accreditation readiness and long-range planning.

• Hear a presentation from Douglas County Treasurer Adam Rains about changes to the Treasurer’s Office. As the Journal-World reported, on Monday, the county announced that the office would close its location at the Douglas County Courthouse and all operations will be done at its Sixth Street site, 2601 W. Sixth St., beginning Feb. 13.

In a memo to commissioners, Rains said that since 2020, the motor vehicle department had hired new staff at an increased rate. There are currently 10 staff members who have been with the office less than five years, and there are three with 10 or more years of experience.

“This situation, along with a high number of transactions, has caused an increase in waiting times, lack of continued training and an increase in burnout,” Rains said in the memo. “The Treasurer’s office goal is to close the downtown office and work out of the (Sixth Street) office for at least a year. This will provide additional training for staff, help manage lines, phone calls and decrease burnout.”

He said an evaluation of the move will happen continuously throughout the year to determine the best solution for motor vehicle operations going forward.

• Consider a site plan for a mini-storage facility with six mini-warehouse buildings totaling 100,400 square feet, with 609 storage units, and a 1,050-square-foot office space in the 1700 block of East 902 Road. The city-county planning department recommends denying it because a required drainage study and on-site stormwater measures were not submitted or approved. The development would also add about 109 daily vehicle trips, and no road improvement or design plan for East 902 Road has been provided.

• Consider awarding a $239,969 contract to Comanche Construction for patch and bridge repairs on two county bridges — one on North 700 Road, 0.2 miles west of the eastern county line, and one on N1100 Road, 0.3 miles east of U.S. 59 — and authorizing the Public Works director to approve change orders up to 10% of the contract amount. Commissioners will also consider a request from Bettis Asphalt & Construction Inc. to withdraw its bid due to a unit price error.

The County Commission’s work session will begin at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the Douglas County Commission meeting room at 1100 Massachusetts St. The business meeting will follow at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will also be available via Zoom.