Central Missouri Community Action held its second Callaway Housing Taskforce meeting on Tuesday.
Kelly Lucero, Show Me Strong community coordinator with Central Missouri Community Action, said participants from the data walk in April ranked housing as the top concern in Callaway County.
Participants at the first task force meeting selected which data indicators should be prioritized when addressing housing in Callaway County, Lucero said. The four data sets include the number of affordable housing units, the number of new housing units, the percentage of vacant housing units and the number of people who are homeless.
"If you are going to make long-term change, you have to address the causes, the reasons that create it," Lucero said.
Task force collaborators at Tuesday's meeting looked at four sets of relevant data and identified root causes. Some common themes collaborators identified as root causes behind some of the discussed data were lack of financial education, lack of community support and lack of resources for addicts.
Lucero said Central Missouri Community Action "received a grant from the Missouri Foundation of Health to facilitate the process of result-based accountability."
Result-based accountability is "a framework that organizes ideas into actionable steps," according to Lucero.
The next meeting will look at the identified root causes to plan "action steps that are based on those root causes," Lucero said, adding a representative from the Minnesota Housing Projects will be present at the next meeting to help consult.
The next task force meeting is 12-2 p.m. Oct 10 at the Callaway Electric Cooperative.