YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board is inviting landlords to attend a meeting at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Catholic Charities Regional Agency, 319 W. Rayen Ave., to learn about incentives for providing housing for low-income families with children.

“We are finding at the Mental Health and Recovery Board, and with the Mahoning County Homeless Continuum of Care, we have resources that we have funding available for. But when we have moms with three or four kids staying at the shelter, we don’t have housing stock to provide,” said Lee DeVito, a MCMHRB program coordinator.

The Continuum of Care receives funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, coordinates homeless services in Mahoning County and provides funding to nonprofits for housing.

“We can give them a housing voucher, but we don’t have anywhere to put them. We are running into that more and more,” DeVito said of women with children.

Forty or more families with children are staying at local homeless shelters such as the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley and the small Catholic Charities facility called Voice of Hope, which houses mostly women and children and opened last year, DeVito said.

“It opened last year, and was filled immediately,” Duane Piccirilli, MCMHRB executive director, said of Voice of Hope.

For example, DeVito said the Continuum of Care has funding through the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority that provides incentives to landlords to work with families with children. It is in addition to providing security deposits for such clients. DeVito said about $750 is available to the landlord if he or she will “work with the client for a year.”

Catholic Charities has funding available for incentive programs, and the Continuum of Care has information on housing vouchers. Both programs must meet certain guidelines, which will be explained at the meeting.

Among the other people in need of housing are individuals receiving services from local nonprofits, such as those with mental illness.

Piccirilli said there can be a stigma attached to providing housing to people with mental illness, but, “these are people who are asking for help. These are people in treatment, people enrolled in a payee program, some of them, to manage their money. So these are people with supports all around them.”

Rental units have been scarce since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Piccirilli said.