Head of Sacramento housing agency gets national job as acting replacement is named
The longtime Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency executive director has a new national job, and the county has announced her temporary replacement.
La Shelle Dozier announced her retirement in August after 18 years leading the agency, which builds affordable housing and manages the Section 8 and public housing programs.
Dozier will now be the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, a national nonprofit that lobbies Congress for improved funding and policies to help create more affordable housing in big cities.
“La Shelle offers an unparalleled skill set to her new role, including leading a housing and redevelopment agency, advocating for public policies at the local, state, and federal levels, and driving innovations in public housing preservation and affordable housing development,” said CLPHA Board President and Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority CEO Jeffery K. Patterson said in a CLPHA news release.
James Shields, an SHRA deputy executive director, will assume the temporary role of acting executive director starting Saturday, as the agency conducts a national search for a permanent director, the county announced in a news release Wednesday.
Shields will oversee the agency’s 315 employees and annual operating budget of over $350 million, the release said. He has been at SHRA for 23 years, and before that has experience in the pharmaceutical and “high-tech” industries.
Dozier was previously vice president of CLPHA’s board of directors.
Under Dozier’s leadership at SHRA, the agency opened the 427-unit $300 unit Mirasol Village housing project along 12th Street, as well as 500 new affordable housing units under the state’s Project Homekey program.
But the agency has been faced with increasing struggles in recent years due to waning state and federal funding.
In 2023, about 51,000 Sacramentans were on a waiting list for 13,000 Section 8 housing vouchers, The Sacramento Bee reported at the time. In the last two decades, while the number of homeless people in Sacramento has more than quadrupled, the federal government has given Sacramento only an additional 1,000 vouchers.
Dozier has shared the frustrations of being reliant on Congress for most of the agency’s budget, which falls under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“We’re always looking to see what Congress is going to do,” Dozier told The Bee in October 2023. “You have to live within the dollars they give you. In some years where they’ve cut back on that amount it can be very difficult. Every year we wait and see.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 12:04 PM.
