During our most recent all-employee call, employees spoke up about the ongoing challenge of finding affordable and available housing at their duty locations, especially in more rural locations and in high-cost urban areas near public lands. This is a challenge we have been monitoring over the past few years.

I applaud the fishbowl participants in the Dec. 7 all-employee call for bringing this critical issue into the dialogue. Forest Service executive leadership is listening and we are taking action.

Earlier this fall, we assembled a team of associate deputy chiefs from crosscutting program areas to help identify scalable, sustainable and standardized solutions. This team is gathering creative ideas that get at this multi-faceted challenge, ideas we feel will have a positive impact for our employees. We will have a more robust outline to share toward the end of January 2023.

Editor's note: Please watch Inside the Forest Service for updates on prescribed fire, pay, housing and other critical issues. Provide feedback or submit questions through the FS-Employee Feedback inbox.