City Council Joint Meeting with CRHA Board of Directors   8/6/2025

Well, I started many years ago because I didn't have anything to do.

It was a long time ago.

I got plenty to do now.

Glad I took it up when I did.

We're going to go ahead and get the meeting started to honor everyone's time.

John will be here.

He'll join us when he comes.

So I'm going to bring August 6.

Charlottesville City Special Meeting will come to order.

This is a joint meeting with the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

All councilors are here, except for Vice Mayor Pinkston, who gave us prior notice of his absence.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's fine.

Yes, so I will bring the CRA chain to order.

We have two new commissioners who I actually haven't met, I believe.

Maybe you guys met them in the last meeting.

And so we have everyone we're expecting, yeah?

Yeah.

And then I don't know if Lisa is.

She's not joining, so we have everyone that we're expecting.

No, no, that's fine.

I know I just kind of threw it on you.

So I'll just say really quickly that welcome.

Thank you all for being here.

We did this last year.

I worked with John and Wes at that time to make this an annual thing to give the Housing Authority an opportunity to meet with council, present information as well to just kind of help direct the efforts of what has become a very significant relationship, especially from a deep financial perspective, but to ensure that council hears directly from the body that is doing the work for

some of our most vulnerable population in the city while we focus on trying to retain opportunities for as many people as possible.

I think that's really what I believe the commitment has indicated over the years.

So part of what we're going to do this evening is Mr. Freeze, deputy of operations, has been working with his housing team and with John specifically.

I don't know others.

He'll be able to explain a little bit more about the background and what they've done.

He's going to walk you through an update of what

And James before you begin I just want to thank the authority and for your work on the board and those are here and also virtual

I like to do it publicly as much as I can because you all could be at home, maybe relaxing, maybe doing some yard work, but we appreciate your dedication and service to the city.

Okay, good.

All right.

All right, good evening.

As Sam said, my name is James Freese.

I'm the deputy city manager for operations.

and you all have a report in your packet.

I'm not going to present for a long time.

I'm certainly not going to read every aspect of that, but I thought I'd hit some of the high points of what's in there.

First off, no secret to anybody in this room that affordable housing is one of our top priorities here in the city.

It's a place where we're investing a great deal of our time, attention and resources.

And to that end, CRHA is arguably our most important partner in that work.

not even arguably, is our most important partner in that work.

CRHA controls more than 400 units.

They administer our, the CISRAP program, Charlottesville Supplemental Rental Assistance Program, key element of our affordable housing, our ability to provide affordable housing to our residents.

And then at the end of the day, right now, we are investing more than $38 million in redevelopment projects.

on CRHA properties to expand our housing supply, upgrade and improve those properties, and ultimately make for better opportunities for our residents and our community.

So, essential partners in this work, but it's also well recognized that there have been stumbling points in our relationship, really on both sides, and so in recognition of that, and recognition of the importance of this partnership,

We worked with John Sales, executive director of CRHA, to develop this report and identify those places where we had issues that needed to be addressed and then develop this plan of action for the things we're going to address.

So the report is broken down into three parts.

The first part is looking at how we move forward on the development projects.

Second one is focused in particular on the rental assistance program, CISRAP.

And then the third one is looking at our general coordination and communication.

So as I said, I'm going to hit some of the highlights, and then John and I will both be available to answer any questions you all might have after you've read the report.

So first off, just right off of that, in looking at redevelopment projects, one of the things we've identified is that we really need together to do a better job of identifying that redevelopment process, both on CRHA's side and on the city's side, and be clear about what our expectations are in terms of hitting the various milestones as those projects go forward.

So it's really about, from the moment we've identified a project, identifying a calendar

of milestones and what we need to do to hit each and every one of those.

Really a key element of this.

And then relatedly, making sure that we are effectively sharing information between the two bodies as we go along because we all know

Like any development project these are complex projects.

There's a lot of different funding streams coming together There's a lot of different interests involved and so things are going to change over time We need to have systems of communication of effective communication in place so that we are responding in a timely Manner to the needs of both parties as we go through the project each project

Moving on to the rental assistance program, the big move that we're making and planning to make over the next several months is to update the program agreement that defines how that relationship works today.

So, Council, at your most recent meeting, you all approved an extension of the current agreement?

carrying the current funding through to December of this year.

We're going to be using that time to construct the next version of this agreement and addressing some of the key issues that have come up like

It's pretty clear actually at this point that the administrative portion of it, the money that's within that project for administration by CRHA is actually inadequate to the funding that CRHA actually needs to administer the program.

We also need to more clearly define what the rules of the road are for that program.

What the expected tenure or timeline of participation is for residents and clearly defining

how an individual can get onto the waiting list and kind of how that whole system works.

Included with that is going to be looking at staffing levels, technology, and as I said, the funding.

So that program has been in place and it went out of my head how long we've had SISREP.

John, how long have we had SISREP?

Since 2017.

Since 2017.

So we're coming up, I guess we're a couple years shy of the 10 year anniversary of that and it's a good time for us to revisit the parameters of that program and then come back to the board and the council on proposed changes to how that system works.

And then lastly, just looking at the general coordination and communication, we are broadly across all the different places where CRHA and the city interacts.

We're looking at developing a general compliance calendar that aligns with both entities' needs and identifies key dates for things like

One of the requirements that we have, the jointly owned portfolio, that portfolio of housing units that are owned by both CRHA and the city has reporting requirements, but we've never really clearly established a reporting timeline for what our expectations are in terms of what we would like and what council would like to receive in terms of those reports.

So defining those, making that actually an easier thing to

to produce for the city.

So that we are fully transparent for our community as to what those units are and how they're contributing towards our affordable housing goals.

And then fundamentally just fostering opportunities for relationship building between the staffs of the two entities.

again we recognize CRHA is a valuable and essential partner for our affordable housing goals here in the city and therefore we need to make sure that our staffs broadly across the city side and CRHA side have good professional solid working relationships and that means that they're interacting and they're communicating on a regular basis and have the ability to do so.

So in short, John I think at this point

And so we started working on this report.

But I will say a lot of the stuff that's in the report are items that we identified before.

And so they were already like little things already being worked on.

So the Housing Authority, when I got there, was like 30-something employees.

And so it was not nearly as large as it needed to be in order to do the work that we're currently doing plus the work that the community has identified that we need to do in order to provide more housing to the community.

We've grown that capacity over time and so I think we added our first redevelopment positions last year, like in the middle of 2024.

and so the city had already provided some funding for those positions but when I got to the housing authority we were spending the soft cost money for construction which is the staff positions faster than we were doing some of the other requirements such as the sustainability plan and so it was required it was requested that we

Speed that process up and slow down on our spending on the soft cost money because there were some requirements as part of getting that soft cost money that we completed a sustainability plan and that the council approved that.

So that got started in 2021, took a couple years to complete.

And so it was completed in 2023 and so in 2024 we started building back on that staffing level that was needed in redevelopment.

We also at the same time underwent a strategic planning effort which also identified some growth areas that we needed to focus on.

while going through the interviews with our stakeholders.

I think some council members were a part of that interview process as well.

And so we knew some things needed to happen.

Around the same time we also had the redevelopment agreement expire and we didn't know about them until we actually submitted a

We were getting ready to go to closing and when we looked through the application the grant agreement showed that it expired and so we knew we needed to have more CRHA management on those grants because how they typically work we would sign them.

We don't we weren't managing as much of the redevelopment process because we have a development partner and when we added that that development partner that was part of their capacity which was managing

the redevelopment projects.

That is still the case but now we have more of our staff involved and so like they meet monthly to go over any upcoming pay apps that are coming out and that person also is doing the redevelopment report as well as meeting with city staff to make sure that they're caught up on any pending grant payments that are coming through.

And so we noticed that these were some, there were some weaknesses and flaws on our end when it came to staffing, having the right size staff because you had me and Kathleen that was over redevelopment and we were the point people for redevelopment.

We also have the other duties of the housing authority.

And so we didn't have a dedicated redevelopment department.

We now have that and have a team that's just focused on redevelopment.

And so those issues have went away.

Like we're on time on our grant reports, it's constant communication going on in their building.

So John, the, I'm sorry, the redevelopment

They're in the nuts and bolts on what's actually happening on the site.

And so we still use our development partner to apply for grants, bring in private money, find additional federal funding.

Using that example, which is really a fantastic one, talking about having a calendar and understanding the milestones and making sure that we're kind of working that program, working that calendar together.

You imagine a scenario where the grant agreement that John was referring to had gone void or whatever, for lack of a better word, had gone void because they'd missed a milestone.

I don't see that as something that CRHA owns entirely.

That's also on the city to be communicating and tracking that stuff.

that expired in several months had gone by without, they discovered it when they applied for and were looking to secure additional funding.

None of that is how it's supposed to work.

Perfect.

And I'll just add, the CISRAP, it has some challenges.

I think it's, we've known it's had some challenges because you have a program where there are no time limits.

And so you have folks who have been in the program since inception and without adding additional funds to that program, you're only serving the same individuals.

So when folks do need assistance, they're only getting on the wait list.

And just the other challenge.

The original agreement did not open it up to every organization or partnership the city has that focuses on affordable housing.

It was a very select few organizations that were highlighted and picked to serve in this program.

And so you have, as the city has grown its reach and its departments that also connect to housing,

You now have more organizations and departments that would like to refer folks to the SISRAP program that's city funded, but they're not even mentioned in the agreement to actually complete that referral.

And so that's a challenge and oftentimes it's the city department, they're like, hey,

It's our money, like we're part of the city department that funded it.

Why can't we prefer folks?

But it's all about what we have in our program requirement of how we serve families.

So I had a quick follow up.

I took some notes there.

You mentioned the strategic plan, and we probably got a copy of it way back, but I don't recall.

What are some of the key findings of that?

Yes, so in the strategic plan it identified three key areas and one of the areas was growth.

But then identifying what is the right amount of growth, when is the right amount of growth, and then planning that out.

and then also the amount of services.

So we are in an area where service is just as important as the actual housing that you're providing because oftentimes our housing is the housing of last resort.

Folks have no other options when they leave our housing and so we need to make sure when folks come in that they are successful and so make sure they have the right services to address whatever barriers they have in place and so I can provide you with a copy of it but it addressed, it was along the lines of service, improving like our mission

and Capacity Building.

Who did it?

Spark Mill.

Mayor Snick may have been interviewed at the time.

I may have been interviewed, but I can't.

Sales, if I can confess some ignorance here, I'm puzzled by what strikes me as three things that may be somewhat contradictory.

One is we've always heard that there is extra money available in the CSRAP bin that we raid for various other purposes from time to time, and yet we've got a waiting list

So when the program was originally created, I think it was created in the middle of a budget year, it received a full allocation of as if the program started with the full allocation of tenants being leased up in units.

It took a while for the actual housing authority to lease up the number of families that would actually eat up the allocation that the city provided.

I think by the time I got there in 2020,

We had just hit the mark to where what you all were allocating actually met what we needed for the year.

And so those few years of previous account balances built up a huge reserve to where I think it was like three or four hundred thousand dollars in a couple years which got you that large reserve.

That is no longer the case.

And at the time that we requested to use those funds,

There was no CRA SISRAP waitlist.

We started gaining that waitlist after we opened up who we received referrals from.

And so that was within the last year.

But before that, we did not have a waitlist.

We were actually calling folks to refer folks over to us.

It was also during the time where Premier Circle was being utilized to house folks.

I guess I'm just sort of puzzled by why we have a wait list when we've got a reserve.

Well, we don't have a new reserve.

The reserve was like one-time funds and as you all don't allocate permanent expenses to one-time funds, it would be the same way for this program.

We could do a mass lease-up of let's say 15 additional people, but without you creating that permanent allocation of additional funds every year,

To meet that need, we would eventually run out and those folks would then be unhoused because we would not be able to afford to continue housing them.

So that reserve was only built up from old funds.

Once we fully leased up, which we have, you're not creating a new reserve.

I think right now in our current housing assistance payment per year, if we just do our last month times 12 is $830,000.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out

It seems wrong that we should have both a reserve and people in need on a waitlist.

And maybe the answer is we don't immediately deplete the entire reserve with one year's worth.

But maybe we say, OK, let's take 30% of the people.

Let's spend 30% of that reserve this year and 30% of it next year.

We just shouldn't be having a reserve

Yeah, but let me just add a little bit more from the budgeting side, from the city's perspective to how CRHA was managing the program.

Going back to what Mr. Sales said about the startup of the program, we allocate the tranche of money within the budget for the whole year

They did not use all of the money in the first year based on the timing of when we made the funds available for them to begin to use.

So it generated a surplus year one.

It also generated a surplus in a future year because we did not fill up all the slots when we gave the new, was it always 900,000?

So we were at a lower amount previously so we're at $750,000 so when the next $750,000 came the point of the management of the program at that point you put in as many people as you could based on where the referrals were coming and if we just did not get enough people then it was going to trigger more money going into the surplus.

That's because the way the program was designed, it's a hard start and stop every fiscal year.

And it was creating a surplus.

I'm sharing what I've now learned because I didn't understand this earlier.

What also happened was we increased the amount of money that we gave as the program was building up the momentum.

People were coming, they were signing up, we were leasing up all the units.

But we had still some money left over at the end of the year.

Part of the conflict, and I know John and I talked about this when I first arrived here about we have this rental assistance program.

We're creating a dependency on the city for paying that subsidy.

My question was, and I think he remembers me asking the question, how long did we commit to paying that?

And his answer was, I don't know, you want to tell me now?

Because we never made that determination.

Each year was a new amendment to an existing agreement.

What began to be the issue that he and I started to work on was that I was of the mindset we should not have a surplus sitting and we didn't have a wait list at that time.

We just had a surplus building.

So the point that was brought forward as he brought forward opportunities to acquire properties to preserve what was naturally occurring affordable housing was to use that money in the same area of helping the lowest income individuals in the city.

I think what I also gave back as an answer was we're not there yet because we're trying to get through the sustainability plan, figure out your redevelopment program and the schedule for all those things, and eventually we would get there.

I think where we are today is, and again what I have learned as to where we stand today, the program going forward as it's currently constructed will not produce a surplus.

The $900,000 that we would have granted July 1st would be expended by June of next year for the most part.

Very little left, if there's anything.

The other challenge is that rents are going up so we're having to make those adjustments as well so we're actually going to be able to help fewer people at some point if they continue to go up the way that they are without making a change to how much is being allocated which is the conflict that I think we are recognizing.

So there was a window of time, to your point, not disagreeing that there was a window of time where the conflict of having a surplus and a waitlist existed, but I think we had expended most of the surplus before that waitlist started.

The reason for not really working the wait list was we were already on a trajectory to make sure that we were going to spend the allocation without adding new people and that was then going to cause a conflict of how do we help all of them that we've allowed in because the allocation as it is currently standing today is not enough if we go beyond how many people.

Is that 67 households, just to clarify?

And I'll also just share that part of the struggle and I think part of what

Allow me to then say to James that we needed to dig into CISRAP specifically is we have heard about a concern that exists at the Kindlewood site for preserving the affordability for the people who had to relocate for the construction to occur being able to come back.

We have people who have come back to those units, but they've come back to units that they probably can't afford.

So there was a request that we consider looking at expanding the SISRAP program to fill that gap, because it is the same concept of what we're doing with the 67 households.

But in order to do that, we would have to add money to the pool.

So that in itself would take away the ability to work a wait list as well if we were to prioritize that.

So if we've got 67 families, $900,000.

10% per admin, that's about $12,000 per family, by my quick metal man.

That's correct.

No, it goes up and it goes down depending on the individuals or the family's income.

And so if the family gains a job,

Have we had any situations of people who were on the program who things worked out and they got off the program?

Yes, but it's not very many.

Yes, so the original program, and I wasn't here for it, but it was designed to assist families come off the HCV wait list and get into housing until they were pulled from the HCV wait list.

and also assist families that were in self-sufficiency programs so that as their income grows they can then fall off the program.

And then it had a homeless category as well, but it did not include all of the homeless organizations that provide housing or assist individuals find housing.

And so that's part of the problem.

That is the problem.

I'll say it seems like to me, and I wasn't here either, but from a conceptual standpoint, the rationale behind it was just managing the volume because the need is greater than the resources available.

But the plan over the next year is to

Yeah, I think what we're doing for our side of this equation because this fits within your affordable housing plan and as I mentioned that we have a wait list.

We would like, of course, to be able to work that wait list.

We have this evidence of concern at Kindlewood, a project that we are deeply invested in, all the many phases of it.

This frames the question for you as to how I'm looking at it.

Do we prioritize that?

If so, to what degree?

How much more might we be able to add?

That's really what we're hoping to get to.

But before we go there, because my friend here has told me that he may not see this as the right program for them to continue to manage because the admin needs to be addressed.

We need to work through that.

If we get to that point where it still makes sense for it to sit here, then we might have other program changes to recommend.

Okay, perfect.

Alright, next slide.

All right, so for this last part, I want to take some time to give an update on where we are, both with our redevelopment projects and then an update with city housing, and then a couple, a few requests at the end.

And so we currently have two major public housing redevelopment projects underway.

South First Street, phase two, and then Sixth Street, phase one.

Residents are currently working as a resident planner group to get ready to submit a tax credit application in March of 2026.

We are also simultaneously doing a parallel track redevelopment effort at our scatter site, which is our Mickey, Madison, Riverside, and the public housing houses.

We've completed now the HVAC expansion project at Madison and Riverside.

We're about 90% completed at Mickey.

I think we're predicting or estimating a

power switch over of next week.

And so those units will have central layer for the first time since they were built.

And the city has contributed to that project $150,000 and so we really appreciate that.

That project grew substantially.

over the last few years where we were talking about it just because we had some electrical upgrades that needed to occur in order to do the HVAC project.

And so that project nearly doubled.

And so for the Riverside, no, Madison project, we actually did it in-house and saw some really large savings.

And so that's gonna be something we look to duplicate in more of our projects for capital fund.

Next slide.

All right, so South First Street Phase 2 is a construction of 113 homes with a mixture of apartments and townhouses ranging from one to five bedrooms.

The construction includes a community center, dedicated access, controlled storage for residents, solar, a dedicated property management office, and a new resident service office.

All units will have dedicated high-speed internet, and that's thanks to a partnership that you guys signed off on, I think maybe five years ago.

We are also anticipating receiving the first phase of those units in the spring of 2026.

I think right now it's looking like April of 2026, and those will be a lot of the larger families that we originally moved off the site a couple years ago.

All the units will be fully subsidized by vouchers so families will be able to assist families at 30% AMI and lower on every unit with them only paying 30% of their income towards the rent.

OK, and this is a rendering of the phase two exhibit.

As you see, exhibit A, or delivery A, is estimated in April of 2026.

And those are mainly four and five beer room townhouses, as well as the community center.

Next slide.

Next you're going to see these are just some drone shots of the construction area and this was probably about two months ago.

Next slide.

These first two were about a couple months ago.

Next slide.

And so these are drone shots from a day ago.

Next slide.

And so in this photo you can see a couple of townhouses being built and behind that trailer is actually where the community center is going to be located.

And I want to thank all the community members that have been working with us in this community because I know this project has impacted you guys because that street has been closed now for I think a couple weeks.

Next slide.

So the second project that is currently under construction is 6th Street, Phase 1, and it's the development of a 47-unit apartment building at the corner of Monticello and 6th Street.

The building will be a mixture of one and three bedroom apartments.

All 47 units are fully subsidized.

Six of them will be subsidized through the public housing program, and 41 will be subsidized through the voucher program.

So all units will be able to assist families at 30% AMI or lower.

The development includes a medical clinic, which UVA is renting,

a dedicated food hub, which residents will receive fresh produce, a business center, a teen lounge, a fitness center, community room, solar, a property manager's office, and resident service office.

And again, all the units will have high-speed internet for free, thanks to the partnership with the city.

Next.

So these are some renderings of the building A, which is phase one.

Next slide.

Next slide.

This is a quick video that may play or may not, and this is of the, it's played.

The commissioners have seen it.

But can you try to press play?

It's of the demolition going on at Sixth Street.

This building is now completely gone.

Never mind.

Sixth Street is scheduled as an 18 month project.

I should have a delivery date.

But they just got under contract or just got started less than a month ago.

And that's what the site looks like now.

There's no building there.

I will say they started a little bit earlier than their contract.

We emptied out this building and then we ran across when they were moving the sewer or making a sewer connection, they ran across a secondary power line that was laying on top of the sewer.

And so that caused a few week delay because Dominion wanted to come out and relocate the wire.

Misutility didn't catch it, it wasn't caught in any of the drawings.

which is literally laying on top of the sewer line.

And so they are now complete with that power line relocation.

We've already cut off power and restored power and so now they're going to get back to work on actually relocating that sewer line.

All right, next slide.

All right, so West Haven Master Planning.

On March 13th, West Haven residents came to consensus on a master plan.

The planners are now working with the development team to come to consensus on overall design of the townhouses and apartment buildings.

The West Haven neighborhood is built on a neighborhood scale that doubles the amount of affordable housing opportunities in townhouses and apartments, and there's more than four times the amount of usable outdoor community space.

Key features include a connection to West Main Street, centralized outdoor community space, and a promenade connecting the site.

and this is that master plan that residents approved and so it includes a mixed-use building that's at the corner of 10th and Run Street that we are envisioning as a potential SRO building to assist individuals that are currently homeless.

We also have a mixed-use, I mean, I'm sorry, we have a senior apartment building and a mixed family apartment building on the side as well as townhouses.

Next slide.

Parallel track.

So parallel track is what CRJ calls major renovation work that is occurring amongst the scattered site public housing portfolio.

In 2024, after we expanded our redevelopment team, we were able to complete several projects, including appliance replacement, exterior door replacement, including hardware, security door installation, porch light installation, and we started the HVAC work.

CRJ was able to save roughly $350,000 by completing these projects in-house using our own manpower.

We were able to come up with that number based upon getting quotes from outside companies to do that same work.

Thus far we have completed 100% of the HVAC installation at Madison Avenue.

We've begun this project about a month ago and finished eight months sooner than the contractor that provided us with a quote to complete the work.

We also completed that project before they completed Mickey in Riverside because Riverside was just finalized and they started that over a year ago.

And we were able to see a big savings of over $200,000 by doing that project in-house alone.

Next slide.

The savings from completing these projects in-house will allow CRJ to tackle more projects at a much faster rate than we anticipated two years ago.

We were also awarded an additional $1.5 million last year from the federal government.

This was a competitive award for capital funds.

I think we were one of 20 housing authorities in the country that received this.

And we applied to continue the work that residents had already planned.

So kitchen upgrades, bathroom upgrades, and overall upgrades inside of the interiors.

So the residents are working with our team to make those final selections, and we anticipate starting that work towards the end of this year.

Next slide.

So this is one of the HVAC units that we have out.

It's a carrier.

Next slide.

And so this is the parallel track plan that we developed.

And so as you can see, in 2024, we have $2.3 million in there in funding.

That's the additional $1.5 million from the federal government.

Every year, we receive capital funds.

Every year, the senators put out

Notice that they've helped public housing agencies get millions of dollars.

It's something that we are supposed to get.

It's in the contract that we get it.

We never know how much or how little and so that's the only surprise.

and so as you can see in these years we are averaging about $800,000 a year in construction money that's actually happening on the sites but in that 2024 year we have 2.3 million and all of that is still 1.5 because it's only going to projects.

Next slide.

And so these are some of the selections that have already been made.

So you have cabinets, you have paint colors, countertops and flooring.

We had to go back to the drawing board on the shower surrounds because when we ordered one to install it, did not have the best feel and just felt really cheap, poor quality.

And so we were going back to the drawing board on the shower surrounds, but the other selections have already been made.

Next slide.

All right, city housing portfolio.

Yes.

A small question about the shower surround and that sort of thing.

Is that something you have to do like a bidding process for?

So we can go buy one, but if we're going to buy 70, we need to do a formal bid process or formal quote process where we're getting multiple quotes.

And so the process that we've followed so far is our team, we go find different items.

So if it's the countertop, we found a countertop that's going to be easy for us to maintain and replace when needed.

And it's going to be durable.

And so we first went through and took out, hey, we're not going to build this product.

We're not going to add this product because it's going to be a maintenance nightmare.

And then from that point, we handed those selections to residents.

Residents then make a selection.

We then go to the open market and find that product.

And I will say a lot of what we're dealing with now is only material costs because a lot of the manpower is done in-house.

So we're only looking at material and so we've been really competitive.

We've gained a lot of relationships.

I had a question.

When you first got here you talked about, you know, you kind of saw the staff and it needed to be larger for the work that you had to do and you beefed up your staff and then you talked about that you were able to do a lot of this in-house to save a lot of money.

So HUD allows you to do something called force account labor is when you have staff that's dedicated to doing work solely on a project and so we get capital funds and this is

The first time I believe that the Housing Authority has done it here.

Other Housing Authorities do it all across the country where they have staff members that solely work on those type of projects.

And so we built a team that only does special projects.

And so every couple weeks a calendar is made of what projects they're going to be working on.

they are then paid by that either by that project or in this case is paid by capital fund through the force account labor.

Okay, city housing portfolio.

So the city housing portfolio began with the purchase of 1016 and 1020 Coleman Street using unspent SISRAP funds and these were the funds we were talking about earlier that were built based upon not fully leasing up.

The portfolio significantly grew with the acquisition of the Dogwood portfolio from Woodard Properties in 2023.

The Dogwood portfolio is approximately 80 units of scattered site housing units.

The units range in age but are primarily over 60 years old.

The CRJ anticipates submitting a tax credit application to repay the city and do a complete extensive renovation of all units in the Dogwood portfolio.

Next slide.

But that will not cover all of the units in city housing.

And so we've started to get innovative with how we tackle some of those challenges without requesting additional funds and CRHA taking on the project.

And so CRJ is interested in exploring land lease proposals for 1016 and 1020 Coleman Street.

We currently have four affordable units on the site.

They're two-bedroom, one-bath.

They range in rent from, I believe, 600 to 1,300.

CRJ is interested in finding a private developer to develop additional housing units behind the NOAA units that are currently on the site.

The completed development would bring added tax revenue to the Charlottesville coffers while also developing additional affordable housing units.

Current studies show 50% of the units will be affordable at 60% AMI without any additional funding from the city.

C.R.J.

would retain ownership in the land and would receive their improvements on the land at no cost at the end of the land lease.

And so what we would be asking from the city is letting us post the RFP.

to hear back from developers to see if they would be interested in tackling a project of this scale.

There will be a requirement that the units are affordable, 50% of the units are affordable at 60% AMI and lower.

And the four units are currently there will continue to be affordable at 30% AMI, which is where they are now currently.

in the proposals or build plan that we've developed, you have the ability to build 40 units on the two parcels, 40 additional units on the two parcels.

And so it will be a great benefit to the city as well as bringing the additional tax revenue from the new development units behind the property.

Again, the way the property is currently structured

CRJ in the city would continue having ownership in the land because we currently are joint owners.

The land would not change ownership.

The only thing that would change ownership is the developer having a right to build on the property.

I mean, I guess you haven't done it yet, so it's an unknown.

I think we can, because we will be removing the cost of the land from any acquisition that a typical developer would need to do.

And so I think we could, and we've looked at this with a couple of different

options, not only this property but other properties that are within a portfolio that include teardown potential and like historic properties we would keep and then work with the current, well, the old soon to be new zoning.

because that allowed us to maximize density on those sites.

So I do think we will find a developer.

I think it's a couple local that would jump at this opportunity.

And we have not done this in this scale, but this is exactly the type of project we're doing with all of our public housing redevelopment.

CRJ keeps ownership of the land and then we provide a land lease to the developer to build.

We've looked at a 30 and a 40, and you can structure it different depending on what you require as a lease payment.

So if you require less of a lease payment, those funds, that developer is paid back faster and they can exit out the situation sooner.

Or if you require a lease payment, then that situation typically is a little bit longer.

Any other questions?

All right, next slide.

The other property there that I would love to have some discussion about is 801 Harris.

It is industrial zone property.

and it's two units.

It has a stream that runs right behind it that's about 15 to 20 feet off of the rear of the building.

It is the only house on that block is next door to a funeral home and then auto repair shop on the other side.

And so it is, in my opinion, not the best multi-family property in the best area where you would like family housing.

And so this is another opportunity where we could either do a disposition, a straight disposition, or look at a land lease opportunity to see if there is a developer that would be interested in developing it and keeping it housing, but also getting some affordable housing units out of the deal.

And so this is another one where I think we should have that conversation because that stream is continually getting closer and closer to the back of the house.

So we really need to make a decision on what we're going to do with that property.

The building, the property is currently vacant.

We've relocated the family's other units that we have in anticipation of doing something with the property.

All right, next slide.

Yes.

So we've gotten offers.

We have not listed it for sale.

And so all the offers have just come in.

And so the property will easily sell.

I don't think we would have any issues selling.

The question is, what is the best use of the future of that project?

If it is housing, and if it is going to be housing, we should look to keep it and maybe put this out as RFP.

It's a train track behind the home.

You've got a stream, a train track, and nothing but businesses.

Yes.

But one of those businesses is Boto's.

Yeah, I think that has a lot to do with it plus the lot itself is

And so when you're looking at building there, you're not going to get as many units and your cost is going to be really high and so what you have to rent those units for will also be really high to recoup any of those funds.

When we looked at

The property next door did a stream restoration.

I'm going to assume it was a tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars.

They broke up a lot of sidewalk broken, brought in a lot of big sewer lines to restore that stream.

That would be very costly for this site and to keep these units, and if we did not keep these units, just the complexity of that site, having to build on top of that stream on that site would be the next challenge.

And I have talked to a developer who said they can build on the stream.

It was one of the private developers.

Yes.

That's what I thought.

Next slide.

Press it again to skip.

Okay.

Can you go back one more?

OK, so this was supposed to be a beautiful table that showed every grant that we had open, and it is not showing.

But it was beautiful.

Take your word for it.

You may get us right, though.

We'll see.

Okay.

All right.

So this is the closed grants.

There's another beautiful slide that has all the open grants.

And so we currently have a lot of federal money that we've received for a different resident service program.

We have a Ross program that is for public housing residents at all of our sites.

We have an FSS program, which is a family self-sufficiency program, and that's for anyone in the voucher program or public housing.

and we also just last year received the JOBS Plus grant, which was a very competitive grant.

We were one of 13, Kathleen, 13 housing authorities in the country that were awarded that grant.

It's a multi-year grant that will allow us to give deep attention and a lot of attention to West Haven residents to help them with self-sufficiency and mobility.

And so we've hired two success coaches

a admin, a case manager, and a program manager with at least three of those individuals being residents of West Haven.

And so we have done a much better job within the last three or four years on applying and receiving grants for resident services as well as additional funding for construction projects.

And so one of the grants that

You can't see them here.

So on the last slide was a grant from Virginia Housing for public housing agencies.

They matched our capital fund for one year and we put all those funds into South First Street because South First Street is about two years behind the original construction date.

It saw some drastic construction increases that doubled the cost and so we spent probably about a year and some change

trying to find different contractors making some value engineering decisions.

And what we ended up doing was splitting the project into three different contractors.

So we're managing three different contracts to get the price where we needed it to even close.

And that's after you all doubled your commitment to the South First Street community.

And so thank you for that.

BamaWorks is a grant that CACF has played a large role in the housing authority, both residence service and operational.

And so we're really appreciative of that.

They made an investment on our language access.

And so this year they supported the interpretation services as well as tools, physical tools and technology to make sure that we're able to engage with our folks.

Next slide.

Next slide.

All right, closing the tech divide.

So we've, as I mentioned earlier, our staff has grown.

We now have a tech IT person.

When it got to that, we did not have a IT person.

Everyone was trying to figure out how to get on the computer and do everything yourself.

We have like RICO, we had a RICO contract and so it was a

a third-party contract that was not as helpful.

So we added an IT specialist and now we've been rolling out different initiatives.

So we've completed a computer lab at South First Street, which now has nine computers.

We've done a computer lab at West Haven, which has five computers.

We've done a computer lab at

Work with the Jobs Plus participants to get computers as well.

They can now come and lease or borrow or rent.

And so we're looking to recycle more of our devices and make them available for folks in the community.

We created step-by-step guides for performing basic computer tasks, ranging from emailing to creation to document creation.

Establish or working on partnerships and relationships with AARP.

T-Mobile, Team Computers for Kids, Open Source Recycling, Girls Who Code to provide resources, training, and equipment for our residents.

Leading a personal effort to collect donated laptops to re-image with open source software to provide program participants.

And this is something that we really ran into a lot during COVID.

We're trying to still work with residents.

residents making the final decision and leading the efforts and redevelopment, but not being able to meet in person.

And so we learned that this is a huge need across all of our sites, and we've been working to tackle that as funding allows.

Next slide.

We can skip this one as well.

I will say we're working on a partnership with T-Mobile to expand internet access at Mickey Madison and Riverside because those are the sites that will not see a complete teardown.

All right, language access.

Next slide.

This is a new initiative as of last year.

CRH currently has 49 families in this public housing program where English is not spoken in the home.

We believe this number will continue to increase based upon the number of families on our wait list.

We do not know the magnitude of this problem in the HPD program.

It's not something that's tracked on a federal application.

And so we're working to identify that information and we're tracking it now.

So in 2024, CRJ developed a language access plan, hired a language access coordinator and a part-time translator.

CRJ is working to translate all documents to ensure community members have access to information that we draft.

And our translators now have the ability to communicate with 60% of our non-English speaking families.

Next slide.

And so this slide breaks down the number of families based upon the language.

So we have nine Arabic families, 12 Pashto families, eight Dari families, two Farsi, three Burmese, one Lingala, two Somali, two Swahili, three Karini, and one French.

That number, these numbers will change.

We're gathering this data more and more now and so we're getting new information and learning of new languages as well.

Next slide.

Next slide.

And so, like I said, we started this in 2024 and we did just 36 documents in 2024 and only did interpretations in six meetings.

Next slide.

But thus far, just in 2005, we've translated 205 documents in all of our languages.

In all of our redevelopment meetings, their interpretations forgot to fill out that column.

And so that information isn't on there, but I'll get that information added and send it back out.

Before you go on, the window is three slides back.

I would like to get that because there's a few languages and I'm not sure if I... Can you go back one more slide?

They're not well known.

Yeah, so a couple of these are, I think like 1% languages where it's only, it's less than 1% of the population that speak that language.

Karini is one, where Karini is not a written language.

It's only a spoken language, and so that written language is Burmese.

and so we translate our documents and Burmese for those families.

It's a lot I need to learn still from this list.

But we are working to do more and do better because every family deserves to know what they're signing and how to be successful in your community.

And so we are taking a big swing at making sure that we do that.

And this is not something that the federal government supports with money.

These are things that we have identified, things that we should do and need to do.

Alright, can you advance a few slides?

One more.

Alright, so this is the good part.

This is where I ask you guys for money.

Surprise.

So the report that you got identified some challenges that we have and identified things that we've done to alleviate those challenges and move past them.

And so this is the next step in continuing that.

And also we've had the conversation for the last few years on how do we support the housing authority?

What does that relationship look like?

And so I can tell you what our needs are.

And so we have identified, all of us in this room, identified public housing as something that needs to be around and our residents need that benefit in the community.

In order to keep it around, we need to fund it.

We have to take care of it.

Public housing got to its current position because lack of funding and the ability to take care of the housing.

It's not like you have housing authorities that just don't want to do it, but they're lacking the money and resources to actually do it.

And so we've identified that, hey, capital fund funding is actually needed.

And so we're requesting $1,000 per public housing unit per year, just on hard cost construction.

So those are capital dollars that we can use for our CFP budget.

And so you all have contributed to that.

You did $187,000 for the HVAC installation.

And that allowed us to move that project forward a year.

We've had to wait a whole year over $187,000 if it wasn't for you guys stepping up and doing that.

The other item is a CFP project manager.

We've identified the next five years as being really important to complete a lot of projects in Mickey Madison and Riverside.

And so we need a dedicated person that's moving those projects forward.

And we're not talking about a door project, but we're talking about a complete bathroom gut, a complete kitchen gut, gutting the inside of the units, moving families for a couple weeks to actually do that work.

And the last item is the resident services.

So this is not something that the federal government funds, but they want you to do it.

They want you to have residents involved.

They want you to provide services and move families up.

but they want you to find the money to do it.

The city has been a big partner the last few years of helping us with that.

And so what I'm requesting is $500 per public housing unit for resident services.

And it's along with the funds that you already provide now.

It's almost like a dollar, like maybe a few dollars off, which you all currently provide us for resident services.

but this would be a way to have any writing so we don't have to come every year and try to fight and scrap for these dollars because they're needed.

So John, I'm sorry, sir.

So that grant is only for West Haven.

The individuals that cannot work outside of West Haven is a Jobs Plus grant that's specific to West Haven only.

And so this is more for Mickey, Madison, Riverside, where they are ending with a negative balance this year.

Just because our average public housing rent is like $240 a month and our average

federal assistance for those same units.

I think it's another 300.

On average, we get about 500-some dollars per month per unit to provide everything, including taking care of all the utilities.

And it just is not enough.

I think it covers one maintenance employee, one property manager, and absolutely nothing else.

Well I gather those three are cumulative.

You're already doing some of it now.

Really, the project manager could easily be caught in the recommendation that's in the joint report to provide the $260,000 in redevelopment soft cost funds.

And so if that money's provided, you could scrap that piece because then after those funds run out, we'll be pulling a developer fee that will cover the redevelopment staff salary.

So how many public housing units

The only one that I would say what I would request to be consistent are the $1,000 in capital fund.

Those are offering hard costs to take care of the actual units, which we need to maintain, and then the resident services funding.

Like I said, the CFP project manager, it's caught in the, if you reallocate those funds, those expired funds, frozen funds, then we would have enough to cover that position.

I would say this is special here in Charlottesville.

Other housing authorities have done other things to bring in money.

Some have, like someone recently, not saying this is a good thing, but they started acquiring properties with the benefit of the properties then becoming tax exempt.

and then those landowners just paid the housing authority a lease fee on getting their property back.

That's some things other housing authorities have done.

Other housing authorities have done taxes and bond sales, which we recently did one a couple years ago.

They've done more private market and

Markerade Housing, which we have not.

And so other housing authorities have done other things, and some have just got out of public housing altogether.

That's what a majority of them are doing, but that's not what our city council asks us to do.

And then obviously as the

Redevelopment projects are finished.

There's going to be a significant addition of units built with loan-income housing tax credits that will provide a larger steady stream of income outside of the public housing program.

Are these numbers factoring in the

So this is taking those things into account.

They are self-sufficient.

They're sustainable.

They produce great incomes.

They can afford a resident service coordinator.

They can afford, oftentimes, security.

But our public housing communities will never be able to afford those type of amenities and services.

And so this is taking into account that, hey, we're going to have

At least one portfolio that will not change, it will not be redeveloped to add additional units to bring in additional funding.

And so this is what's needed in order to maintain those units.

We're adding HVAC, which has a maintenance cost every year.

But I don't think anyone in this room can say, hey, we don't want to do HVAC because it's going to have a HVAC maintenance cost.

We would say, let's figure out what the cost is and let's spread it and budget it so we know what it is and we're ready for it.

And I guess kind of to distill it down I mean in the past several years historically for these kind of funding needs you've gone through competitive applications to the city and you've ended up

historically getting funding, if my memory is correct, around like $350,000.

Sometimes it wasn't initially awarded and ended up being awarded by the end of the budget cycle.

So in essence, this request would be to take moving CRHA out of those competitive applications and

Yes, and I would say we probably are averaging between that $350,000 to $500,000 already because like last year we received some HVAC money, roof replacement money, and resident service money.

I think it was around half a million dollars.

Like you said here, it's saying, hey, these funds are earmarked and dedicated to these efforts.

And like the public housing, it's going to be a conversation.

If we don't have a conversation now, it's going to be a conversation that we have in 10 to 15 years.

Yes, they have a reserve account that we pay into every month.

They have a big reserve that they build up.

We were able to expand the amount of service they're getting.

So both of the tax credit properties now have security.

that alone is something that we had to get rid of at all our public housing sites because we couldn't afford it.

Those properties, moving to that program, the LAZAC program with project-based voucher units instead of just public housing units, we're receiving five to eight times the amount of public housing where we were receiving now in the voucher program.

So like let's say

On average, our public housing rents are $240.

We get another $300 in federal money a month.

And so let's say it's $500.

Let's say it's a one-bedroom.

Well, a one-bedroom voucher is $1,800.

So you're talking $500 compared to $1,800.

Well, let's look at a five-bedroom voucher stand that's like $2,800.

500, 2,800.

Like that 500 doesn't change no matter what bedroom size.

The voucher rent changes based on bedroom size and so we're receiving a lot more income on those units and so they can afford to maintain themselves.

So since we're talking about replacing things like appliances and

and all of that.

I'm thinking back to conversations we had earlier this year about the decarbonization project and study and move to do that.

And one of the pushbacks we heard was the relative, well the cost of having to retrofit a house or like to turn off the gas and get new appliances

for electrical use instead of gas.

So crescent oil has almost been a complete switch.

The only thing that's on gas, not in crescent oil, is our grill.

And I think the boiler is on gas as well.

South First Street has completely swapped over to electric.

So in those scattered projects?

Yeah, and so I was on the meeting in Washington and I was thinking, man, I wish we could get some funds for that effort because we're going to do that.

We're going to be switching over.

So we've already did the electrical upgrade.

As we replace HVAC, I mean, high water tanks, we're going from gas to electric, high water tanks.

HUD has not funded it as an initiative yet, but we have undertaken that work because our gas cost is substantial.

So yeah, for the scattered sites projected for this year just in utilities is just shot off $260,000.

The funding provided for HUD for the year is $261,000.

So there's not much of a gap and so we're looking at ways to bring net costs down.

and also look at ways to add solar.

So we are talking to an individual about doing solar on those roofs because we replaced the roofs a few years ago on all those sites.

Solar is already built into South First Street, Crescent Halls, South First Street Phase One, Phase Two, Crescent Halls, and Sixth Street.

Mr. Sayles, I'm not sure where else you're going with all of this, but let me, since we've been talking about money from the city and your shortfalls in other respects, one of the things that we've talked about a number of times over the last six years that I've been on council

is the question of whether there's any way for CRHA to use as part of the redevelopment effort.

For example, at the West Haven site, which is probably the one place that may have some commercial potential given its location.

So those are some of the things we're looking at doing.

The only problem is when you do a specific on the site, those funds are specific to that site.

So we can't intermingle funds from Crescent Halls or South First Street to the other properties.

If we could, we would not have this problem because we could let an overreach at Crescent Halls or South First Street make up for a deficit at Amp 4 or West Haven.

We can't currently do that.

We won't be able to do that when we redevelop the sites either because all those funds stay with that project because they have actual owners and partners that own those developments.

Once CRHA owns it outright, we will have that ability but we currently don't have that ability.

Those funds belong to that development.

We are looking at opportunities like the downtown building, which I won't touch on too much because we're currently in the works with some things there.

And like the Dogwood portfolio will be opportunities where we could bring in additional money to offset, but it could not be like a tax credit deal.

and that was also part of the conversation when we acquired the Dogwood was like how do we move the housing authority continuously to sustainability and that does that.

Like we're able to make those investments in staff so we've almost doubled in staff in five years.

The city was a big part of that and the biggest part of that was allowing us to buy the Dogwood site because that brought in over $150,000 a year just in the central office.

So you're talking about at least two staff positions.

Yes, and that's just for the management fee that we're getting.

That's not even talking about the actual revenue that's produced for the portfolio.

Well I don't know what the overall kind of financial plan is and whether this fits into the sustainability plan or any of the other documents that you maybe generated, but I would be interested to know

I think

As long as we are saying that we want public housing, we're going to always have to figure out how to make it work, whether it's the city supporting CRHA's efforts to diversify its income streams to always have enough to cover any shortfalls of public housing, or if it's the city saying, hey, this is our commitment every year to ensure public housing is here.

HUD will continue to reduce the funding in the public housing program.

That will not stop.

I think this year alone we saw over $100,000 reduction in operating money.

That had nothing to do with who's sitting in the White House.

That's just naturally what happened.

And so if that continues to be the case, public housing will need assistance.

That's why a lot of housing authorities are going away from public housing.

But that is not what the city has said they wanted.

It's what is in the housing plan that we're going to protect public housing.

So it's still around.

I think we can show you what we have for funding.

I'm not asking for that reason.

I'm just curious.

Yeah, and I think what we're seeing is going to cost you is $1,000 per public housing unit if you just want to look at the capital funds for maintaining those units.

And what we're looking at is

When we're installing these systems, looking at the useful life and then projecting what the cost is to actually replace it.

And so when we did our sustainability plan, we actually did a study for our useful life for all building systems.

And so we know that that's the number we're going to fall at.

The only question we don't know is what will be the federal number every year.

That capital fund number from the federal government will continue to drop as we take off public housing units and we bring back new public housing units with a new construction date.

that will drive down the capital fund dollars from the federal government because their factors to determine how much you receive is number of units, the construction date of those units, and what's needed in those units to determine how much you should receive.

And so our number will continue to drop.

Once West Haven is removed, that number is going to significantly drop because that's our oldest site with the most units.

And so overall, it's going to have the highest cost to maintain.

When we get down to where it's just Mickey Madison and Riverside, I can't project how much it's going to receive, but it will be significantly lower than what we're currently receiving.

Because your units at South First Street are two years old, and so their capital allocation is going to be really low.

Preston Halls, we were lucky enough to keep the same construction date because the building didn't change.

So on paper it says those units are 40 something years old even though they're freshly renovated.

But all the other sites will have brand new units with new construction dates.

And so the capital money for those units will be really, really low.

And it will punish Mickey Madison and Riverside.

because those sites got a complete renovation while Mickey Madison Riverside was waiting to get pennies described together to actually get a full site renovation.

You said that other localities are moving away from public housing.

They're going to the voucher program or to market rate housing, a mixture of both.

I know other authorities do more of that, you know, some bigger cities.

Yeah, so we are looking at ways to do that on some of our sites.

So we have, like at Sixth Street, we have two economic opportunities.

We have a clinic that UVA is going to be renting.

at market rate.

And then we also have a food space that will probably not generate a lot of income because it should be seen as an amenity or benefit to residents to get fresh produce.

And so the rent on that space will be really low.

But we are looking at adding commercial opportunities to other sites.

So like West Haven has some commercial space at its location on 10th Street as well.

I guess one of the balancing acts would be if there's an economic development opportunity that generates income for the whole of CRHA

versus the residents' desires perhaps not to have that and to have more housing or more other amenities that may cost rather than generate income.

Yeah, so we haven't run across that issue yet.

Hopefully we don't because we work well together.

And so we have these open conversations

Plus, I think when we look at a lot of these communities, so like West Haven, yes, it's by far the largest site, has the most opportunities, but where do you put a commercial space there?

One that requires deliveries.

So how do you get a delivery truck on Page Street?

And so we've had those conversations because yes we're down at grocery store and that's like one of the number one items our residents have asked for is grocery store but how do we make that work on our site and so those are conversations that we're having but we have to be practical because we can build something but if it does not work it will not be true it'll be empty and there are

housing developers that have done that same exact thing.

I guess just on the capital side, it's $250,000 a year with project manager resident services that takes it to $500,000 at least going back to 2018-2019.

That's roughly in line with what the city has been providing.

But this request would be to take this out of the competitive process, guarantee it as a contractual agency basically.

So I guess one of the questions is if it was to transition out of the competitive process to something that's contractual or fundamental agency, however you, I forget what the exact wording would be.

You laid out the request, I guess from a city staff perspective, what would be some of the terms or expectations you would look for if we were to move in that direction.

I would say that there's a few things that we would need to do.

Ultimately, it would be council's decision and discretion to designate CRHA a fundamental agency at a higher amount.

You've already made the decision to designate them a fundamental agency.

So the question would be, are you committed to going that high?

That would be the first thing because that is then working it into the budget as a guaranteed amount, not a competitive amount.

There's still questions that I would have to balance in working with the team to put the budget together each year.

When we put the budget together, we make the determination on what the

Allocation is that it's available for outside agencies and nonprofit organizations, outside agencies.

That's roughly $2.3 million is what we've done for the past couple of years.

and that would be what's available for VCF.

Or do you do something different?

The problem with doing it out of VCF specifically is that that is not what we are using VCF for today because we've shifted all housing programs to CAF and HOPS.

So there's some reconciling of what we've been doing up to this point to how to then accommodate this request.

Unless you just simply make it an increase to what you are outlying at this moment.

I think the other part of what I would have to wrangle with the team, of course, is how do we make all the things fit into the budget, which you know what that process is for me as the biggest and most complicated part of my job.

We're going to have to go through the bigger conversation, which is what your retreat is shaping up to be, focused on the big ticket items, which are much, much larger items.

And it simply would be a matter of where do you go with what decisions you have available to make.

If it is a matter of do we have enough revenue to cover it, that's one thing.

If it's we don't have enough revenue to cover all the things, what do you do about that?

When it comes to the actual agreement itself, we have shifted in a big way to further invest in higher compliance across our relationships with all organizations in a governmental as well as fundamental agencies and our competitive agencies.

What we would be looking for is what CRH is already now accustomed to in what we just, I think you're working with Taylor right now to finalize your agreement.

We work into that agreement what the conditions are from a performance standard for that year.

This would be no different in that regard.

It's just a higher amount of money.

Because I guess, I mean, at least for the past several years, it seems like how it's worked is the CRJ has received some amount of funding for these kind of needs.

Right.

And then the budget's just amended to get there anyway.

And that's happened for many years in a row at this point.

and I guess the question is, is that an indication that the City Council's intent is to always fund it at that level and that's why we end up amending it anyway and just kind of standardizing it.

I don't know, that's some viewing, I mean I guess on the question of like the performance agreements and expectations like some of what James was mentioning and the staff report are about

improving compliance with timelines, timeliness of communications.

What might it look like to operationalize that in terms of specific changes in terms of the structure of how CRHA is talking with the city?

I think that's the work.

There's more work to be done in that space.

We're all open to the idea that

We want to be able to issue an agreement that says in exchange for these funds on this schedule, these things will get done over the course of the year.

I think you all have made it clear that that's what you would like to see.

Those of us, myself, Ashley, and others who have worked in the nonprofit sector and in this public space of using public dollars are accustomed to that.

So we're just trying to make sure that we're setting that standard across all relationships that we have.

We haven't always done that here.

We have had intergovernmental relationships and fundamental relationships where we get a request and we've just baked it into the budget.

I have said, I don't think we're going to be doing that.

So we've got to ask more questions, make sure that we're getting the things that you have identified that you want to be able to get done.

When it comes to measuring needle movement, that's the way you do it when you're funding different works.

I think what we would just simply do as it relates to you determining through your action of designating a fundamental at a higher level, we would accommodate that request if that was your choice.

As one component of the relationship, I know, I can't even remember if staff, which if any staff were around when this

was a process but there was like the PMT process which was grant funded and ended up ending a few years ago but it was regular meetings with CRHA staff, FAR, city staff.

Was that a structure that would be worth

I think, so one of the things that we... Ashley said no, no, I'm just kidding.

So we were meeting, and we were still having meetings.

This report didn't come from CRHA and the city going in separate quarters saying, hey, I won't talk to you until it's time for money again.

There are meetings that happen every month,

it's just that information and getting back to the appropriate parties and then so it's finding the right chain of communication, chain of command, lines of communication, clear lines of communication and the individuals that are responsible for that and making sure that hey that's actually happening because we've been engaged for like years now

So it's not like that hasn't been happening.

We're having those meetings.

In fact, I think we met more than the PMT team met each month.

And we were still having that issue.

So it's making sure that the right information is coming back to the appropriate parties.

The city is huge.

There's multiple different departments that are intertwined in all the work we're doing.

And so we had to make sure that one person is coming back and spreading it to all the parties that have an investment, an interest in the work that we're doing to make sure that we're all on the same page.

Yeah, and I'll just add, there's been a reset.

The request that I made to James was that I needed him to plug in.

I even talked to John about I need you to be available in some of those conversations just because I can't be everywhere that I might even want to be.

I think that has led to what is a substantive report here that's identifying not only things that still need to be worked on but things that John's already worked on and his team has as well.

I think we're past that particular moment.

I would say that felt even forced if I had to be honest.

I don't feel as though we're at a place where it's strained and that is needed.

I think we just have work to do and we're recognizing that

So this is one of the surprises Sam doesn't like.

I mean, he knows that I know him well enough to expect that he was going to make an ask, so yes.

You mentioned CRHA staff has substantially expanded and there's been a lot of improvements.

I know you've acknowledged we hear from the community there are issues that pop up in terms of

people who are on the wait list or trying to access CRHA and you know aren't able to get on the phone or people who reach out to city council with maintenance issues and people who reach out to CRHA board with maintenance issues where do you feel right now CRHA is at in terms of your staff level

Yeah, I think we are right there, and Robert Harvey's on here as maintenance facilities gentleman.

So he would probably say we could grow.

But I think, honestly, we're right there where we need to be when it comes to size.

We're now putting things in place that improve efficiency and service itself.

So like we now have eye plats that are deployed to the maintenance technician so when they go to a home they have the work order they can take a before photo or after photo collect a signature from the tenant saying hey I signed off on it now we have a work order clerk that's calling back those residents saying hey how was your experience with that technician

was your issue address, and then we also have a maintenance supervisor that's randomly going out and looking at these four quarters to make sure they were actually addressed appropriately.

But these are all processes that have to be built.

We're working through these processes and then improving them because they're not always going to be perfect and we're not always going to get it right the first time.

And so we are building these processes.

We've built a team.

We have a very stable team.

Our maintenance department is almost half of the agency.

It's 30 employees in the maintenance department.

That's almost the number of employees we had all together in 2020.

We had 33.

We have 30 employees just in maintenance.

We're asking maintenance to do a lot more.

They treat every unit every month.

They are turning units.

They're doing special projects, work orders.

They're doing our grounds.

So we're asking them to do a lot.

But it's almost half of our entire agency.

And so I think we are at the right size now and it's actually putting the processes in place and making sure they're working to provide a better service to residents.

We've improved opportunities for residents to engage with us.

We have TexGov now.

And so residents can text communication with us.

We can also send out reminders, send out notices.

We can send out emergency notices.

Residents can send information on us and request information on us.

They can put in maintenance tickets.

We're also working on expanding Rent Cafe, which is through yarding.

That's where a tenant can do a rent recertification.

They can pay their rent, do a work order, get documents, transfer documents to us to do our recertification on annuals.

And so we are looking at how technology can improve.

our service and efficiency and so we're rolling those out.

I know we've already had a long meeting and we there's still big issues that I don't think we'll get into tonight like resident safety and

from the board as well.

So I'll just end myself by saying I do think, however it looks like, I do think it's important for the city to figure out how to provide a predictable permanent stream of funding for public housing and resident services because that is a commitment.

Our community is made, city council is made.

I think it's the desire of the residents in CRJ properties themselves.

This is part of the process of self-determination that it was outlined as an important goal and you know seeing what's happening in the federal government and comparing us to other localities like Richmond and seeing what's unfolding with their public housing over a series of years.

I think we're seeing that we've made good choices in the past and we've already made significant investments

and a lot of that funding we've already ended up doing just through amendments in our budget cycles but I do think it's an important commitment to try to figure out how to make more predictable for CRHA because that need is going to be there and maybe we start out in that commitment and CRHA is able to identify different sites they can purchase for

you know mixed income developments or you know business development that can ease that burden but certainly for right now we know that that need is going to continue to exist.

So it's getting closer to eight.

I think Councillor Payne's done a good job of voicing some of the things that we discuss.

I'll just echo, the need's not going away.

Anything.

The need for affordable housing is only getting worse, at least in the near term.

So I think anything that can improve the predictability is only going to make it easier for us to manage.

We are aware that we need to figure out and help Mr. Sales find ways to make it sustainable and to create income streams.

There's a finite amount of space in our little town and this is something that we really need to make sure that we care for and earmarking the fence I think make one less thing to be worried about.

The team has done a really great job of finding grants and finding ways to find money, at least during my tenure on the board.

And I think they'll continue to do so.

I don't think this is going to be like, oh, OK, now we're in the clear.

Any other, anyone else?

No, well said by Bridget and Michael, kind of hitting all the points.

Thanks.

Yeah, well said.

Good.

Any other comments by council?

John, thank you so much.

I know this is a lot of information and, you know, we're formalizing a lot of the

Relationships and things that were done in the past and thank you Sam for your work on that.

It will make it a lot easier.

Any other questions?

May I get a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

All in favor?

Second.

All in favor please say yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Do we have to motion?