CRHA Meeting   1/27/2020

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Who is Caroline?

No, I'm not.

Close it up.

I'm touched to believe you have saved the breast certificate that says Caroline.

Could we have a roll call of commissioners, please?

Chair Ricker?

Here.

Vice Chair Oliver?

Here.

Treasurer Talbert?

Here.

Mayor Walker?

Commissioner Osteen?

Here.

Commissioner Slaughter?

Here.

We have quorum.

Thank you.

The maintenance committee meeting just met last week

And we haven't set a new date.

and then our next meeting here will be February 24th.

But the redevelopment committee meeting is not on Thursday this week, it's on Tuesday.

Okay, so we'll open up for public comments.

I'm sure there's some HUD things in the way of dealing with that, but I want you to think about that.

Thank you.

Ms. Wilcox.

There'll be an update later tonight as well.

Meetings?

Okay.

Alright, so we can move on to the next resolution is to thank Wes Bellamy for his service and he texted that he's running a little bit late so we'll move on to approval of the minutes and when he arrives we can go back to the resolution.

We may also bump up having Cornelius talk because he's able to come sooner.

I'll second.

The Board of Commissioners of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority do hereby recognize and formally commend Dr. Wes Bellamy for his admirable efforts exercised on behalf of the residents of the CRHA, thus benefiting not only those directly served, but the greater Charlottesville community as a whole.

I appreciate it.

to check in with us.

Remember Miss Audrey?

Everybody to argue with.

Miss all of y'all, yeah.

I appreciate that.

Don't want to forget about the cable leader and team.

You're making me choke up, but I'm not going to do it.

Saying I'm alive.

That's strange.

You're welcome.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

So thank you.

Thanks for that.

Okay, so now we have the review of the understanding with VEEP and is that something Claudette was going to say?

We have a gentleman here who's going to present to the board.

Let us get to this page.

then help reduce hopefully the backlog on your rental voucher, the list of the rental vouchers and increase the acceptance among more landlords here.

Okay, sorry, is this a little bit better?

people on your voucher list who are not being accepted and sorry basically increase the amount of landlords that are accepting the vouchers don't know if you have questions you want me to go into more detail about this sorry I was

Is VEEP an acronym?

We are a local nonprofit based here in Charlottesville that does more weatherization and energy efficiency work.

to the beginning of it, right?

We tried to be maybe a little cheeky with it, but a little more interesting too.

Is there some sort of a mechanism either in this MOU or in your processes so that as technology changes, as things become increasingly energy efficient, that there's a way for people who are living in units either to report that the landlord is allowing this property to fall out of compliance or to bring in improvements to units where landlords are open to it.

That would fall on LEAP's part of the agreement which is a much longer contract that also NDS has revised and will make us implement.

How are you doing that if it's a private landlord?

We do about at least 100 houses a year.

What happens then?

I'm looking for some money to help repair it, and in exchange I'm also then willing to commit to taking a voucher for five years and participating in the CRHA program.

And whose responsibility is it to reach out to the private end or to let them know or make them aware of who you are and what offices you all are offering?

And so we've already received some, sorry, chair.

Oh no, I was going to say I believe Miss Green had a last minute, she couldn't, she's not going to be able to be with us this evening and I think she was going to help explain some of this because you two have been working together.

And this was a way to look at trying to, again, improve renters' utility bills while also trying to help get increased supply of rental units taking vouchers from SISRAP or HCV.

the landlord doesn't agree with VEEP but VEEP does have grounds to say that something is defaulted or something needs to be replaced and it's not going to be beneficial to the renter then what happens to the renter when the landlord opts out with VEEP and CRHA now knows that there's an existing problem that the landlord is not willing to fix and the resident is already in the unit.

You'd be tearing out your insulation, maybe, or let's say taking out that new HVAC, new heat furnace or heat pump or air conditioner.

They don't maintain.

We do have at least one year where we can take from the court and have a basically lean on the property.

that that could potentially happen if equipment is taken or moved from the home?

Sorry.

that sign on to participate to participate for a minimum of five years?

Yes.

And you are going to hopefully the goal is at least 10 landlords.

Yes.

And the dollar amount per is that based on supposed to be an average of five thousand dollars.

Some might be a little more in the value of the improvements they receive.

And there's only been one in 100 that you've had some?

And this is all using Dominion utility money, not city money.

I just meant to say, and you were saying only maybe one in 100 has had legal, any problem with following up.

The contract is with the utility company or the city and we make sure we make the improvements and then again it's the household either the renter or the owner that's enjoying the improvement.

could you give us a little more definition on the loan will be forgiven for after the term of commitment to accept rental vouchers in

We're not holding them accountable for the past five years.

It doesn't matter how many residents move in and out of the residence with the voucher.

And again, it's just you're accepting the vouchers for five years.

And it says if a tenant moves out that the property owner is responsible for notifying the program administrator while seeking another tenant with a rental voucher.

We will also be checking in every year as part of our due diligence and reporting to the city with CRHA about again if they're accepting the vouchers or not.

Have you done assessments of any of our other units?

That's why West Haven is Tdub.

They're relatively similar units, so it could be a pretty quick assessment would get a scope of the issue, I think.

I'm a little new to this position, so I don't know all the history of what we've done.

Yeah, well that would be a good first step.

So once we get done with West Haven, I'm sure we can have another conversation about what other multi-family we can do.

Did we need to make any decision or we're just

We just wanted to see if the board wanted to move for us to go ahead.

I'm not prepared to make a decision.

Am I understanding this is a review?

Yes.

So I guess if there was more concerns, Claudette might be able to answer some more questions.

Yeah, unfortunately Claudette had a medical emergency and she's doing okay now, but she's wanted to send her regrets.

Okay, so we can follow up with Claudette and let her know.

Thank you very much.

in the preparation for construction.

Good evening.

Welcome.

How's everybody doing?

Great.

So any specific questions for me?

What kind of options is a resident going to have?

We went with a dark oak, a pine, a kind of like a more modern grayish color.

And are they going to be able to pick that per unit or they have to vote on?

you know cabinets with floors with wall paint and then we're going to with whichever one comes out of that meeting is the one we're going to mock the unit up to and then at that point the residents can walk through view a mock-up see what it looks like and say hey we like this selection we made or no we don't like this selection and we'd rather go with that one and then we will sure we will follow up with a with a different mock-up to represent that pick so

I'm very surprised that you don't have 50% drawings yet with April's start.

You should come sit in some of these meetings that we're in.

Should I be pressuring you, the architect, the developer?

I'll tell you that it doesn't always win me fanfare in the beginning because you know folks always want to see the low number right and sometimes it's the low number but what is it based on and then once the documents come out we finally get a gut check so I try to make sure that we're being honest up front with what we anticipate that cost will be so that when we pass it over to the developer we're not seeing these big fluctuations in pricing because that doesn't do anybody any good you have to be able to budget around a certain number so

So we've heard a lot about Crescent Hall.

Crescent Hall, though, like most buildings of that age, it has a lot of bodies buried in it, you know, no pun intended.

So my question is, so you talk about the 40 to 50 year budget issues, obviously it's of great importance, but you're talking about starting to build in April, so how much of a slowed or stopped process might that cause in the future for building?

So we would be at a kind of at a halt.

As you all are moving forward, who's tracking for that?

So the developer has an entire team of individuals that are working and moving documents from one place to the next to make sure that we are moving at a timeline that gets us to April.

could probably answer some of that in the next meeting because he's in terms of on our side he's coordinating that.

And the new issues how are you determining the cost?

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you.

And should we, so with Miss Green missing, this next piece.

and this memorandum would be with Albemarle, Fluvanna, Nelson, the Region 10 Community Service Board and Skyline Community Action Partnership.

So does that mean meaning that vouchers could move seamlessly between... Each agency would be involved with their own expenses.

As I said before, I just wanted to get this in front of the board, give them a chance to review it.

Is anyone here?

I'm gonna follow up and see, we might, okay.

They might show up at, well I don't know, we've been switching the CRHA meeting and the CCDC meeting, which goes first, so.

Is it the resident or the house?

So it would still be with the housing authority, but they can look in a greater area.

I would just be able to go and get my voucher.

Okay.

Sure.

Is there still fine tuning this?

and I would ask Miss Green again.

No.

Thank you.

I don't know what I'll do without you.

The cameras came up too about them put that the cameras is at the entrance of 8th and Hardy and Page and Hardy, but nobody was aware of it.

They took them down.

The next meeting will be, I don't see it on here, but it's the fourth, it's the second Thursday of every month.

February 13th at West Haven.

Nothing is really happening.

I was trying to remember, we met with the Chief of Police when she was pretty new.

Right, it was when she first came on.

I don't think that we've done that since.

then I think that is a serious problem.

Well, I can follow up and report back.

Yeah, and if she's open to meeting with us.

Yeah, and I can send an email and try to set up a. Yeah, and Lieutenant Nick said he will be the representative coming to the Resident Services meeting.

I feel like we need a clear understanding of what's going on with the police department and public housing.

So to attempt to not have, I guess, the officers always present, but if something occurred, they would be able to see if individuals were leaving the property.

But that's happening on all our properties.

We're hearing some people say no cameras.

But, um, it's the housing authority call.

Yes, it is.

I don't know how many people are going to get mad with me, but there it is.

So.

So you all will be aware of what we're talking about and what the topics will be for the next 11 months, well, 10 months.

make some decisions.

But we're not getting anything from the city police and I don't understand what's going on with that.

So I would like to see maintenance go out and survey and see how many of those lines that need to be replaced so that they can even park in adequate spaces because it's to the point where people just pulling up because this is not a clear indication where you're supposed to be.

That's a good point.

Should we move on to the maintenance committee or do you want to, any more about safety at this moment?

and it would be good to just start to get those votes out even if it's several months in advance so people know it's coming and they can plan to be there so that we can like get that in the minutes and people can see those dates.

Are we sending reminders?

She's made several inroads, but we wanted to have a more formal arrangement, so we really do want to start getting reporting back in place.

So I'm talking about in reference to meeting dates and times like our meeting for tonight for them to obviously our police department gets busy so are we sending correspondence to them to let them know that hey Charlottesville Redevelopment is meeting on this day and time you know we'd like to have y'all present to give a report

It's part of the city, on the city site, but I can definitely follow up on that.

Like I said before, it's obvious that the police department can get caught up in a lot of things and get really busy, but to shoot them a reminder and say, we're going to meet, we'd like to have you guys present for a report, just so that the ball doesn't get dropped.

And I think that should come out of the meeting with the entire board.

Well they had a representative coming.

I think the resident service committee?

No, I think they came here, they were coming here.

All of that dropped and the one at resident services is just coming back.

Okay, so that's just starting.

That's just starting back, but they were there before.

get things started back up again and what that looks like.

Would you like to talk about the maintenance meeting?

Actually, I'm Osteen.

Okay, great.

Somebody have something planned for that other than just saying there he is?

No, come up and say hi.

And the winner is...

The winner is Brana Popovic, called Smiley.

That won over a couple of votes right there.

It's a privilege for me to be in front of you and I hope that we will in the future be very close and have a very good relationship.

Ideally, we'd like to have four new staff, so eight people in the department.

Everything else is of less importance and if they are willing to learn, everything will be okay.

Do you have anything else that you would like to put on the board today?

I'm looking forward to work with you.

Thank you very much.

Just as we're heading into the housing director's report, I'd really like for you to share the work you're doing and you're already right now with the work orders.

I'm not sure, that's why I have to talk to Kobe and he will give me a clear guidance and probably we will walk together through the sites, you know, probably a couple more weeks and we will be able to close it off.

I hate to put you on the spot one more time but I know we've also been working on getting lights fixed and I didn't know if you had any more updates about the lights at First Street.

I think it's already due on the end of January, fire marshal should come, but I will talk to him to give him, because I know him, to give us more time to get some of the things done that I know has to be done.

Okay um and Kathleen can you so we have the housing director's report without the housing director so um I don't know if we should just read through that and come back in more depth next month if there's anything to point out that's particularly

We'll probably send an interim report as well to the board.

And should we move ahead with the resolution that she prepared for us with the utilities allowances or is that something we should wait for her?

We could definitely move that to the next meeting, but in the meantime I'm more than happy to get answers to any questions anyone has on that.

Slaughter would prefer to wait and speak with Ms. Green.

And if you have any questions in the meantime, please let me know.

So maybe she can give us some more information on that.

They just sent it here right before you got here.

Okay, to the sides.

Thank you.

Miss Glenn-Matthews.

So that would be Mickey Madison, Riverside, and

Yeah, what's going on with them?

We need to have a greater conversation about the waiting list.

So Misha Drive and Versa for

It looks like now that we've almost up to enough vacancies at Crescent Hall that that might not still be coming into play.

But these are for relocation.

Two were being held for that, but it may be soon that we won't need them anymore.

What about the same thing on Riverside?

on the next week.

Or how is this breakdown being given?

I did not get a chance to talk to her before she had to unexpectedly go today.

It says at least 23, one of 23 is currently pending Lisa, so it's actually 22.

Yes.

So could you give us some clarity on that?

She had planned to bring it tonight and hand it out.

You know, it would be a good, after we hear from the chief of police in those discussions, you know, how much we add into our budget for security versus maybe, you know, rethinking the MOU or how they're operating on our sites because we are, we do continue to add security and it, and it does help, but it's, people still don't feel safe, so.

I think we need to find a more effective way.

Yeah.

Can we find out how often that list is supposed to be purged?

Okay.

I think pest control is another one that's usually been over budget every year.

Can we make a distinction what the drive up is?

I have one question I'd like for that discussion too is could you find out what certification is required for any of these people that are doing the work and how realistic it is that we could have staff trained up?

But I'll definitely get that information for you.

what units have to be re-exterminated or what areas are being re-exterminated, what the problem areas are, that's what I'm asking.

Yeah.

Can we get in there?

West Haven and... Command decision.

Okay.

So I'll check on the, make sure the location, make sure it's open.

Yeah.

through the CCDC, which is the community, what is it, Charlottesville Community Development CCDC, CCDC Corporation.

So our attorney is here for the closed session, but was it necessary, so we're gonna do that first?

Does that sound okay with you?

Yeah.

So five minute break and then back in here for the CCDC meeting.

I love you

You know, and I used to sit here and I used to go home and I used to be scratching my leg because I ain't so bad in life.

But then I started having problems because I'm so warm and I don't want to have my problems.

Yeah, you know what I think it is?

Yeah, I think it's what they clean the roads or something with.

Yeah, that's why I always have to have water.

The dollar is so strong.

The most expensive bottle of wine I saw in there was five million dollars.

I brought my mom back this handmade pottery thing and she was like this is so beautiful I can't believe you spent this much money and I didn't want to be like it was $4

So I was like, yes, you're with us.

We already did it.

We already did it.

All right.

Yes.

Starting all over.

and a portion of our meeting will last.

I move to adjourn the CRHA regular monthly board meeting until the close of the CCDC meeting at which point we can do our executive session.

Second.

All those in favor?

Roll call of commissioners, please.

Chair Redker?

Yes, here, present.

Vice Chair Oliver?

Here.

Treasurer Talbert?

Here.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Commissioner Osteen?

We have a quorum.

We'll move on to approval of the minutes from the previous meeting.

I would like to read these minutes more thoroughly than I can tonight, so I would like to postpone that until the next meeting.

Okay, Mr. Dave Norris is here with a redevelopment update.

a year or two longer than we thought.

And so thank you, Ms. Kelly, for arranging that meeting.

Before I invite our next two speakers forward, I'm happy to entertain any questions or comments you have about what we've covered already.

Who needs to be providing that to us?

I think that would be very positive.

Who's tracking those?

And so we have to, you know, that's very common and we just have to navigate them as we encounter them.

So are we tracking that?

Very excited to have Miss Johnson on our team and she's going to just give a few updates about what she's been doing with Section 3.

Question?

Can I?

Yes.

So this HOTMA, it sounds like.

I don't remember what it stands for.

Housing Opportunities Through Modernization Act of 2016.

Yeah, thank you.

So if that was to go away, I understand what it, right now it would protect people's, like if they go into section three and start making money, the rent can stay stable for one or two years.

I'm pretty sure you can't be in both.

So it's the problem that one or both of those might get dissolved.

You just got to figure out how you were funded and that kind of stuff.

So I have a question.

Yes, ma'am.

When I first came on the board, the EID and FSS programs, two separate entities in Charlottesville, Redevelopment and Housing Authority, am I to assume that now that we have a Section 3 coordinator there to be merged and those two departments will

But with the FSS program, I have to work with the staff to figure out how we revive that.

So that was my question.

I will never say to say you need to do earned income disregard or you need to do self-sufficiency, but we'll give them the best choice of what they need to choose.

Thank you.

As she said, she's been talking about Section 3 for years now, but forever.

But then when she started talking about what they would like to do, I told her that Dave and I would talk to her and I would let him decide how we move forward on it.

introduce herself talk a little bit about what she's doing she is somebody with has done a lot of good work not only in public housing she helped organize West Haven Community Day for the last couple years you may have seen her out there also has an MSW and a lot of work work experience in social work and we're pleased to have her on board.

So with three and almost four vacant units on the eighth floor, these 12 movers are gonna have, it seems like 13, we've got 13 vacancies.

One's a mock-up unit.

which everyone's very excited to see.

And we also just, we have a couple that are two bedroom units so we're trying to negotiate that too because we don't want to overhouse anyone but we might have to temporarily probably be talking about that some more.

Okay, thank you all.

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

I motion to adjourn the Community Development Initiative.

I second.

Okay, so now do we need to reopen?

We'll call the meeting back to order and then we need to close the session and discuss.

Okay.

So we'll call the CRHA meeting back to order.

Second.

I second.

Let's move into the conference room for a brief closed session.

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