CRHA Regular Virtual Meeting   8/24/2020

So this is the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Special Meeting, Monday, August 24th, 2020, 6 p.m. And this is a virtual meeting due to the COVID virus.

I will read the code that allows us to meet during this time.

Governor Northam issued executive order EO 53, restricting public gatherings of greater than 10 persons according to code

2.23708.2a3 permits public body to meet electronically to discuss business required or necessary to operation of the public body in discharge of its lawful purposes duties and responsibilities in times of emergencies

and to address COVID-19.

Therefore, this meeting is being held electronically pursuant to Virginia law because the COVID-19 pandemic makes it impractical and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location.

And welcome and hello.

I forgot to actually say hello.

Good to see you all.

So I guess we're ready for the roll call.

Are you, let me see.

Betsy, she was online, and that is a profile picture that she has up, and I was conversing with her earlier.

Looks like she's trying to join us by phone, so you guys might want to.

I know I have to say I was in many Zoom calls for my GPA today.

And there were some problems today.

And apparently it was across the Eastern United States.

Commissioner Slaughter.

Commissioner Green.

Here.

Thank you.

And we'll have a brief moment of silence just to

Get our heads in the meeting.

Okay, so before we get to public comment, are there any general announcements, CRHA staff, if anyone from PHAR wants to chat that they have something, commissioners, anything that we think residents listening should know about?

I'd like to mention, there might be others, but the safety committee has been meeting every other Tuesday.

So we just met this past Tuesday, August 18th.

We'll meet again on September 1st.

We have a stable Zoom link with the same password that you need to enter every single time.

That should be going out in CRHA newsletters and hopefully can get up on the website how you log in.

We've also attached to that information about how you join by phone and if you join by phone, how you mute and unmute yourself so that you're able to participate.

We meet at 6 p.m.

They go usually about an hour and a half.

But as many of the residents know, there are pressing safety concerns that we're trying to address.

And there's been some proposals to turn it into a working committee.

And for that to happen, we need a lot of resident engagement.

And so we've been brainstorming how to drive that engagement.

One of the things that we're gonna be doing at this upcoming safety committee meeting on the first, in addition to hearing residents concerns is talking about

Zoom protocols so that people feel like it's a space where they can share, where it's safe to share, and where they know that there's not going to be any retribution for the things that they share.

So please, we'd love to have as many participants as possible.

I can paste the information into the Zoom chat, although I know that not everyone has access to it.

But you can always email me if you want any information.

That's great.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I'll mention the other meetings upcoming so that everyone's aware in case they don't listen to our whole meeting.

The safety meeting, which the next one will be September 1st at 6 p.m.

Every Thursday at 2.30 we have a redevelopment committee meeting so if you're interested in any of the upcoming redevelopment it's every other week.

One week it focuses on the most pressing projects at Crescent Halls and South First Street and then the next week it's a sort of larger redevelopment discussion

about all of the properties, although it tends to focus on the most more recent projects.

I'll have to ask the commissioners about a board training, but I was hoping we could do a board training one of these Thursdays as a work session.

Our lawyer from Norfolk does them.

She does them for lots of housing authorities.

So this would be great for those of us who have been on the board and for the new members.

and then our next monthly meeting will be September 28th at 6 p.m.

I'm assuming it will still be a virtual meeting.

Okay so we'll start with public comments and I believe I'm looking at my screen there's panelists and attendees so

We'll look to see if anyone raises hands or...

Okay, thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

First, I want to make an announcement and I'm not sure other PHAR folks are here to make the announcement themselves.

Some, if not all of you should have gotten an email today about our awesome internship program commencement coming up on Thursday at five o'clock.

and we really hope you'll join us.

It's a new thing to do this online, but it's a really great way to get you there and see what's up.

There's an amazing speaker, Delegate Hudson, who had some interaction with the internship program.

So we're feeling really super cool about that.

And I just really hope CRHA will continue as they have in the past to

Honored these residents and the hard work they've done and to show up and celebrate their awesome work during a really strange time in history.

And just so everybody knows our intern graduates are Annette Brock,

Randall Crawford, Katrina Cooper, Cynthia Holliday, and Kathy Green.

And we are just super pleased that we can still go ahead with some kind of acknowledgement of the great work that they've done.

So please, that's Thursday at five o'clock.

We really would love you all there.

And if you didn't get my email, let me know.

I'll send it to you.

And we'll also have it posted on the PHAR website.

I'm not going to add a whole lot of additional public comments.

The work session you had the other day I think summarized where PHAR is at.

We're really excited with John.

I think the communication coming from John Sales right off the bat has been phenomenal.

And we're feeling very confident that we're going to continue to build a really great relationship with CRHA moving forward.

Similarly, we're feeling super confident about Lisa and Miss Henry.

And you're coming on to the Housing Authority Board.

and just really encourage the board to be a working board.

There's a lot of challenges ahead of you.

It's not just redevelopment and it's not just the state of buildings, issues with the community and the housing authority itself has a lot of work to do to be in solid footing.

And I think,

You got some fresh blood and you got some folks with some background on the past.

And I feel confident that y'all can do it as long as you're willing to do the work.

And so I really encourage you to get involved in every committee and every meeting and make it happen.

As you know, there are serious concerns about safety in our neighborhoods.

And I think that's a priority for our housing authority.

And I think, you know, it's been a while since I've given everybody a pep talk, but the work that's been going on with this housing authority over the last few years is historic.

It's probably the most impressive public housing redevelopment effort in the entire country, particularly when you look at what's going on with phase two,

but in terms of resident participation and decision-making, resident understanding, we get down on ourselves a lot because we set a really high bar and we should because we're dealing with historic inequities and we're dealing with Charlottesville's past and we're trying to make a new path and make some amends and I think

This is amazing work and doesn't mean we slow down, doesn't mean we can't do better, but this is historic, important work.

And I urge you all not to let this drop in a year or in another couple of years.

I feel like very strongly that people who are participating in this historic process need to see it through as part of the Charlottesville community.

So nobody gets out alive

and, you know, disappointed to see some folks dropped out, but don't let that be you.

Anybody else from the public would like to speak?

We just need you to raise your hand on the Zoom call here.

Madam Chair, I don't see any other hands.

Okay, thank you.

We'll have another opportunity for a public meeting.

I mean, public comments at the end of our meeting.

And thank you for the pep talk from far I think there's is I think the work is

Difficult in this virtual environment, just given that it's harder to meet with people and get consensus.

So have talk is needed.

Thank you.

Okay, so we have updates from commissioners and discussion about board work sessions.

I'm happy to report what we've been discussing.

So I think the most pressing issue was the shootings at South First Street.

And so we've talked a lot about things to do with the residents, about trauma in the wake of the event, helping residents to regain a sense of safety.

But we've also talked a lot about long-standing safety issues and especially the question of community engagement in this moment and ways to have residents feel a sense of ownership and pride in their communities so that they feel as though they're active participants in any discussions around safety.

So we've brought up things, there's been discussions about things like

Thank you so much for that.

I should tell residents that I mentioned when PHAR staff speak and they say you know I'm coming from PHAR

or city staff or police like anyone like that but any residents I just write resident and so I just say like this is what the resident is saying so there's no identifying information for the residents in those notes but there are really large issues there's concerns about problems traveling between sites so people causing a problem at one site and moving on to the next and so

Thank you.

Any questions, comments?

OK.

We'll move on, but that is important work and we thank you for keeping the momentum going.

So our next business is approval of the minutes.

Our last official monthly board meeting was June 22nd.

Let me grab my copy.

Madam Chair, quick question.

I would be abstaining from this vote since I wasn't there.

Yeah.

Then we're down.

We have four people who were present.

point to make.

I participated in the meeting.

I'm shown as absent on the last item, I believe.

And I don't know if that's because I might have dropped off when we said, you know, I didn't hang around for the, possibly.

I don't care.

But you know, I'm referenced numerous times in the, in the document.

So it might make more sense to say I was there even if I didn't vote.

Okay.

I second.

Okay, all those actually have to do a roll call.

And Dr. Henry and Ms. Green, I will not call on you.

Ms. Goldblatt.

Yes.

Oh, this is the June meeting.

So we still had Oliver and then myself.

Yes.

So minutes are passed or approved.

All right, so next we'll move on.

And I have a question, maybe this is to Dave Norris, if you're listening.

On our website, have we been, I don't think we, we may not have these up yet on our website, I'm not sure.

There's a tab on the website that says board agendas and there's a separate one that says board minutes.

Awesome, thank you.

Maybe I haven't, I have not checked it lately.

All right, so next we'll move on to Mr.

Sales with a director's update.

We all have a written version.

Okay.

Good evening commissioners and the public.

It's gonna be very brief.

We talked about a lot of the things at the work session a couple weeks ago.

So one of the big points that I will continue to highlight are the number of vacancies that we're dealing with.

Right now it is at 58, but that number will go up.

And the report, you can see that we're projecting, I believe, another six vacant units by the end of the week.

So we are working to figure out how we can take care of those units through a mixture of ideas.

So right now we're working with Habitat.

Habitat has pledged some construction members to assist us with a few units.

We currently have a contractor going through some of the units as well, which I provided you guys the contract for this morning.

We were supposed to have a meeting today, but I had a resident call and I was on the phone while the contractor was here.

So I wasn't able to get off, go meet with him.

So I had to reschedule that meeting, but he's supposed to provide us with an update on expected deadline of finishing those units on Wednesday.

And then we're also looking at hiring three to four maintenance technicians.

That number will probably be four or five and

The possibility of keeping three or four of them on permanently to assist us with short everyday needs in that department.

That department is really short staffed.

At the moment, it has been short staffed for quite a while.

And we are also working with a partner to possibly assist us with flipping, turning some of those units, maybe 15 to 20 of those units and a partner possibly paying for those units to get turned.

by contractor.

We don't have agreement yet, so I won't say who the partner is, but we are in talks with someone.

The other issue that we talked about at the last meeting were there a number of vouchers that we have that need to go out on the street.

So right now we have 49 vouchers out on the street with the goal to put another

Put another 20 out within the next week or two.

So one issue that we've ran into was we used to be able to do these large briefings for HCV program, 10 to 15 people in one room.

We can no longer do that.

So the voucher staff is meeting one-on-one with each person.

Typically it takes about 30 minutes to maybe an hour and a half, depending on how much need the individual needs during that time.

So we have purchased a briefing video that we plan to post on our website, which will allow us to issue more vouchers faster because we actually don't have to meet with the individual anymore.

We can send them to our website, they'll review the video online, and then they will be issued the voucher.

And we're also doing the same thing for public housing.

So once the units do become ready, we need to be able to get the individuals in those units, and we're gonna run into the same issue

where we have, we can only meet with each person one at a time.

So we'll have the video online where we can send the individuals to the video and they can access and then we can fill the unit, the individual once they completed that video.

So we're doing that for housekeeping just because that's always a good refresher to have a good housekeeping video.

So housekeeping, fair housing, the public housing orientation and the briefing for HCV.

And I believe that is all I have.

It was good to do it every year.

Okay, okay, okay.

Miss Green is on here.

It's supposed to be done once a year.

Thank you.

And looking at the financial, you know, just the summary, I'm wondering, you were saying in our work session that we were doing okay because of the care money that we're getting during COVID.

I guess I just wondered if you could speak to that.

I can't find my exact question.

Yes.

So I will say the CARES money is definitely what's keeping us afloat.

We would be in really bad shape if it wasn't for the CARES money.

financially.

We have not met our projections for either leasing up vouchers or public housing units since the schedule was created before the last budget was approved.

So CARES money is really keeping us afloat.

We're able to purchase vehicles, which we have several individuals.

We have two individuals driving their own vehicles throughout the day that are maintenance staff.

We have a group of individuals riding in one vehicle, which is impossible to social distance on a bench seat in a truck.

So those are some of the issues.

And that's not even mentioning the issues with the units.

So the CARES money is giving us the opportunity to get our staff up, our staffing numbers to where they should be with maintenance.

So we should have,

six to eight maintenance workers full time.

And we were averaging four.

So that is part of the reason why we have a large vacancy.

And without getting the staff up to where we need it to be, that vacancy number will continue to increase because we're adding more vacant units and we're actually able to turn them over.

So that's another good thing.

So if you go through the report, we weren't, for the last few months, we were able to use the PPP funding to cover salaries.

So those funds haven't come from any of the properties or the central call center.

So it's given like really good positive numbers in net incomes in all of the amps and as well as the central call center.

We are a little down when it comes to our voucher number, of course, and that's because we're projecting more vouchers and we're actually leasing up, but we put a lot of vouchers on the street.

Unfortunately, the more vouchers we put on the street, the harder it is for individuals to find housing units.

And we already had really low numbers when it came to being successful with finding units in a very short amount of time.

So,

Zero percent of the vouchers we put out on the street find a unit within 30 days.

The average time it takes to find a unit for our clients is between 90 and 150 days.

Most housing authorities are averaging 60 days or less.

So that's one of our issues.

So the units we, the vouchers we put on the street now is a chance that our numbers won't

Our numbers won't increase until the beginning of next year, in January, due to the time it takes individuals to find units in about, we have a 56% success rate.

So about, we put 10 vials in the street, about four of them are gonna come back, because the individual is not gonna be able to find a unit where they won't qualify because of maybe their past or with a credit, credit, bad credit or something like that.

So,

That is one of the reasons why we have to open up our wait list because we currently also don't have a wait list.

Everyone on our wait list is currently slated to have briefings to get vouchers.

So it says that we have, I believe it said maybe 77 on the wait list, but that isn't actually the case because those individuals are slated to get vouchers

either have a voucher or they're slated to get the orientation to get the voucher.

So that's one of the reasons when you open up the waitlist and we met on Friday to discuss that with PHAR and Legal Aid to ensure that we're opening up the waitlist and ensuring that number one, we're protecting everyone's health, but also ensuring that we're providing the right resources out for the community for individuals that don't have resources to apply online.

So we've talked about possibly doing tablets and working with the community to ensure there's computers or there's someone out there that can help families sign up for the wait list.

And I think that's it.

Okay, thank you.

Other questions?

Well, hopefully, we'll see.

Hopefully, some of those will get, find a unit soon.

Mr. Singles, I have a quick question for you.

Sorry, I was just going through all of what you've given us.

And you said you were trying to purchase some vehicles.

Are you guys able to purchase off the state contract?

We purchased through the state contract.

So last week we, yes, we purchased through EVA.

So last week we purchased one vehicle, one van to replace a van that was total,

I guess a while back now.

And we need, we're probably going to purchase another one tomorrow.

And both vans are used, so we're trying to save as much as possible because, so this money is also designed to address COVID cases that might pop up.

So we want to ensure that there is some money there just in case.

So if something was to happen at Crescent Halls, West Haven, South virtue 6th street, we have some funding there to address those issues without having

And I'm sitting here trying to remember, I know that one point there was a contractor in town that had changed out their whole fleet and had offered some of those vehicles for sale.

That was going to be my third point and you might want to reach out to the county too.

They do the same thing and they've got it.

And the county and county schools, I know the county schools have vans because they use the vans to transport to all the schools.

So those may be options for you as well.

And you're right, usually there's a lot of life left in some of those vehicles.

I think that's what was in my head at that point.

I've got another question about the recovery agreement.

I know that the lawyers between the city HUD and ourselves were meeting to talk about signing off on that agreement.

Do you have an update on that?

The city attorney's office and HUD's lawyers are still negotiating, I guess, verbiage.

in the agreement, but HUD has decided to move forward with the recovery agreement that was signed by you and Kathleen.

So we are gonna start reporting on that on October 1st.

Does that mean, this is probably a stupid question, but so the timeline that they laid out, I remember that you know the Excel sheet that has each step that we need to take in the timeline associated with kind of each step.

Did any of this, you know, that it wasn't officially signed by the city, did that help us at all and delay and, you know, do any of those deadlines get extended or are we still on the same schedule?

I don't know if I can answer that, but I would always side with the caution side, of course, because it's probably a chance that it's not going to get amended to reflect a new date.

HUD is trying to show housing authorities and everyone that said they're doing their job.

So we should go forward with what we have done.

And Kathleen has done a great job of addressing some of those items already and the items that have not been addressed, we're working to address them now.

Okay.

That's great.

Thank you.

All right, if there's no other questions, I don't see any, we can move on to Dave, Mr. Norris and the redevelopment update.

And you ready?

So you all have my report.

Basically, the big news is

We're making good progress in getting to closing on our first two projects.

And it's just a number of hoops we have jumped through.

But one of the final hoops was approval from the Fair Housing Office at HUD.

It's called a Site and Neighborhood Standards Review.

And I'm pleased to report that just this morning we received

A word from HUD that both our Crescent Halls and South First Street Phase One projects have now cleared the site and neighborhood standards review process and have been approved by the Fair Housing Office.

So that's one of the

One of the final hoops, regulatory hoops that we have to jump through to get us to closing.

There are still some hoops with the Special Application Center in Chicago, but we feel like we're very close to finalizing that process with the Demo-Dispo process.

So we're getting very close.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

We've got good progress also with the city in securing the bond financing for our projects.

In fact, I believe September 7th, city council will be voting on a bond sale for CRHA to get that money flowing.

And we've got some paperwork we need to finalize in that regard.

but we're getting there and we got to get both of our general contractors to finalize their contracts.

So Jay Kessler with Riverbend is updating the list of things that we still need from our general contractors in order to get the final contracts.

And once all this comes together, hopefully by October 1, we can move to close.

So, and then it'll take a little bit of time to mobilize and

Get some construction activity going, but we're still hoping to break around this calendar year and that's to be determined, but we're getting there.

So we had a really exciting event last week.

The city's Trade Builders Academy that they put in place in partnership with CRHA and PVCC and

CATEC and GMA and others had their very first graduation ceremony so this is basically training residents in our section three program on construction skills so that when construction does begin on our sites that they'll be first in line to get jobs and well-paying jobs doing the work of rebuilding public housing in Charlottesville so

We had four graduates in our very first training class who graduated made it all the way through a very difficult program made much more difficult by

COVID, which changed everything about the nature of the program, but they stuck with it and they graduated.

Two of them have already received jobs from another local contractor.

So hopefully we'll get them back once our work starts.

But and in addition to the four graduates of that program, we've had at least four other public housing residents from our section three program that have been hired by the housing authority itself and our maintenance department.

So I want to once again give a lot of credit to Joy Johnson, our section three coordinator for getting residents in the pipeline and getting them into training, getting them into jobs.

So we're just getting started, but we're already seeing some good signs of progress.

So I want to give a big shout out to Holly Lee in the city's Office of Economic Development for pulling that program together and

It's a learning process.

There's some things that went well and some things that could be improved.

So we'll talk to her now about getting another program underway in the not too distant future and keep getting residents through that pipeline.

So making good progress.

We had a good discussion today with some of our redevelopment partners about ways to just improve communication, particularly as activity is ramping up

And a lot of, you know, there's a lot of balls in the air right now.

We want to make sure everybody's feeling engaged and informed about everything that's happening.

So some good measures to improve communication and coordination.

Yeah, COVID definitely put a big wrench in the works in terms of particularly when it comes to renovating a building like Crescent Halls with renovation in place with seniors and people with disabilities living in the building as it's being renovated and

even under normal conditions that's tricky and then you throw in a global pandemic where seniors and people with compromised immune systems are most at risk from it just makes that process so much more difficult but our team has really rallied together and they looked at a whole variety of options over the summer for shifting gears and retooling the way we're going to renovate that building they've come to a consensus now

to where I think the most of the work they'll be able to have complete separation between construction crews and the residents and that's really important to us we want to make sure we preserve the health and safety of our residents but an answer to your question it certainly has affected the timeline there's no doubt about that you know if you all remember originally we were hoping to get underway by

early 2020, August we're looking at hopefully breaking ground by the end of the calendar year with closing hopefully in October.

And Dave, I had a follow up question there too.

And one of the,

Well, so yeah, since that report was submitted, we actually had another call where I think now the consensus is, is that, you know, there wasn't an interest in having a mock-up unit in Crescent Halls, but again, we're talking about introducing construction crews to the building and

I think at the end of the day, all of our partners decided, rather than putting in the time and expense and dealing with the safety issues involved and actually doing a model unit, instead we're going to kind of do it on a more virtual basis, have our architects design a really nice virtual walkthrough of what

Markup, what a unit would look like.

And then we're also installing a monitor in the lobby down at Crescent Halls.

And so that's one of the videos that'll be running on a loop.

We also have a virtual walkthrough of the construction project itself, and that'll be running on a loop.

Okay, yeah, I knew that was the direction that had been decided and then there was feedback about, but that was my concern, just the introduction into the building and how we can keep safe and COVID out the building.

Then the other thing we'll do is once that, so we're going to start construction for the residential units on the second and third floors of the building.

So the idea is that once the 15 units on the second floor are fully renovated, I think our thinking is we'll hold one of them open for a couple of weeks so that residents can see.

So we don't actually have to do a mock unit, just show them an actual unit once it's fully renovated.

and we'll arrange for tours and again make sure we address social distancing and all that good stuff as we do so but give residents a chance to see what an actual renovated unit looks like before you move somebody into that unit.

Yeah, we heard it once and we're back muted.

Am I unmuted now?

So I was going to suggest just that.

So I think that's a great idea.

You know, 40 years of doing this stuff, you know, I've had very sophisticated clients that really didn't know what we were talking about when we put drawings in front of them.

So I'm sure we'll have one or two residents who are really enlightened by really seeing a unit.

We're going to be doing, you know, 105 similar units.

If there was something we could address after the first 30, that could be very valuable.

So I think that's it.

Thank you.

Okay, do we need to, is there anything about the September 7th City Council meeting that would need support for that, like for a vote?

You know, I'm just thinking like, do we need to get on the public comment list to support it?

Yeah, it's a moment.

It's a sort of check in the box.

We did have a pretty good discussion, I think Friday or the Monday.

Monday is today.

So Friday about finance and that.

And so you all will see CRHA on our closed session for tomorrow.

So council will be having that discussion and

Michael and I participated in the meeting and the only thing that we're asking the counselors is we discussed the $1.5 million that would be debt to the housing authority and we want to present another option for us supporting that versus having to take on the debt and that's the only thing, that's what we'll be discussing

So don't know if we'll get the votes for it, but the attorneys and their concerns about potentially losing the property if CRHA couldn't exercise first right of refusal, if something came up, it will be addressed then.

And then the meeting is on the 8th instead of the 7th.

Labor Day, but that's it.

So just in case anyone sees on our closed session meeting, that's what it's about.

Okay.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you, and thank you for all your work, Mr. Norris.

I know it's really hard being the go-between person between all these different constituents involved in this.

All right, I guess that'll lead us up to another round of public comments.

If anyone listening would like to, I don't know how you do it, raise your hand.

Hi again.

You know what I never said originally was I'm Brandon, I work for PHAR, the Public Housing Association of Residents.

We are the duly recognized resident council and resident advisory board for Charlottesville.

I kind of wanted to add on to the pep talk a little bit, but also just first mention a couple of things.

I assume, well I know that Mr.

Sales and others are really trying to come up with ways to make sure that voucher recipients can find housing and it's a real big, it's a problem

When you get a lot of vouchers out on the street all at once, as we know Charlottesville already has an issue.

So that just gets compounded by putting a bunch out there, but you have to do it.

And I'm not sure Mr.

Sales highlighted enough for y'all that he's gonna put a full-time person on managing some of that so that there can be better landlord outreach and I hope to get people housed.

It's a funny thing, the General Assembly now says you can't discriminate on income, source of income

meaning they can't discriminate against a voucher but you know landlords are coming up with all kinds of other ways to discriminate against voucher holders and that's really disappointing and I know you all I hope have the stomach for some really strong advocacy on that and I know that us and Legal Aid are interested in really pushing that forward a little bit better

because you know vouchers are going to be a big piece of change in history here in Charlottesville and we got to make it work and we need landlords to be good landlords and not discriminate.

The only other tiny little piece I just want to point out is some of the outcomes that we're looking at for redevelopment are huge successes.

It's not just that we've had good input and good involvement in decision making, but

You know in phase one and phase two you're adding a significant amount of affordable housing to the Charlottesville community and more so than anybody really else is prepared to do and I think that's awesome and I just wanted to point out how awesome it is too that there's no market rate housing attached with phase one and phase two as of yet

And that's a big deal.

I mean, that means you're really meeting the need and really taking it seriously.

And I know that y'all and us and everybody else is going to get beat over the head on this issue time and time again.

Is there anybody else from the public that would like to speak?

If so, please just raise your hand.

We have Don Gathers.

No, just unmuted.

Not a question, just a comment.

I just want to thank everyone for all their hard work.

And thank you, Mr.

Sales, for coming in and hitting the ground with both feet and running.

And just look forward to working with you and doing some great things in the housing community here in the city of Charlottesville and the surrounding county as well.

Okay.

So one quick thing I meant to mention earlier, sorry about that.

This is not public housing related.

It is housing related.

And I just want to get the message out to everyone.

I'm on the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and just this past Thursday, voted to work with the sub-grantees to implement the TJPDC's Emergency Rent and Mortgage Relief Program.

So if anyone's out there listening to this and they know someone that needs that information, just go to the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission website, that's a mouthful, for information on that.

And it's for rent and mortgage relief.

It's COVID funds.

And what they were saying is it's coming from the state

So people need to use it because that means we may get more funding here.

Great.

Thank you.

Sorry.

I also want to say that the city also has a program

for rental assistance and mortgage assistance for anyone that's listening.

So we have created a rental relief program as well.

So with the state program and with the city program, there's a requirement to forgive a portion of it.

Unfortunately, we can't forgive due to our structure and being under HUD, we can't forgive any.

So we've created a fund that CACF,

Help Fund, where we're gonna match that.

So the fund that they provided us will be the match, the 25% that has to be forgiven.

That's great news.

Thank you.

I didn't know.

Thank you.

I didn't know how that was going to work.

And as a resident, I know there's many different ways right now to reach out for help, but it's hard.

It seems like it would be hard to navigate which one is the right one to go to first.

Yeah.

And none of the, actually, I'm sorry.

The state's program will not qualify for any of our housing.

So the state's program is for unsubsidized housing.

We have subsidized housing, so the state's program, the money cannot be used for public housing.

I believe it can be used for HCV.

I believe, I may be wrong with that one, but I know it cannot be used for public housing.

That's good news.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Thanks.

I just wanted to add that I believe that rental mortgage, rent and mortgage relief program, the one that's being run through the Planning District Commission,

is not applicable to anyone who has rent that's adjusted by income.

So I think Section 8 residents actually would not be able to access it.

But the other programs are available, I believe for that group of folks.

Emily, thank you for clarifying that.

Sure thing.

Great.

Okay.

I've never had such a fast meeting in the history of our board meetings.

So it just feels so strange and I know we all have a lot we want to talk about which is difficult under these circumstances but I'm hoping that we'll get a work session together.

I'll check in with you all but it seemed like Thursday late afternoon worked well with most people's schedule.

I need to check in with Miss Walker about that.

So the two dates that were sent out, the 17th worked best for me.

Okay, great.

So I'll go ahead with just checking in with the lawyer to see which of them they can do because I had waited to see if those would work.

Can anyone else yes or no on the 10th or the 17th?

What time are we saying?

So what time?

I can make both of those dates work.

Okay, great.

I guess so.

Okay, great.

Okay, wonderful.

All right, so I'll speak with the lawyer and then send you all a reminder for that.

And I was also going to suggest what I hope to do is do more just calling and talking to you all in person, you know, one at a time.

And I haven't been very good with that lately.

So I'll try to do that, but also maybe even, you know, just

Okay, and then we have to do the roll call.

Okay, so Dr. Henry.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Did she say yes?

Ms. Walker, did you say yes to it?

Okay.

Ms. Green.

Aye.

And Ms. Goldblatt.

Yes.

Okay.

We are adjourned.

Hey, one question before you go off the record.

I'm still having trouble getting difficulty getting sworn in.

So if you could maybe try and help me with that because I can't legally vote until I'm sworn in.

Okay.

Yeah.

If you remember.

I don't know.

Okay.

All right.

Well, we'll figure this out.

Well, all right.

All right.

Bye bye.