CRHA Work Session   10/15/2020

Okay.

Well, I'm going to start with just sort of a high level update on where we are with redevelopment.

And I know Mr.

Sales wants to spend a good bit of time with you all this evening, digging into our proposed comprehensive

development plan, RFP for a comprehensive development plan, sustainability plan.

So we're gonna get to that after sort of this general update that I'm about to present.

As I'm speaking, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to interrupt.

I'm gonna try to share my screen.

Disabled participant.

Betsy, are you a host on this?

Yeah.

Sorry about that, Dave.

No, you're fine.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

So Dave, you're going to talk more about redevelopment and updating us.

Okay.

So again, I just wanted to start with just again, a high level update on redevelopment and where we are and then we'll hand it over to John Sales.

But again, just as a refresher, why are we doing this?

What's the whole point of this redevelopment initiative?

and there's four sort of overarching goals to redevelopment of public housing in Charlottesville.

They're not necessarily in any order, although I would say first and foremost is we do wanna improve the quality of housing and the quality of life for our residents.

So that's probably the one goal that drives everything else but the others are also very important.

We need to put our housing authority on firmer financial footing.

Right now, as I think all of you know, we are entirely dependent

largely dependent on one subsidy, one annual subsidy from the federal government, which is never sufficient and it hasn't provided and doesn't provide the funding we need to maintain our housing stock and to operate our agency the way it really should be operated.

Through redevelopment, we can incorporate and we are incorporating new streams of financing that will give us more of a,

put us in more of a financially sustainable position moving forward.

So that's going to make a big difference for the agency across the board.

Three, we want to add to our community's inventory of affordable housing.

That number has, we haven't finalized what that number is gonna be yet, but we're confident in saying that over the course of this redevelopment initiative, we're gonna add hundreds and hundreds of new units of affordable housing to the city stock of affordable housing.

And that's badly needed.

So we're happy to be part of the solution.

We can't expect the housing authority to be the entire solution, but we can certainly do our part.

And four is just to change the dynamics of poverty in Charlottesville.

Right now, public housing is built on a model of creating these isolated pockets of poverty, which have long been neglected and under-resourced.

And we are, as we move forward with redevelopment, we are changing that.

We're working to change that.

And I always say, redevelopment isn't just about investing in bricks and mortar, it's also investing in our residents, investing in our people.

So one example of that is the Section 3 program, which I'll be touching on in a few minutes, but also how can we incorporate asset building opportunities for our residents in redevelopment?

So I know Mr.

Sales and Mayor Walker and many others have talked about really digging deep into opportunities for homeownership development, for instance, for our residents and for low-income residents in our community as part of this redevelopment effort.

So in a variety of ways looking to change the dynamics of priority.

So very important goals.

That's what this is all about.

So quick update on sort of an overview of where we are on our phase one and phase two projects.

I think most of you know that our first project that we're just about to break ground on is Crescent Halls, a full scale renovation from top to bottom of this property, 105 units, essentially going to be gutting the interior of the building

building, rebuilding brand new units in their place.

It's a renovation in place, which does pose logistical challenges.

Residents have the option of staying in the building during the construction process, but it's a challenge that we are fully prepared to take on.

And so this is a, it's a very exciting project, approximate price tag of about $19 million, give or take,

We are going to be renovating on a floor by floor basis, two floors at a time, basically from the ground up.

And so once we are able to close on both of our first two projects, which hopefully will occur within the next month, within the next few weeks, then we can start mobilizing for construction.

The goal is to have construction activity underway at Crescent Halls.

by the end of this calendar year.

Everything has taken longer than we expected.

So if it ends up being January, so be it.

But I'm hopeful that we can at least start mobilizing during the year 2020.

I'm sorry.

Is my screen not showing anymore?

I just, this is just sort of an agenda.

I don't have a document per se.

Okay.

And maybe that's just me.

On my screen, it's showing a picture of Crescent Halls.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm glad you asked because...

Sorry about that.

So this is the first part I went over, why redevelop.

Overview of phase one and two projects, Crescent Hall's renovation project.

Again, we're hoping to get underway this year.

Complete renovation, new fixtures, new appliances.

Essentially, we're gonna be changing the units to make them a little bit more open.

Right now, they're a little bit boxed in, so the units themselves on the interiors will be more open.

We're gonna have new systems in the building, heating, air conditioning, et cetera.

We'll be upgrading the elevators, the community spaces on the first floor.

Just again, a total renovation of this building.

The skeleton of the building is in decent shape, so we're not having to knock down the building so we can reuse the skeleton, but basically fixing up everything inside.

And this will also include some extensive exterior improvements.

You're just getting a taste of that with this one photograph here.

Anyhow, a lot of work that's going to be going into Crescent Halls.

Our other phase one project is to the right hand side of this picture.

It's a little light on this image here, but phase one, this is our South First Street project.

Currently it's 12 acres with 58 units.

We're going to be doing this project in phases, as I think most of you know.

Phase one, which is to the right.

It's a three acre, currently it's a green field site.

It's a ball field site.

We're gonna be starting there.

And again, hope to close within the next few weeks and get construction mobilized this year, if not actually underway this year.

Phase one will be 62 units of brand new housing on that ball field site, on that three acre site to the right of this diagram here.

And that will also include a community center, some green space,

New parking, obviously.

So once that's complete, and by the way, both of these projects, we are hoping, you know, obviously with construction, you never know for sure, but we're hoping that they'll both be complete and occupiable and fully occupied by Spring of 2022.

So we're looking at March, maybe April of 2022 at present of having both of these projects completed.

Once South First Street phase one is completed, then residents of the existing South First Street units, the 58 units, will have the opportunity, if they so choose, to move into South First Street phase one and vacate their current units.

And then we'll proceed with

South First Street, Phase 2, which will be 113 units.

Again, a second community center, some wonderful community amenities, some office space for CRHA.

Again, I know you all have heard a lot about these projects, so I don't want to go into too much detail.

and South First Street phase two will in itself be done in phases, not to complicate things, but we have phase 2A and phase 2B and that's to accommodate a relocation within the site.

So a lot of work that's gonna be happening on this project, this property over the next 12 to 18 months.

And then if you'll notice, I don't know if you can see my cursor here, but down on

The sort of bottom right of this diagram, there's some wooded land there on the corner of Hartman's Mill and South First Street.

CRHA does own some of that land there, that corner lot there in particular.

And so that has the potential to become a part of what will likely become known as South First Street phase three.

One side note is that

Residents at South First Street have talked about as part of redeveloping their community have talked about changing the name of South First Street to give it a little bit more character.

So I think that's gonna be part of the upcoming resident planner conversations as we flesh out the plans for phase two.

I believe they're going to be coming to the board with a request

Probably not in the immediate future, but in the not too distant future with a request to change the name of their community.

So you may be hearing more about that.

So other redevelopment updates.

So where we are in the project, in the process, we have completed the design and the development review process.

Essentially, there's a couple of little things we're doing on South First Street, but essentially completed the design development review processes for Crescent Halls and South First Street phase one.

We have been very successful in securing the financing needed

The bulk of that financing, as I think most of you know, is through a federal program called the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, often referred to as LIHTC, which will fund about 60 to 70% of the construction of each of our first two projects.

So we were very grateful to have received Low-Income Housing Tax Credits on our first two projects and also

on our South First Street phase two project.

So we are now three for three with our low income housing tax credit applications.

They are extremely competitive.

So that's bodes well.

And it's a sign of, I think of how well received our products have been among funders, because not just the federal government and the

EH, Virginia Housing Development Authority, which administers the LIHTC program.

But also, as I think most of you know, we've received a strong commitment of funding from private donors, starting with the Dave Matthews Band, who generously chipped in $5 million and then went out and raised an additional $10 million thanks to Red Light and Corn Capshaw and Anne Kingston.

Then the city of Charlottesville matched that and was very generous in making a commitment of $15 million in city monies in the capital improvement program over a period of six years.

So all told, we've now secured commitments or if not actual funding of over $70 million in the last year and a half for our redevelopment efforts.

So been very successful.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that this is something different.

This is not a typical public housing redevelopment or just

Community Redevelopment Project that you see in most communities.

And the reason why I say it's different is because of the strong partnership that we have with our residents.

And the fact that from day one, the very first item in the residents bill of rights for redevelopment is that this would be essentially a resident directed initiative that we work with the residents of each community, work with our citywide resident organization on coming up with a vision for public housing in Charlottesville

and coming up with a vision for each of our communities.

And then it's our job to help make that vision happen.

And does that mean that a hundred percent of residents get a hundred percent of everything they ask for a hundred percent of the time?

No, but so far everybody has been wonderful in terms of being engaged at Crescent Halls.

We had many, many meetings between residents there facilitated by PHAR and want to give PHAR a lot of credit for the work that they've done both at Crescent Halls, at South First Street and beyond.

and working with our development services team, the design professionals, Colin Arnold, Bruce Wardell and his team, the development team themselves with Jay Kessler, with all of our wonderful partners with Virginia Community Development Corporation,

with obviously Riverbend Development, Ashley Davies and just been a great team effort and which is why I think it's been so well received.

So where are we now?

We are in the very closing stages or the final stages of getting to closing on our first two projects which means getting all the financing in place and getting the legal documents together and so that we can actually sit down and

Make it official.

And then once we are able to close on these first two projects, it'll be about a month from there to when we can actually start mobilizing on the construction side.

I wanna make sure we also give a lot of credit to our construction, our general contractor partners who've been working hard both on Crescent Halls and South First Street.

So GMA in the person initially of Cornelius Griggs and now with John Adams and John Black,

and then Breeden Construction with the great team over there, Ryan and Brian and all the guys over at Breeden.

Then again, a real team effort to get us to where we are now.

We're excited to be this close.

We haven't, it's taken a long time and there's a lot of hoops to jump through and our attorneys are working hard getting all the legal paperwork together.

We're working closely with city staff to get the city

funding finalized.

And next Monday at the city council meeting, the city will be considering a funding agreement and a recovery agreement for CRHA that will finalize the city's commitment of funding, a bond funding for the construction on our phase one projects.

And some of that would also be for phase two.

Again, please ask questions anywhere along.

I know I'm kind of

Rushing, but I wanna keep going.

So phase two, South First Street phase two, I mentioned that's gonna be redevelopment of the existing site, the existing occupied site at South First Street.

This is a project which has won all kinds of acclaim because again, the strong partnership with the residents, starting from summer of 2019,

Onward, the residents met every Sunday for months and months and months, putting in hundreds of hours of their time to help come up with the design for phase two for the occupied portion of that neighborhood.

And I've told this anecdote many times, and if any of you haven't heard it yet, I've been to many planning commission meetings in my life.

and when the residents of South First Street presented their project for approval from the planning commission, the first time I'd ever seen a project get a standing ovation from the planning commission.

So that was pretty special.

And so we have to give the residents and then Bruce Wardell and his team over at BRW a lot of credit for coming up with a plan that it works well for that site.

And it's going to help us accomplish all of our goals for that site.

Where we are in terms of phase two is we are in the early stages of, again, going through that whole

Development and Review, the process with HUD is really quite laborious, but there's a lot of hoops that HUD makes you jump through from the, it's called the Demo-Dispo and Mixed Finance Review Process, Application Review Process.

So we're starting that all over again now with phase two.

Thankfully, we learned a lot from having done it on phase one.

So hopefully phase two will be a little bit less laborious and we'll just keep getting better at it as we move forward, which brings me to phase three and beyond, which will be the subject of this sort of comprehensive development plan that we'll be discussing

Momentarily and sort of figuring out what are the next steps.

I know there's a lot of interest.

I'll just say it.

There's a lot of interest in seeing West Haven happen either next or very soon because it is our largest site and there's a lot of need there for redevelopment.

And there's a lot of interest there among residents for, you know, seeing their neighborhood improved.

And so

But we have other sites, obviously 6th Street, Riverside, Mickey Drive, Madison, we have our single family home.

So there's a lot of work left to do.

And this master plan, this comprehensive development plan that we'll be talking about in a moment is going to help us figure out where to go next.

And just real quickly in terms of redevelopment coordination, right now under the current structure,

Kathleen Glenn-Matthews has sort of overall responsibility for oversight of redevelopment.

I'm still serving as redevelopment coordinator and manager.

We've got, again, we've got a great team.

Oh, and then we are, you know, at some point, if we can figure out how to fund it, we are hoping to bring on board a construction project manager, particularly as we get into the construction phase who can adequately represent

the housing authority on our residents as we navigate all the construction activity that's about to come.

Also would be the key person on our internal capital improvement program with all the parallel track repairs and upgrades that we need to do to keep our communities in good shape.

So partnership in general, I would say we have a very, again, I mentioned earlier, some of the key partners starting with PHAR, with Riverbend Development,

VCDC, our general contractors.

We've got a good team in place.

I think we're learning a lot here in phase one about what's gone well, what could be improved as we move into the future.

How does redevelopment get managed in the future?

That's a topic for discussion in the future.

and then budget.

Right now our primary source of funding for redevelopment coordination at CRHA is funding that we received from the City of Charlottesville and we are

grateful to the city for their support and but you know at some point we're going to need to increase our budget and increase and build our own capacity to manage redevelopment.

Thankfully the good news is is that you know because of the

agreement we have with the MOU that we have with Riverbend Development and PHAR is that the housing authority will be receiving the development fees on both of our first two redevelopment projects across the halls of South First Street phase one and presumably phase two.

That's a pretty hefty amount of funding that's gonna be coming to the housing authority for redevelopment coordination and or for actual redevelopment work.

It doesn't, you know, we don't actually come into that money until the projects

We're still a year away from or more away from actually receiving those dollars, but between our first two projects, we'll be assuming the projects don't go over budget, which we hope they won't, but we'll be receiving a million dollars in total in developer fees for our first two projects.

And then we'll be getting another million dollars from phase two.

That's a pretty hefty amount of money that the board will have to wrestle with.

And that's a good problem to have to wrestle with.

I do want to give a quick nod to section three and to Joy Johnson, our section three coordinator.

I have mentioned on several occasions how proud I am of the work that Joy has been doing.

to get residents into the pipeline for jobs, for job training for eventually someday potentially for business development.

And it's not just CRHA residents, but it's just low income residents in general that can qualify for section three.

And again, the basic thrust of section three is that whenever a housing authority is spending money to improve our community, we should be doing as much as we can to recycle that money in our community and creating opportunities

and jobs and business opportunities for low-income residents.

We have, as of last week, over 80 residents that are now in the pipeline, thanks to Joy and thanks to PHAR, and they're all in different sort of, they're not all at the same part of that pipeline.

Some of them have actually completed

job training with the city.

We had a very successful trade builders academy with the city this fall, this summer.

We just met recently with the city about part two, about another business trade builders academy that will be kicking off early in 2021.

So we'll be starting to do some outreach for that here in the next few weeks and get some residents enrolled.

So some people have already completed training.

Some people have just done the initial assessment and some people have already gotten jobs because we've also, and I give a lot of credit to Brono Popovich, our facilities director.

We've also been creating opportunities, identifying opportunities internal to CRHA, particularly with our maintenance department.

for residents to get training and jobs.

So future goals, I mentioned home ownership.

We'd love to revive our family self-sufficiency program.

I call it financial.

It's family self-sufficiency program, which again is one way to help residents build assets and save for their future.

That's not exclusive to redevelopment, but it's part of this overall effort to, again, help

help our residents climb the ladder.

And then CRHA is one of the partners among a number of other local agencies, organizations in creating a financial opportunity center for Charlottesville, which will be a one stop shop for financial stability support services.

So any resident, any low income resident who needs help putting together a household budget, setting up a savings account, getting a better job,

accessing job training, accessing public benefits, you name it, anything that was gonna help them achieve to work on their credit, you name it, work for home ownership, anything that's gonna help them achieve financial stability, they'll be able to walk in the door of this financial opportunity center and get services that are tailored to their needs.

And we have visited a couple of financial opportunity centers in Richmond, well,

CRHA and PHAR visited one in Richmond.

I've been involved with a few others in Richmond and it works.

It's a proven model for helping residents to climb the ladder.

All right, so that was a lot.

Again, very high level.

I'm happy to answer any questions before we move into the discussion on the RFP for the Comprehensive Development Plan Sustainability Plan.

But any questions at this point?

I'll just comment that that is absolutely amazing work.

And I just want to thank everyone.

It's, you know, as a volunteer, I don't have as much time to spend on it.

And I know that all the staff and all the partners have been spending so much time to make sure the momentum keeps going.

We, you know, COVID was difficult and transferring all the meetings online and keeping the projects going was

really important so I just wanted to say thank you to everyone and I'm really proud of all the work being done.

One other thing I just want to mention because I see both Claudette Green and Melinda Haidt on here is you know there's

There's a big challenge ahead of us and ahead of them in managing this new housing that we're gonna be building because we're so used to sort of our two core programs, public housing and housing choice vouchers.

This new regime, if you will, this new paradigm of housing that we're creating has a whole lot of other rules and regulations attached to it with the low-income housing tax credits, with project-based vouchers.

So I wanna give them a lot of credit because they're already, even now,

you know, working to get their staff and get themselves up to speed on what it's gonna take to manage these new streams of housing, these new types of housing because our ultimate goal is to make sure for the residents that it's as seamless as possible, that it doesn't, we don't want our residents to be confused because of new regulations that we have to abide by in the back office.

Let me see.

Mr. Rice, if we have, obviously, you know, this presentation's to the board and I'll be quiet.

So we see if there's more questions, but I don't know if we're able to have the attendees ask questions or if we need to wait for public comment.

I'm noticing it's, we don't have a lot, a lot of people on here.

Yep.

All right, do we want to shift gears now?

So I'm going to talk about the sustainability plan and then, you know, John's available to chip in as necessary.

But let me pull that up on my screen.

I think this went out to the full court already, but this was,

This was brought up at our Redevelopment Committee meeting last week.

I'm trying to pull it up here.

And they offered some really good insights and suggestions.

Is that on the screen now?

I don't know why you could see it trying to open.

There it is.

You might wanna do, is it PDF?

Can you do the, there's something where you can say full screen or view, I'm not sure what the term is, but.

Oh, heck, I don't know.

Okay, all right.

So basically, you know,

The Housing Authority had a master plan or redevelopment that it adopted.

It's been over 10 years ago now.

And it was done by a firm out of Pennsylvania.

They came down and met with Housing Authority officials, with residents, with city officials.

And it's, you know, I think it's safe to say that it's really,

It was an interesting exercise at the time, but it's not something that we rely on at this point.

And so it's time to basically revisit the idea of having a master plan for development that basically, again, you know,

working with our residents, working with city officials, working with other key stakeholders, it sets forth a sort of a broad approach and a broad strategy for how do we develop the remainder of our sites.

Obviously we're off to a good start with our first projects, but we wanna make sure that we continue the progress and do it in a holistic way.

And again, the ultimate goal, one of the ultimate goals here is for the housing authority

to achieve fiscal sustainability.

And so what does that look like?

What does that require in terms of funding?

What does that require in terms of housing types and mix of uses?

And so what we've set forth here is a scope of work.

We had done some sort of a road mapping exercise over the last year, looking at an optimal build out sort of analysis, but this goes much deeper in terms of actually how to

get us to where we are physically sustainable, where we are able to deliver on our promise of better quality housing and better quality of life for our residents, where we are able to contribute to the city's affordable housing inventory and where we are able to really change the dynamics of poverty in our communities.

And so this is an RFP that's looking for a firm that's going to be gathering information and compiling comprehensive review of our public housing inventory

and developing a plan and strategies to reposition, revitalize all of our communities.

So I don't wanna necessarily go through the whole document line by line, but again, just to summarize the key tasks that we'd be looking for this firm to perform for us and with us, evaluate the current physical condition of our public housing and affordable housing units.

So working with our facility staff

and our management staff to look at the physical conditions of our housing units and the neighborhoods themselves.

Looking at past, current and future markets, housing markets, affordable housing market and developing a market projection for our properties in terms of what's the highest and best use of our properties given market pressures and market demands and market opportunities.

researching best practices utilized by other public housing authorities and repositioning their inventory.

Again, we don't need to reinvent the wheel.

There are housing authorities all over the country that have been doing this work.

And so we wanna look at what models they're using and what successes they've had and what challenges they've encountered.

We say in here, we are not looking at utilizing RAD, which is a tool that many housing authorities are using, and that HUD is encouraging housing authority to use, which essentially privatizes public housing.

And there are some advantages to RAD in terms of financing, but I think our position has been for quite some time now that we are not looking to privatize public housing,

and that we have a firm commitment to our residents through the Residence Bill of Rights for one for one replacement of public housing units.

There's also concerns among public housing advocates that RAD undermines resident rights, particularly when it comes to resident participation in development and resident participation in housing authority operations and decision-making therein.

So we are not looking to utilize RAD, but looking at other options for financing redevelopment.

Develop a roadmap in the form of a mini strategic plan with goals objectives and strategies and with timelines and schedules.

So again, working with all the key stakeholders to come up with a strategic plan moving forward.

and then actually get into some conceptual designs for each of our communities and so meet with residents at the different communities, come up with both exterior and interior conceptual designs that would, again, help us get the highest and best use out of each of our communities while upholding our residents' bill of rights for redevelopment.

So coming up with some conceptual illustrations,

Delineate a market strategy to fulfill the strategic plan.

Can I just ask a question about that?

So I'm just for task six.

So I mean, I understand that all of this redevelopment and new building obviously costs money and that the

that the agency has to pull in that money.

But I'm just a little bit, if you could, I'd like to hear just a little bit more about what this means or what thinking is going along there since I feel really strongly that CRHA's primary responsibility always needs to be to the people who are most in need of housing in this community, which is people at 40% AMI or lower.

So task six is really focused on improving the market.

So I'm sure Ms. Green can tell you multiple stories where we've offered housing units in West Haven or South First Street and Sixth Street and individuals have turned it down.

because they have a bad reputation.

So we need to rebrand those communities when we're redeveloping to improve the individuals that want to live there because there are housing units that are available there, but we have a lot of individuals that turn them down because of their reputation.

So the task six will focus on that.

And as you can see, we actually prioritize home ownership and affordable housing for households at 40% AMR or lower.

So task seven, kind of developing a grid of funding strategy, ownership structures, et cetera, kind of basically pulling together all this information

This firm working with us and our stakeholders have compiled, facilitating at least three discussions with residents of three to five sites, presenting to the redevelopment committee, working with PHAR on all of the above and coming up with basically some best, what is the best path forward for each site that if applied would have the greatest short-term and long-term potential for improving the quality of life for our residents, expanding affordable housing, all the things that we've talked about.

looking at who the key partners would be in implementing these plans, coming up with a financial plan for, overall financial plan for redevelopment.

Again, this all sort of ties into each other and all the way down to like the cash flows, pro formas, uses of funds, how would we position these projects to attract investment capital

etc.

So the draft deliverable, we've already presented this RFP, the draft of this RFP to the Redevelopment Committee for feedback and that feedback was incorporated in this document here tonight.

Tonight we're presenting it to you all and then

The idea is that we would then bring it to city council next week.

At their meeting, the city is very interested in seeing us adopt a comprehensive plan that's gonna get us to where we need to be and get us to a fiscally sustainable position.

So this is something the city has been asking for for some time now.

And that's where we are.

You're on mute.

Sorry, I think you touched it all.

My only comment is the same comment that I've had and it's back to the same task, six that Laura brought up is I think there's a,

probably a better way to write this because as it reads now, you would be asking, even though it says at that last line to prioritizing home ownership at the 40% and lower, you're talking about communities that already sit in right in the Charlottesville community.

There are communities all around

if we wanna isolate these communities and say that so they are in every neighborhood, there are already the income types that this strategy would probably attempt to incorporate into that piece of land also.

And so if there's a way that we can just be more intentional

about the fact that we know that surrounding every community, there's already individuals who are, you know, various income levels, including above, you know, a hundred percent AMI.

And then we, I don't think, and I had the same conversation with PHA,

that we should ever prioritize them on the little sliver of land that we have left.

All right, we'll look at that and see if we can reword task six.

I think maybe the wording is actually losing the value of actually what's incorporated in TAS-6 because it's really focused around branding and improving the brand of CRHA in some of the communities where we have individuals that turn down housing opportunities.

I'm concerned about the verbiage to eliminate discussion of RAD.

As long as we're looking at options, I really think we ought to look at options.

And I think probably everybody participating in the meeting today might be of the same mind on RAD, but if a consultant is developing a matrix of options, I think that ought to be one that's on the list.

If we're looking at,

Density is also a tough place to go, but I mean, it very well might be that 10 years from now the housing authority has, you know, 750 units and we have residents that we never imagined we were gonna have.

And they're, you know, how are we going to expand beyond the current number of subsidized units we have?

I would feel good about that.

I think maybe we ask PHAR about this, but it sounded like RAD was trying to improve their

residents' right to organize that wasn't there at the beginning of RAD, which I know is a sticking point.

So maybe we also, in parallel to this, just make sure we understand the current structure of RAD if the consultant was to bring it up, because I know there may have been some changes.

I'm not saying I'm pro or con on that, but I'm just saying it sounded like there had been some changes

I will say I looked at the resident rights deal and they are almost exactly the same as they are now with regular public housing.

So they've definitely advanced the resident rights in red.

I mean, I think we are as a commissioner, you know, I want to have all the information on the table.

I'm still not convinced that or I still am not in favor of RAD.

And so I really, I believe PHAR has built up a lot of community knowledge, a lot of community power.

And I think that's something that we should cherish and we should be proud of and we should continue to honor.

And I think we were lucky to have

are really dynamic and hardworking and creative staff that has clearly found lots of ways to redevelop public housing without having to step into the waters of privatization.

The only other thought I have is I was originally thinking that the facility condition piece of this was going to be a more robust facility condition assessment.

So this is really a sampling.

And if I was a consultant reading the verbiage, I think I would appreciate knowing exactly how many units you were expecting me to go into.

Okay, we can define.

Find that exact amount of units to review.

And there was a comment from former Commissioner Talbert about having a in-depth review of each unit.

And we are actually going to start working on that.

We're going to work on getting a P&A, fiscal needs assessment on all of our units so we can get a clearer picture of where we are with some of the capital needs and provide us with the useful life expectancy on all the equipment that's in a unit so we can better prepare for our capital fund in the future.

When this goes out, will there be any additional sort of background material?

I'm assuming there'll be some background materials, the history of CRHA.

I'm wondering, you know, the PHAR positive vision and thinking about the RAD

I didn't want to say that I support it, just that I'd like to know more about it.

But I do think if there are some supporting documents that could be read just to give more priorities of the residents, then that could be attached to help the team understand when they come.

I'm assuming when they come to interview,

So all of the redevelopment documents will be attached.

So this is just a scope of work section of, or end up probably being a one or 200 page solicitation that goes out.

Cause it has to include all of the HUD clauses and the back outs and the maps of the sites.

Some schematics of what we have on our record.

Okay, great.

So I have one comment that I mostly just want to have on the record.

It's not specifically about the RFP, although it's within this scope.

Because I've been spending so much time with a safety committee, one of the things that's been on my mind is thinking about communities that are really built with an eye towards building community.

And so as we look into best practices and we consider some of these mini strategic goals,

Certainly.

And so one of the tasks identify setting priorities, goals, and vision for the community.

And that's where we really are going to get to the residents leading this process and letting us know what do you want in your community?

Is it a grocery store?

Is it the garden?

I mean, what is it that will make your life easier living in this neighborhood and being accessible to certain things and amenities and where, if you use transit, what is the best place to have it?

Where do you envision it?

So it's accessible to everyone because currently South First Street is not accessible to everyone across.

across Elliott, I'm sorry.

I think that's Elliott.

I'm sorry, I'm still getting used to these streets, sorry.

But yeah, I think that's where all of that will take place.

And we're really gonna depend on PHAR to help us in that process.

When someone gets hired or maybe even before that in the interview process, would there be opportunity, there's so many important

I'm wondering if, I don't know if this is a Section 3 opportunity, but if there are ways to make sure that whomever is chosen can team up, maybe we can help designate residents to help facilitate that so that it's not

All the money is not going to people we're hiring to do this plan, but some of it can be used to support those meetings in whatever way we can.

Yeah so since this is going to be a federal contract it's going to use federal dollars it's going to hit section three so it's going to have that requirement and I think we've talked about ensuring that some some residents were hired so we think your community engagement piece while creating this document so yes we have talked about that and that is definitely on our minds throughout this process.

So one other thing that we've talked about is how can we ensure that PHAR has a voice in hiring of this firm?

Due to them not being employees of the housing authority, they actually can't score or review the applications due to procurement laws.

So I think Miss Goldblatt and I ran into that same issue when we were looking at the security RFP.

I had to wait until I was hired to actually be involved in the scoring process.

So we've talked about potentially hiring a PHAR employee just to review solicitations with us because we do see them as a partner and value their opinion throughout the process.

Any other questions?

Questions, comments?

Okay, sounds good.

Um, let's see the next item on the agenda.

This is not as exciting by any means.

But can I let's see, I don't know if I can share my screen.

I do have a list of committees and we were just going to try to match up staff and board members to be able to start scheduling and taking ownership of the

the committees and let me see if I oh I can hold on a second I just I'll share my screen with the list I don't know if that's is that working no yeah we I can see it okay I can't see it myself hold on I have to find where I where it went oh my gosh

Well, for whatever reason, I can't see it very well, but I know, I think I know where it is.

So I just made a list and I thought I had some notes about who I thought had said, you know, who I had noted wanted to be on the different committees.

Right now we have

six which I mean honestly these you know a lot there's overlap in all of these I put a possible seventh that might go under some other umbrella but if we can at least get these six started right away the safety committee's up and running I didn't know if

And I guess what I wanted to do was have a staff person assigned as the lead for each one, just so the board member and the staff could talk together and make sure, you know, just in terms of agendas, making sure things are happening.

I do have a list of personnel for each committee.

So for the safety committee, we're gonna have Claudette Green and myself.

So we're gonna have two on that one.

I'll go back and make this cleaner.

And then I know Joy had been the chair for the resident service committee.

I didn't know if she, as a staff member would be representing, you know, a staff member or PHAR person or, but it would be great to have her knowledge.

But do the asset managers usually

Okay, cool.

Eventually it'll go over to a asset manager, but it's really recreating this program.

Okay.

Correct.

So I envision the staff being very involved in all of these.

The individuals we're assigning are just on the management team to run lead on the meetings.

So this is Brono Popovic.

So I was interested in staying on the redevelopment committee.

Oh, yes.

You know what?

Sorry.

Okay.

That's correct.

That's great.

Cause I know some other Lisa Green was recommended too.

And that way, I mean, since that one is, it's every week, it's also that, you know, there may be board members that I can't do every week, but it would be nice if we could have more than two.

And then personnel, I think as Green mentioned, or I can't remember if someone nominated her as being a good person to do it, or if she actually expressed her own interest.

I didn't know if this, I was trying to also add like the, what am I trying to say, frequency.

and it seemed to be safety committees every other week.

I know in the past resident services has been every month.

And that one covers a lot.

So maybe there's other smaller spinoff ones with various partners.

I think the maintenance parallel track committee has been every month.

Redevelopment, it's every week.

Personnel, it seemed like not having served on it, but it seemed like maybe monthly.

So I'll join Lisa there.

Okay, and then the financial committee

I didn't know if that was descriptive enough.

Are we just checking the sustainability of the organization?

Whatever.

We'll have to go back and make sure that we restate the charge for each one.

We don't need to have paragraphs and paragraphs.

We're just looking at the sustainability of the organization or we're checking monthly.

status of finances.

But I thought Miss Henry and Miss Goldblatt and Miss Walker wanted to be on that one.

I'm not sure.

Yes, I was interested.

Miss Henry, were you interested in that one?

sure you don't have to be i mean there's other okay i'll keep you on there um it's goldblatt are you okay if i take you off just for the official uh to commissioner yeah totally okay we will do that for now um

Great, so we have, I think this is a good start and we can fill it out and we'll start with the staff and board members to set up the timing.

The safety committee has a time, redevelopment has a set time.

I think maintenance had a set, it was like a Tuesday at six time, but maybe it needs to be revisited based on current.

I feel like we just need a weekly matrix of when,

Things are happening.

I know Ms. Green is on, she's still on the planning commission.

I think Ms. Walker's on city council, PHAR meetings, so maybe we can do a little draft weekly schedule so that we can get things, that time set fit everyone's schedule.

Great.

Questions, comments?

Do you think that's enough?

Then we can circulate the draft and start getting times set for these.

and I also added reporting so we make sure there's either a person in charge of reporting at the monthly meetings when we can do full reports or they're doing a quick written minutes or we make sure that the information cycles back to everyone.

Okay.

So we'd like to have some time.

It's not on the agenda, but I'd love to add public comment.

And then the board has a closed session on a personnel issue.

And then that's it for tonight.

And we are getting to be 645.

I know these onscreen meetings can seem longer for some reason.

Okay, so public comment, I see a hand raised.

Where is Mr. Rice?

Sure, sure.

I'd just like to welcome our registered attendees to this evening's CRHA work session.

And we are at the public comment portion of the meeting.

If you'd like to address the commission during this time, please click and please click your raise hand icon or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine.

We will call on you on the order of hands raised.

And once we enable your audio, please unmute your mic.

You will have three minutes for comment.

And right now we have one person with their hand up and it's Mr. Brandon Collins.

Evening commissioners.

It's Brandon Collins.

I am an organizer for FAR, the Public Housing Association of Residents.

We're the duly recognized

Resident Counsel and Resident Advisory Board.

Just had an election and got some new folks on our board, which is really exciting.

And we will also be appointing some folks soon to fill out all our seats.

This was a good meeting, a good overview by Dave.

I think you all know what I'm gonna comment on.

So, there's multiple problems with RAD,

I guess my biggest concern as concerns the RFP is if you look at it, they're going to come back all RAD and they're really not going to look at much else.

And I think, you know, in terms of thinking about RAD and why it might not be right for the community, you know, they have made some changes.

They have made some pretty good changes.

on what they call 964-like protections for residents.

But that's just in resident involvement.

And honestly, I don't think they go far enough.

I'm not sure that's the biggest consideration.

I think one of the biggest considerations is with RAD, you lose public housing units, you lose the ACC,

units.

And I think as a result, it forces anybody in a RAD conversion to have to look at mixed income market rate scenarios in order to make things pay.

I think the way that the benefits that you can get from RAD, you can also get from Demo Dispo without losing your public housing.

And I would also add that the changes that they made to RAD over at HUD were

based on really, really very little resident, public housing resident participation in those.

What they had was some organized groups of section eight residents getting some things in there for them.

We're not opposed to looking at it and seeing if things can work.

I just think if you look all across the country, residents have not been satisfied with the things that happen in a RAD conversion.

And there's been a lot of really bad disasters and a whole lot of different ways it can go wrong.

And at the end of the day, I think it forces you to go into debt for different reasons.

But I just don't think that's the right way to go for housing authority.

I also wanted to just point out something about the Redevelopment Committee and seats.

There's an official allotment of seats that were agreed upon in terms of the number of votes on that.

Of course, everybody should be welcome.

And we really welcome the participation of everybody and welcome the participation, the full participation of the board.

But when it comes to seated members, I think there was already an established ratio in the last,

amended MOU.

So Dave should probably take a look at that.

I think I have one other thing, but I really, I got so sidetracked thinking about RAD that it kind of threw me off.

So I think that's it.

Okay, if anybody else would like to address the commission at this time, please click the raise hand icon, or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine.

Okay, thank you.

And in reference to Brandon's comment on RAD, Mr. Osteen and Mr.

Sales,

Can you, you know, I see his point where why should we even list it as an option if we don't want them to come back with, you know, three options of RAD?

Maybe there's a different word, whatever word you're gonna put in there.

I think Mr.

Sales, you're saying we are not prioritizing RAD or we prefer, I don't know, I'll leave it to you, but a wording that pretty much says, no, thank you.

But if, you know, it's one out of however many options

So the current phrase or wording is utilize without utilizing RAD.

Due to Miss Osteen's comments, I suggested possibly changing that to

from utilizing to prioritizing.

So it's really up to the commissioners.

PHAR and we agreed to add that language utilizing.

So if you all would like it changed, I will change it.

This is Osteen.

You know, I really don't have any strong feeling that this is something that I'm going to

You know, raise is a big issue for me.

I certainly have heard our entire body and resident base the entire time I've been on the commission.

I do hear, you know, I'm reading industry stuff all the time.

I'm talking to some big wigs in the game and, you know, I hear that subsidized public housing might go away.

Rad might be your one chance.

I mean, we might know it a lot more after the next election, but it scares me to think that this thing has been dangled out there for years and years and years as an alternative.

And we have been told basically to take it, and we have responded, no thanks.

And so that is a concern that I just want other people who are gonna be longer term

Thanks to this entity.

I want other people to be aware of what the possible impact is.

And I think for all of us representing the prudent management of this entity, as we respond back to city council who has requested this thing, and as we respond to our citizenry, I think it's prudent to look at the options.

I have no agenda I'm pushing.

I want the best thing for our residents.

And if we decide the best thing is not RAD, I'm in line with you.

The truth is out there.

I'd say just follow the data and look at what's happened where RAD has been developed and its impact on African-Americans in public housing.

That's all my last word on this.

I tend to agree with Brandon on that one.

I will say they've been talking about getting rid of public housing for the last 30 years and the same thing with HCV program.

So it comes around every year when budgets and President Trump has zeroed the budget out several times for public housing and HCV.

So it does happen and Congress fixed the budget and puts it back in there.

Mr. Osteen, it sounds like you gotta get ready with us to fight like hell if that happens.

I have no stake in us being something other than what our residents want us to be.

All right, so maybe the compromise is we say it can only be one of three.

So it's the best practices.

So maybe one of the options would be RAD instead of someone proposing all three options be RAD deals.

Yeah.

And maybe even saying to date, we have not wanted to utilize RIP.

I'm sure there'll be all the supporting documents.

All right, does anyone have a, let's just say, does anyone have a preferred wording?

I think it's just between whether we say absolutely no, don't even show us that or some wording that says only one of the options should be read.

I prefer not to utilize RAD or

Ifrad is one of the only one, let's see, someone else help me here.

I'm trying to, I agree that I'm also not interested in the market rate mixed income, kind of forced to privatize.

I'm just trying to, again, to Osteen's point, maybe there is some positive piece that we haven't heard of or thought of.

I mean, I think that if we're going to add anything in about RAD, then we need to say that any financing options would uphold the PHAR Residence Bill of Rights.

So if we were to say that even one of them is going to be RAD, they have to be able to come back to us with RAD.

They have to show up and down that it does honor PHAR's Residence Bill of Rights.

I mean, I think that the current wording is fine.

And I don't think that it precludes

Anyone, should we hear from, Joy's got her hand up in the middle of our discussion.

Joy, would you like to, oh, she's gone.

Yeah, she was coming in and out.

So I'll keep an eye out for her.

Actually, I think she's on the panelists list so I can promote her.

She was on the panelists list, so I just wasn't sure if she should be in the, in the meeting, but once she comes back again, I'll

Joe, she should be the panelist.

OK. She should receive the invitation.

So here's a potential option.

and we can keep without, I'm dropping down to the sentence below.

All right, so I still didn't touch that utilizing or prioritizing sentence.

It has 3A.

Oh yeah.

So it really, now I'm gonna let you all make that decision.

I mean, what did you, I would like to say something like preferably without utilizing RAD.

I mean, I'm okay, I'm honestly okay not looking at RAD, but I do understand that there are, you know, there, you know, we just don't know what's coming and it would be interesting if we're weighing several options to at least even see what that would mean.

There's also a lot of RAD discussion under task seven, however we,

I mean, it sounds like to me, it's absolutely going to get voted down when it when the time comes for us to make a decision.

But I still feel like to be open minded at this point, as to what the options are, is really of an administrative body like we are.

But I've said my piece.

Okay, so should we, I guess, take a straw poll, you know, a vote here on whether we keep it with, just say totally without showing us anything about like, don't even talk about RAD or some softer language that would infer, you know, that we prefer not to do RAD based on what we understand.

Miss Henry, I know, do you have any comment on that?

Well, I'm sort of like at the same place as Brandon and Miss Goldblatt in the sense that we've had many, many discussions about RAD with housing residents.

And we've also done enough research, especially with the former housing commissioner coming out of Atlanta and seeing what happened to folks in Atlanta.

and how Chicago too easy it is to convert those units when you use RAD to other mixed groups away from poor.

And so that was one of the reasons I think why we wanted to stay away from RAD.

But it always has this sort of back door and back into the conversation.

And so if you just think that somehow because the corporate world wants it there, the developers and the realtors and whatever, and if they won't do anything else, then at some point we don't have a system where other people are being heard.

And that's the only thing that makes me want to shy away from it.

Yeah, I still like the current language.

I like adding in a line about the Residence Bill of Rights in the second sentence, as Mr.

Sales had mentioned.

But I think if I saw a proposal in which someone said, preferably without doing something, and I thought, I mean, I would say, oh, I'm going to start to fill in all, I mean, that preferably just opens the door, I think, to get a lot of rad recommendations.

Because it's vague, it says,

Well, now we're really open to this other thing.

So I would prefer, I mean, we're going to hear about RAD no matter what.

You know, no, I disagree with that.

I don't know why we would get RAD proposals if we twice in here have said CRHA is not interested in converting to a private project-based section eight platform such as a rental assistance demonstration.

Yeah, but I would say that is unresponsive to our request for services if they turn around and do that.

You know, look, we're gonna take whatever this information is and we're gonna vote it up or down.

And it sounds like we, you know, we're gonna vote it down.

But I just think, you know, we're looking at for ideas, we're looking at a matrix of ideas.

I just, I don't think it hurts to have options in front of you.

Even, you know, in fact, I used to work for a guy that he always used to tell me to come up with the one good solution and two bad solutions.

So we had things that we could vote down easy.

You know, if we got better solutions, they're gonna win.

And if we already have a majority of the board that is preconceived to say no rad, you know, then it's just an exercise.

And in part A, it says six to 10 public housing, the research the best practices of six to 10 housing authorities.

So what if we went back to saying only only one, we will only accept one rad example.

For me.

Because one out of 10 or one out of six gives us, at least we can feel good if we do vote it down and we say, oh, this is why, now after they're explaining it to us in this way, they may try to put a positive spin on it, but then we can do our own research too.

How do you feel about that saying, going back to the idea of saying only one option should include, involve RAD?

I think we should say could, rather than should.

Could, yes, thank you, could.

Because that gives us five to nine, if they do add one, that we could then compare.

Are you all, is everyone okay with that?

Miss Henry, are you okay with that?

Saying it could, what did you say Miss Goldblatt?

It just could not should, but could.

Yeah.

I still think you're pointing it in that direction.

And I mean, you're putting it, even when you're saying it's a low priority, you're making it a high priority.

You know, why single out red period?

And then we can take a vote.

It may show up anyway.

You might get six out of 10 red.

All right, let's vote on the late, well, anyone wanted to actually spell out this amendment word for word?

Ms. Goldblatt, could you say what I was trying to say?

For public housing author, oh.

Let me get back to the point in the document.

Sorry.

Research the best practices of six to 10 public housing authorities.

Oh, Brandon's satisfied.

Oh, okay.

She left the meeting because she wasn't being acknowledged.

Oh, that she's already left.

Maybe we can try to get her to come back in.

Will you text her back?

Okay.

How did that sound?

To increase deeply affordable housing and financial security for the public housing authorities,

So I'd like us, I mean, I don't care to add in anything about, you know, saying that only one could, I think it's clear there without utilizing rads.

Okay.

But I do think in the second sentence, and I mean, we can vote on this, but my second sentence, best practitioners should include a mix of financing options.

being successfully utilized by authorities and that uphold PHAR's residence bill of rights for redevelopment.

And I don't know, but if that's absolutely, if the bill of rights is absolutely in conflict with RAD, I think RAD is history for us.

Okay, so let's vote.

Who's in favor with just keeping the without utilizing RAD?

I think everyone's in favor of that.

Is everyone in favor of adding the piece about the Residence Bill of Rights?

Yes, okay.

And in terms of, without keeping the piece that says without utilizing RAD, I guess thumbs up if that's okay to just keep it as it is.

One, two, Miss Henry, keep that.

Or don't even mention it.

I've been staying out of this conversation for a reason, just because of my other role.

When you start talking about, it has been taken in the past that you are eliminating funding streams by eliminating the conversation.

which I don't think that's necessarily the case, but I think what will probably be asked is how do we know it wouldn't be effective?

So just I think what Laura

And that I, you know, we all agree there that if it does not align with you know, the resident's vision, then it's not something that we should consider.

Okay.

Does that mean we take the whole thing out without utilizing RAD?

No, no, no, that's okay.

All right, so we're sticking with what we have and adding the sentence about the, that it must be within the, it must support the residence bill of rights.

I do have one question on that last part.

Do we want them to demonstrate that it would be in compliance with the Bill of Rights or is the current language strong enough?

I like demonstrate, I think.

Because no matter what, yeah, yeah, that would be, I think that would be best.

if they had to have some sort of written bullet point, something coming back to us about how it does that.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And any, I don't see any other, I think Joy is not on the list anymore.

Okay, and Miss Slaughter, if you can hear us, we're going to go into a closed session.

Okay.

I can copy, are we allowed?

I can copy the link into the chat.

I don't know if that's allowed for the closed session.

Are we allowed to, is that something we can do?

Cause I have it on my, I have it.

The chat's only available for panelists.

Okay.

So let me pull it up.

Are we leaving now?

Yeah, I think I have to read.

OK, so Laura, if you can see the chat, Ms. Goldblatt, she gave us the link to go into the closed session.

And I need to read the, and we need to vote to go into closed session.

So I hereby move that CRHA close this open meeting and go into a closed session for the purpose of discussion no matters as authorized by section 2.2-3711A1 of the Code of Virginia.

and then we read the rest on the way back.

So we need to do a roll call.

Vote is lovely still on here.

Chair Rector?

Yes.

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Yes.

Commissioner Green?

Dr. Henry?

Yes.

Commissioner Osteen?

Commissioner Slaughter?

Yes.

Okay, great.

So now we'll go into the other the other link.

This certainly doesn't feel like retirement.

Oh my God, I know.

All right, so it looks like the board members are back.

I can see other participants on here.

All right, so I think we can go ahead.

I'll read the certification of the closed meeting, and then we've got one motion.

So this is that we certified we had a closed meeting whereas the Charlottesville redevelopment and housing authority has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and

Whereas Section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia requires a certification by the Board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law.

Now therefore be it resolved that the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge.

One, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies.

And two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion

convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by CRHA.

And then someone needs to move that the foregoing motion be adopted and introduced.

I move to close the closed session.

I think we need a, oh, we don't need a second.

We just need a roll call.

Director?

Yes.

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Yes.

Commissioner Green?

Dr. Henry?

Yes.

Commissioner Osteen?

Yes.

Wonderful.

And now we're back in the public meeting and we have one thing to vote on.

I would like to make a motion to allow employee aid

I second.

Okay.

Chair Redker?

Yes.

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Yes.

Commissioner Green?

Dr. Henry?

Yes.

Commissioner Osteen?

Commissioner Slaughter?

Yes.

Great.

Motion passed.

All right.

Second.

Leslie, sorry.

Commissioner Green?

Dr. Henry?

Yes.

Commissioner Osteen?

Commissioner Slaughter?

Mayor Walker?

Okay.

We are adjourned.

Thank you everyone so much for all your time.