CRHA Meeting   10/25/2021

So now that being said, we are going to ask for someone to call us to order.

Mayor Walker?

Present.

Commissioner Green?

Present, Maddy Green is present.

Commissioner Wicks?

Present.

We have quorum.

Okay.

John, do you know when our next meeting, the exact date of the next month's meeting is?

Page two, the safety committee meetings.

Okay, so I'd like to welcome our newest commissioner, Rosea Parker.

Welcome aboard.

Thank you so much.

So we want to now go to public comments from PHAR.

Is the PHAR representative here?

I think Joe may have lost connection.

Can she be promoted?

Yes, I'm going to allow her to talk right now.

Do you have anything you want to add, Ms. Carr?

No, I think you did that quite well.

Well, my apologies for mispronouncing one of my staff's names, but I am really excited for y'all to be able to get to know all of them.

Do I need to read these minutes into the record or just call for them to be approved?

You can call for them to be approved.

So I'd like to make a motion that the minutes from Monday, August 23rd, 2021 be accepted into the record.

I can second the motion.

Okay, so all those who approve.

Roll call.

Okay.

Commissioner Wicks.

You can call me whatever you want.

Commissioner Mary Walker.

Yes.

Commissioner Doc Henry?

Yes.

The motion passes five to zero.

And congratulations.

Thank you.

Any thoughts on that?

I think that sounds like a good way to all be on the same page.

Can we do that in private?

So you might have a coordinator put it together and so that as long as it's communicating with everybody individually, it shouldn't be a problem.

Yes.

Okay.

And then another one, Laura's not here right now, but that I would think you might, could help with would be safety?

Most definitely safety.

The residents board, they're really good at getting that information out to you.

I normally get the resident service meetings in my email.

So forget with Kathleen.

The only one that I don't get is the safety meetings.

Sales can get you the information on that.

And the link is also on the agenda, page two.

Ms. Walker.

So I still have- Okay, he wants to ask a question.

So we just need approval from the chair to make that happen.

Who is this person?

Her name is Asia Green.

And she is the resident?

Yes, she is.

I have no problem with that.

And we also need to fill the spot from former Commissioner Lisa Green resigning from the Redevelopment Committee.

Redevelopment.

It's pretty connected.

Anyone else want that one?

You.

I thought so too.

Thank you.

What are your ideas about those two options?

If I was to just say, look at a dateline, what is the very end time by which we need to have all of this finished in order to make a decision?

So a month from now.

We really wouldn't have any time for anything other than the board evaluating within that time frame.

It will be hard to get feedback from the community members with a significant number of community members within that time frame.

Okay, well, I like the fact that Miss Green was doing a lacquered type of scale, but I think her questions would have to be a lot shorter, you know, as opposed to the big chunks of information that we're trying to take into account.

That's why I'm breaking them down and instead of them being less than a bullet point like that, you'll be able to rate each one.

Okay.

So I'll have that finished tonight and sent out by tomorrow.

And then one other thing with regard to the residents, it would be a different type of survey because there are different types of questions.

Yes.

And so that, and I agree with you, because I was almost gonna say that we would have to come up with maybe like, maybe we were doing a 10th of people at each buildings, but I think at this point, it's better just to think about that into the future, you know, where you do give it to the board, the residents board and PHAR, and allow them to come up with what they would consider that by next year.

I think Kathleen, did you have a,

I know other housing authorities have utilized that.

Kathleen or John, when are you all planning to have those completed?

So we're still in concept phase.

One completed?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

I don't think that will be an issue.

So then you would have that to influence, I'm not going to be here, but you would have that to influence your decision when you had the sessions regarding the performance evaluation.

Are you all okay with that?

Or do you want it to go through by far and the resident services committee?

But I would like to see something in your reviews of having a process where it's never included and that that happens every year.

appropriate or how people want to give feedback?

And then if there's something different that the board or PHAR suggest, then they will incorporate it.

If this is gonna be the part of the process.

Is that agreement to use the process that staff does and have it compiled and sent to the board and presented to the board by October of each year?

I probably would almost say to submit it to us by September, but October is fine.

That has been, that's the way the conversations went last year.

I don't think I have anything else to add besides that.

So my apologies on that part.

Yes, I apologize as well.

So Ms. Edwards, if you have any thoughts about that, also chime in, but commissioners, what are your thoughts?

Yes with of course the caveat that the letter would be written in collaboration with the PHAR staff and more importantly the PHAR board of directors so that that sounds fine to me.

And it would be good to just think about what a process like that might look like so that it doesn't fall through the cracks.

But if you would just use maybe some of the PHAR staff to do targeted or limited surveys of specific units, getting people to answer, that would be another way of getting that type of thing.

So Ms. Edwards, do you all think you all could have a letter for this year's evaluation by the 9th

That's for down the way.

Just from board, this, you know, a letter from PHAR.

That shouldn't be a problem.

Oh, go ahead, Ms. Edwards.

So yeah, we should be able to have something by the 9th.

Sales, did you have a?

And so just keep that in mind, maybe some collaboration with either Mary Lou or someone else in that department, maybe good to collect paper copies or be a vessel somehow.

You know, John will provide us with wine or something.

We can have a closed session after.

Yeah.

Are you okay with that process?

And so we might want to build a timeline that says if that's going to be the case, that we would need to start that process by May or April, whenever it'll be, so that we can make sure that we gather that broader feedback so that we don't end up in a situation where we say, oh, shoot, we really wanted to consider broader resident feedback, but we didn't begin that time.

I think that we should shoot for higher engagement than that and hopefully whatever process that they come up with produces that.

I think that the higher resident engagement we could get, it would be great to have a lot of robust resident engagement every year.

Okay.

So are you saying, excuse me, so are you saying that it would be CRHA doing the surveys or the PHAR staff?

CRHA staff.

I prefer PHAR staff.

So we can't commit PHAR staff.

I mean, if we could, because I definitely know that it would get done with PHAR compared to waiting for CRHA staff.

So are we okay with seeing and then maybe critiquing the process once we know what they expect for it to look like?

Yeah, once the critique- That works for me.

Okay.

All right, well, let me, I'll talk to, cause Laura, I think we talked about whether we did, whether we, the email copies of the surveys were the only way that we would be able to collect them.

How would we collect feedback from them?

All right.

So I can work on them that weekend and get them back out to you all to complete.

Cause that'd be 29th of

And I apologize already for the time crunch.

I can do that.

So again, my apologies.

And so now I would like to, oh, are you finished?

That's- Yes, unless there were any, unless there was any questions.

Okay, so I want to move on and get a safety committee update.

If it hasn't, we can go back to the all virtual, but I just wanted to check in about whether or not that location has been taken care of.

Yes, we're going to do it at South First Street tomorrow.

Okay, and anywhere specifically at South First Street?

and 912 Building.

And then it's 904 to which one?

904 to 910.

But yes, anyone else who wants to weigh in, please do so if I've forgotten anything or if there's anything inaccurate in what I've said.

Laura, you're gonna have another commissioner joining you.

Has that been assigned?

and Parker.

I don't know, you might just be hearing now that we're in person tomorrow, but I can send you all the Zoom information if the in-person component isn't gonna work.

So we have to be able to reach out to, you know, even though we know that you said we're going to try this in person, but it's still somehow we still got to be able to reach other residents that don't have the means of transportation nor internet.

I would love to get some ideas about what we can do to make sure that all residents are included regardless of their internet status or their ability to get transportation.

Okay, any other input?

Kathleen, hand this up.

Okay, Catherine, go ahead.

Todd Niemeyer was one of the individuals in the group who brought up the idea and we've had just tremendous ideas also from April Oliver, but that's what's happening with that group.

If not, then we would like to hear an update from the executive director.

Chair Henry, I think we have the finance report.

Finance director update.

So does anybody have any questions?

So will any of these things affect CHRAs standing with regard to rating how it's ranked?

And I know we're kind of winding that down.

of Operating Reserve based upon our most up-to-date financial report to HUD.

Laura's hand is up.

Are we seeing any places in the budget, again, that are, it's not about cuts to staff or cuts to resident services, but anything that we say like this is something that we could forego if we were in a budget crisis, not crisis, but a budget crunch scenario and we needed to scale back and like devote funds elsewhere.

And even if you look at our financials without the shortfall funding, we are still positive at every site.

Thank you.

We're constantly looking for places to save money, even if it's 20 bucks a month on a recurring invoice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are we fully staffed for that, or are you still looking to hire for?

So we do plan on keeping that position open year round.

Is that one that you're now hiring for or are you looking to procure services for that?

No, that's one that we're going to hire for and it's probably going to be at the beginning of the year in like January.

Perfect.

So we're trying to do a lot of things to make it go down, but it's definitely gonna require some work on the residents to work with the eviction provision coordinator to make that happen.

The residents that are having issues with rent, are these in any way related to childcare issues?

And I think that's all I have unless you all have any questions.

Why those are hardest to fill and does it have to do with like the wait list or anything that the board can help with?

The bedrooms are tiny.

Which inspection?

but the inspector identified every unit that did not have one so we went out and spent over two thousand dollars on new testers and then we got an email from the field office saying hey we're sorry that they identified all these but you actually don't have to do it too late we already spent the money we already had individuals installing them so we just got that friendly little email that hey yeah you wasted some money but it's all is on us

Okay.

So.

So next year will definitely be scored and I assume all of our properties will be inspected.

And I believe that's from Mr. Collins.

So happy to answer any questions and anything else.

Any questions?

Well, thank you, Chair.

Okay, so I guess that about does it for tonight.

Public comments if there are no other questions of Mr. Collins.

Chair, I see no hands raised.

I would like to make a motion to adjourn because we're not gonna need a closed session tonight.

Second.

Okay, can we get someone to call?

Chair Henry?

Yes.

Mayor Walker?

Yes.

Commissioner Green?

She had to leave.

Commissioner Parker?

She said yes.

Got it.

Okay, so see everyone on the 11th.

Bye-bye.