Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board Meeting   6/24/2024

Yep.

I don't know.

I haven't had any attention.

I've just got it upgraded.

He grows in Switzerland.

He's a man who's from Paris.

And maybe he works at this point in time this week.

Actually she called me yesterday.

This one is fine.

All right, so good evening everybody.

We hereby call this Charlottesville Housing Authority meeting to order.

Miss Kerri, oh I'm sorry.

Sure, Commissioner Wicks?

Here.

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Here.

Thank you.

Good afternoon or good evening everyone.

Clearly I have a plus one.

So we are excited to be here tonight for our June Charlottesville Housing and Redevelopment meeting.

We do not have our executive director, Mr.

Sales, in person, but he will be joining us virtually.

And if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Payne will be joining us.

I must say I'm really excited to be

See you, everybody.

Welcome to our newest commissioner.

Earl Hicks, commissioner.

Thank you, Mr. Hicks.

Mr. Hicks, in addition to being a resident, a longstanding member of the NAACP and community member and activist.

So we are really excited to have you here.

Happy to see you, Miss Wicks and Dr. Goldblatt and Javier and Miss Alice.

Miss Washington, it's good to see you.

I missed you so much.

Well, with that being said, we will move forward with our meeting.

Can we have a quick moment of silence please?

Thank you.

Next we'll move forward with any general announcements and or meeting date slash reminders.

Anybody have any announcements that they'd like to make?

Okay, hearing none, we'll move forward with public comments by far, followed by public comments from the community.

Thank you.

My name is Emily Dreyfus.

Hi, Miss Giles.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Good evening.

So of course once again thank you Emily for introducing me.

I'm Latricia Giles.

I'm really excited about being able to lead PHAR and I wanted to go ahead and of course just give some updates from I guess since my new time joining PHAR.

So the first

bit of information I wanted to get out is the election process for PHAR has started so if anyone would like to run or nominate someone you can call PHAR at 434-984-3255 the next update is redevelopment activities are of course still an important part of the work that we're doing and we are definitely glad to continue

Our lovely relationship with CRHA and other groups to ensure that resident-led redevelopment does continue.

So we've been doing that.

We have a partnership that I want to talk about.

We have some youth activities that are coming up.

And so there will be the NextGen Tech Fest that will be held on July 20th from 1 to 3.

And that's going to be

Of course, it's the Next Gen Tech Fest and it's going to be on the 20th of July from 1 to 3 at C4K and like I said we'll have more information that will go out regarding that doing some fliering and then posting.

The other information that we learned about is the city scholarship program for swimming pools.

We do have information, so anyone who is interested in trying to get scholarship information for the summer, of course, please contact us.

We'll make sure that we get you that information and get you connected where you need to.

The next thing that we've been doing is we wanted to just update that we've been partnering with local groups to provide monthly food outreach at Sixth Street.

And if there's extra food, we make sure that it does get to Crescent Halls as of right now.

And we've been working with CRHA and other groups to start regular food services at Crescent Halls.

And then the last reminder is that, of course, if anybody does want to reach out, just please reach out to PHAR.

I'll give you the number one more time.

It is 434-984-3255.

All right.

That reminds me, we do have a, if I could backtrack for a second.

commissioners, I forgot to announce or say publicly tomorrow for everyone's information.

The Housing Authority will be meeting with the Charlottesville City Council for a joint meeting tomorrow at 6 p.m.

at City Space, thank you, I cannot remember the location.

The meeting we're anticipating taking a little longer than an hour or so, if you will, and we're looking forward to addressing and going over a wide variety of different issues.

Commissioners will be there again, joined by our lovely counterparts from the City of Charlottesville City Council.

So looking forward to that, again, 6 p.m. tomorrow at City Space.

and also online with the tech piece that was just named by Miss Giles.

The Tonsil League in week two will actually be opening up

Applications for any student or young person between the grades of 5 and 12 with a special preference for those who are in the housing authority to join our second annual We Code 2 coding academy.

So this will be taking place from Monday, July 8th to Friday, July 19th at the UVA Equity Center.

It will be completely free from 8.30 to 3 p.m.

from 8.30 to 3 p.m. Transportation can be worked out in the event in which it's needed.

Lunch will be provided, all expenses paid, and we have room for 30 students.

It's a two-week camp or academy.

They told me not to say camp because they're older.

It's a two-week academy in which we'll be teaching them not only coding and technology skills but a wide variety of other things as well.

So if you have any young people again between the grades,

5 and 12 who are interested, just look on the Tosser League Facebook or Instagram page and you'll see the information that goes up tonight.

So if that concludes our announcements, we can move forward.

So the next item will be approving the board minutes from, or excuse me, updates from commissioners and discussion.

Are you guys meeting the day before Fourth of July?

I guess so.

Great.

Mr.

Sales kind of sounds like Darth Vader coming through the thing.

I don't know where that came from.

But anyway, all right, great.

So we will, any other announcements or things?

Oh, next we'll have the approval of the board minutes from April 22nd.

Any communications or anything in which anybody would like to add and or was missed from the April board meeting?

All right, we'll move for approval.

Ms. Carey, do you mind doing a roll vote?

All right.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Motion passes 5-0.

Next up, we have resolution 1477, an amendment to the parking policy.

This can be found in attachment B. Dr. Goldblatt or Commissioner Wicks, but either of you like to read it.

In West.

Oh, correct.

I apologize.

Yes.

Actually, there's going to be a slight amendment to the agenda.

We're going to hold this item until our next meeting at the request of our executive director, Mr.

Sales.

I understand that there's a couple of things at which we still need to work out.

Is that accurate to information, Mr.

Yeah, we got some comments from Legal Aid.

maybe like three hours ago and so in order to address those I want to pull this.

The changes that we're proposing have nothing to do with the comments but if we're going to make changes based upon those comments I'd rather do it all at one time instead of having to

We'll do it right after this, if that's okay.

and then we can start that process.

I will say we started the engagement with residents over 60 days ago and so we've done a lot of engagement.

We provide a lot of engagement opportunities and we've done it at two or three different safety meetings around the part of the policy.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Sales.

So we will, I'm assuming have this on the agenda for our July meeting.

It's okay.

We don't have a sign in sheet.

No, we don't have a sign in sheet.

It all depends on what the changes are and how fast we can get them in and out to everyone to discuss.

Alright, thank you Mr.

It looks like we had someone present who wanted to say a few things about the parking policy, is that right?

So I'll take responsibility and accountability on our agenda.

The second item is public comments followed by PHAR comments.

And I just moved forward with the PHAR comments and I wasn't aware.

So if the commissioners are okay with it, I would like, since we had a shortened item for

Excuse me, shorten item five with the resolution.

You all okay with that?

I just have a couple of questions and comments.

I'm understanding that the Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing has money that they fund.

My question is, and what I would like to know, is the money that they have, the waiting lists,

The people have put on the waiting list for two and three years and it has not moved.

One of them is a senior, which is my mom.

It has not moved.

I have talked to John Sales.

Nothing is moving along.

I'm just concerned about that and it seems like nothing is going in that direction.

I have talked to several people and the only thing I keep getting is the money comes in, there's a waiting list, and then the money

It's not moving the people.

If you have 2,000 people on a waiting list and you're getting the funds in, these people are not moving.

I understand that you're moving homeless people, veterans.

That's not true.

My sister's a veteran from the Air Force.

She's been on the waiting list for five years.

She has not got an answer.

There's no courtesy of sending a letter out saying, are you still interested in being on housing?

I'm not understanding.

And I have been talking to everybody, not just you, Mr.

Sales, the mayor, and everyone about this situation, and nobody seems to want to help.

My mother's 84 years old.

I applied for her back when she was 82.

Crescent Hall was then being remodeled.

I filled out the application.

I went down to the 6th Street when they was on 6th Street to the building, changed her address because she lived in Michigan.

I moved her here.

We still haven't heard anything.

There's nothing moving.

And I'd just like to ask those questions.

And another question I had also, and see if you can answer this one.

CRHA, the turnovers.

I had a good rapport with a couple of the people that worked there, and they no longer work there.

I was keeping tabs with them.

And when I called and asked, I get nothing.

When I asked, where's my mother on the list, I get nothing.

The answer from me to them, they have no answer for that.

I'm not understanding.

Sure, so I think there's two questions.

The second one, we can't comment on the personnel matters.

With all due respect, and I apologize, we can't comment on that portion or we'll all be in trouble.

The first question, specifically in regards to the waiting list, I think it would be more appropriate that we hear from Mr.

Sales, specific in regards to the waiting list.

Well, just one quick question, Mr.

Sales, before you go.

Well, I guess a question for both of you.

Me and Mr.

Sales have talked on the telephone for several times.

The response that I get from Mr.

Sales is, I'll get back with you.

Matter of fact, one was May the 24th.

It was the weekend before Memorial Day.

I understood.

I'll get back with you on Tuesday.

We are June 24th, and I have not heard from Mr.

Sales.

So I have an issue with that too.

I keep getting put off of what is going on.

I don't understand.

I mean, somebody needs to explain that to me.

And I'm not getting there.

I'm not getting any answers from anybody.

And I understand that they got another million dollars, CRHA.

And I understand that that's being for renovation.

I did my little research a little bit.

But my thing of it is, I understand that.

and I understand that you're trying to help the homeless.

I understand that you're trying to help the ones that's coming out of foster care that need to be placed.

I understand that too.

But you have seniors out here that have been on this list for a while that's not being moved and you keep getting shuffled.

Her paperwork, I don't know.

I asked the question, where is she on the list?

We're not working with the number system.

I was told that.

Ms. Wells, I think the last time we talked I explained to you about the different funding sources that we do have and that the voucher program that your mother is a part of is one funding source and that funding source

We are not able to lease up any additional vouchers.

We're only able to continue funding the ones that we already have leased up because we're running a shortfall.

But then I explained to you that there are other programs, such as the voucher program for veterans that we are leasing up for.

And then there's a voucher program for the foster youth that we are leasing up for.

And so those programs have separate pots of money that are specific to those categories.

And when I explained that to you,

Okay, I passed your information along for the referral process, but it has to be referred to the city.

I will reach out to you tomorrow and I will get you an individual about getting you referred over.

Okay, so now I'm waiting until tomorrow again and I'm not being disrespectful, please forgive me, but my thing of it is I keep waiting on you telling me this and I'm right here in front of your board and every time you tell me that I'm waiting and I'm waiting.

You gave me a number to The Haven.

Those people never answered.

I followed your lead.

Right.

So that was explained.

OK. And my question to that was when I talked to you also about when you run an ad,

to open up housing for Section 8 vouchers and housing for seniors in Crescent Hall, but you don't place anybody in there.

And I understand, I know how many units Crescent Hall has, it's 125 units in there.

105, I'm sorry.

I understand that.

I already know.

I used to work down there.

I used to take care of some of the seniors down there.

So I know all about what's going on.

But my whole problem is, is that when you run an ad to tell these people to fill out these vouchers, and then they're looking to find placement, and then they got to constantly keep trying to get help, and you're not helping.

It's been four, almost going on four years.

And we're still trying to fill out an application.

and then you're trying to send me to, but you're trying to send me to somewhere else which I didn't apply to.

The legal requirement for all housing authorities is to have a wait list that is three times the size of the program capacity.

And so when we open up our wait list, it's because we had no more individuals on the wait list, not because we are prepared to serve 1,900 families,

It's to get families ready so when we do have assistance, we have a wait list to reference to give the assistance.

So there's a preference system that's located in that wait list and that controls who gets assistance and when they get assistance.

So when you open it up, you're having these people wait for years?

So every couple of years we do a part of each of the wait list, which is when emails and letters go out to families to see if they're still interested in that, in the wait list.

So I know we did not get that.

and we did not get that either because the mail came to me.

So I'm listening to what you say Mr.

Sales and I get very frustrated about it because I'm just, you're talking but it's not going anywhere and something has to be done because you can't keep opening up saying we're opening up for housing and people are applying but no one is moving

and people are going to places that you know, like for instance, I can guarantee you if you will support half of the people down in Crescent Hall right now, and I know Miss Alice right there, very well, if you will support half of the people that's down there right now, besides Miss Alice, Miss Harriet, and the rest of them that I know, I guarantee you their application has not been in there as long as my mother's.

And they are not homeless.

You're fine.

I'm fine.

One, I think I can speak for the board collectively.

We appreciate you coming and sharing and collectively as an organization, I will say, and I'm pretty sure I can speak for Mr.

Sales in this regard as well.

We want to try to find a resolution.

I'm going to apologize to you and your mother that we haven't been able to find one yet.

What I can commit to do with the permission of the board is have a conversation with Mr.

Sales this evening.

And we both can look to have a conversation with you tomorrow.

I think I heard Mr.

Sales say he mentioned a resource in terms of going to the haven.

Is that accurate, Mr.

Sales?

Okay, so we have a contact there with Ms. Kahn so we can reach out to her.

I'm literally going to reach out to her now.

And Mr.

Sales and I, again, with permission from the board,

We will both contact you tomorrow to try to find out what a resolution is.

Now I will also say I know Mr.

Sales, although this situation may be frustrating,

I do know Mr.

Sales.

He works really hard to try and find resolutions.

Sometimes they can be swift.

Sometimes they're not.

And again, we apologize for that.

And we, as a board and collectivist organization, we appreciate you coming down.

And tomorrow, as he said, he's going to get in contact with you, but I can assure you tomorrow,

We'll talk and we will figure out how we can try to move this forward.

Best way to move this forward.

Yeah and I just want to let you know if you try to reach me by cell phone I work at the prison.

So there's no phone.

If there's one thing maybe to add, and I see that Commissioner Payne is on Zoom, but maybe one thing we might want to add to our discussions with the city is how to streamline these referral processes so that people don't feel like they're just getting the runaround.

I don't know if there's like a, but some way to make sure that when Mr.

Yes, Dr. Goldblatt, if you don't mind, well, maybe we can make a note and then tomorrow when we have our joint session with city council, we will be sure to bring this up.

I think that's an excellent point.

And some of this, unfortunately, is kind of like bureaucracy.

and you have to go through this step to go through that step.

And unfortunately, when you're doing that, you're dealing with real people who are waiting in limbo.

And we do know sometimes communication can be dropped for whatever reason.

Something can be sent out wrong address or not sent or not caught.

But I will say, I can say confidently as one commissioner, not saying as the chair, but I can say confidently that I think our staff

does work hard to try and get it right.

And again, I apologize that we haven't gotten it right yet, but tomorrow we will talk.

Okay.

All right.

I can assure you tomorrow we will talk.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

And thank you for answering those questions, Mr.

Sales.

We have another comment.

Hello, my name is Natasha Scott.

Good afternoon, Miss Scott.

Sorry.

I have been homeless for about two years now.

I was promised an apartment September 15, 2022 and I was told that I was given a call about my apartment.

I did not get a call.

I did not get a letter because I didn't have a residence.

The haven does not work.

I'm going to let her know now.

The haven does not work.

You can go down there all you want to.

You're going to get told by different people and sent to different departments, and you're just going to get the run around.

I have since then lost my son to my ex-fiance, which he's without a lot of things that his mother would give him.

I have been taking care of my son alone for 15 years, and now I'm stuck out here on the streets with nowhere to go.

I was in a shelter which I was abused in the shelter.

My eye has been messed up and nobody wants to take accountability for that.

So I just want to know what are y'all going to do to help us?

It's a lot of us that are on the street right now and we don't have anywhere to go.

There's no place to go.

No place to get water.

No place to get food.

And on the weekends, the bathrooms are even closed.

So I don't understand where we're supposed to go.

What are we supposed to do?

And when there's only one shelter that's taking people in and they abide by only rules that they want to abide by and change them up daily, what are we supposed to do?

I'm not understanding why we have all these waiting lists for all these programs.

And if you work the program, it's supposed to work for you.

I'm

Thank you, Ms. Scott.

Ms. Scott, hold on, Ms. Scott, before you leave.

Well, one, you have placed your information and applied with us, correct?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Mr.

Sales, with permission from the board, I'm asking Mr.

Sales if we could, one, if we're not familiar with this situation, if we could maybe do a review of sorts in terms of where Ms. Scott may be on the waiting list.

Is that something that we could do, Mr.

Okay.

Miss Scott, do you have a way for us to get in contact with you?

I do.

So do you mind leaving your contact information with Miss Carey in the green?

And what we can do is provide you with an update tomorrow.

Okay.

Now that doesn't give you an immediate solution.

And I apologize that we don't have an immediate solution.

But what I'm thinking and again, permission from the board and input from Mr.

Sales, what I'm thinking is, is that if we have steps, quote unquote, the first step would be for us to review where you are on the list.

And there may needs to be a review in terms of your, quote unquote, status.

Thank you.

I'd appreciate that.

I used to work for the PHAR boards though.

I attended every meeting, almost every meeting.

No.

Mr.

OK.

Thank you all for your comments.

We really appreciate you all sharing.

We'll move on to item six.

There'll be a maintenance update.

This will just be a verbal update.

We'll be providing this.

Will this come from you, Mr.

Yeah, it's going to come from me.

All right, so the maintenance department, we're almost fully staffed.

We made the decision to hire two additional turn team technicians to assist with some of the additional capital fund projects that are coming out of the pipeline.

So like this week they will be working on the exterior light replacement at West Haven and the appliance replacement at Madison Avenue.

And the rest of the appliances at Mickey and Riverside will be replaced within the next couple weeks but they will order on Friday.

and so we're almost fully sat there.

We're working on moving the technicians to site base starting in July.

There'll be two technicians at West Haven, one at South First Street, one at Mickey, one assigned to Mickey Madison in Riverside,

Williams, one at Galway, and two floaters, which will have a fully staffed preventative maintenance and work order tech team.

We have had, recently, within the last two

A couple months we've had a few break-ins at our bike shop and so we're working on modifications to advance to secure them.

We've already added cameras and that has not deterred the break-ins.

We've had four of them and so of the things taken it's been mostly equipment owned by staff members which CRHA has replaced.

But we're working to curb those break-ins with modifications to the vans that will stop individuals from being able to break glass to actually open the door.

We have been having the maintenance meetings.

They have happened every other Wednesday.

And so they're happening twice a month and happening opposite of the safety meetings.

So those are hybrid meetings.

Does that conclude the report, Mr.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioners, any questions, feedback?

Thank you.

Next, we'll move on to item seven, the housing director update.

Will you be providing this update as well, Mr.

We're currently, the housing director position is currently vacant.

We're currently getting ready to post the position to begin the interview process.

We have hired a compliance specialist who will be starting at the end of July.

And that individual will be doing compliance checks for both the housing towards voucher program, the local housing tax credit program, and the public housing program.

We currently are experiencing a normally high vacancy rate at West Haven.

We currently have 15 vacant units at West Haven.

We've had a number of families move out and we've also had a number of evictions that have happened at West Haven primarily due to background and who

And so we're currently in the process of turning those units.

That is also part of the reason why we're adding an additional turn team.

The other sites, we have two vacant units among the units that are not getting turned at Sixth Street, not getting demoed at Sixth Street, and those units are assigned to relocation families.

They're currently in the process of being remodeled for those families to relocate towards the beginning of July, which will empty out the remaining of the demo units at Sixth Street.

We currently also have two units that are vacant at South Percy phase one.

One of them is, actually both of them are due to evictions.

One for nonpayment of rent and one for lease violations due to gas and other illegal activities on the site.

Both of those units are in the term process.

One required a new door after it was kicked in by the police department.

The door had to be ordered.

And I think we're slated to receive the door next week.

Those doors are really expensive in their custom order.

And so we had to wait for its arrival to complete the term because the unit is not secure at the moment.

and so we didn't want to do any extensive work on it for it to get vandalized.

The AMP4 sites, we currently have a total of four vacant units and those units are in the process of being turned except for one that Mickey does offline due to extensive tenant damage.

We currently have two vacant property management positions.

One is an assistant property manager, which is a new position, deposition with a trainer.

And so we'll have a person ready if there's any turnover.

And it's also able to assist wherever needed at any of the other sites.

And then we have the South First Street property manager, which we're currently in the process of interviewing for.

We have extended the offer for a community ambassador for Crescent Halls.

Some resident planners have participated in that interview process and selected who the candidate is and offered that position to them today.

And so they are slated to start in July.

And we also have security that started at Crescent Halls last week.

Thank you, Mr.

Sales.

Just a quick question.

I wasn't able to keep count.

A majority of them will be.

We do have a four to one ratio policy for transfers.

And so for every four new movements, we need to do one transfer.

And so we have a long list of transfers as well, which is part of the reason why we have a cycle of vacant units that turns.

Right.

Correct.

And that typically, typically is families that have lived in there for a long time.

And so instead of like a five day turn, you're talking about 21 days.

But we should be at five.

The HUD average is five to seven.

Can I ask about that?

Any other questions from commissioners or comments, feedback?

Okay.

Thank you, Mr.

And then next up, we have our HCV program manager update.

Good evening.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Zoe Paraquo.

I'm the HCV program manager.

My updates are numbers.

Never boring, Miss Zoe.

But other program updates, we just hired a new administrative assistant for the HCV program.

She started today doing a lot of training and so we have a full staff in the HCV program.

We are receiving referrals for the CSRAP program.

We're receiving referrals from the Department of Social Services and also the Department of Human Rights, Home to Hope, to fill, to add program size up to hopefully 70.

Last Monday we held our first landlord event together with Albemarle County.

We partnered to talk to the landlords about the new inspire,

inspection standards, going from housing quality standards to the national standards for physical inspections.

We had a pretty good, I mean fair turnout, and we hope to partner with Albemarle County moving forward to just enrich that landlord relationship.

Also another update, we are going to be

We're going to start, TC is working and the finance team is working on getting us electronic payment system because the mail has been very slow and so that will alleviate some of that slow movement to getting checks to the landlords.

Thank you.

Exciting news specifically in regards to the electronic system.

Mr. TC, do you know how long that may take?

So yeah, a few updates on that.

So I guess back in February, we started talking about getting that updated.

So for our vendors, as far as, you know, like any outside, those types of things, we've got a lot of that.

System online now is in a lot of their vendor portals.

So internally with our software system, we are building out a what they call vendor cafe through Yardi.

This will send all of our landlords or any any vendor that we do business with, even reimbursements for staff.

They have a portal linked to their EIN or social security number sign in, and then they will get their rent checks electronically.

with a statement of, you know, say a landlord has four of our participants.

We'll give them the breakdown of, you know, that participant, the amount, so forth and so on.

All through a pretty easy to use portal.

It also has various tools in there as far as updating participants' paperwork and research, you know, anything to do with their lease that they can easily correspond with Zoe or anything about.

So the build out time on that, we have

We're doing two meetings a week with our software system because we're building it internally with their help.

How does this work?

Maybe I'm actually not.

I'm just wondering, so it's like, if someone wants to get, like, can both people be looking at the same documents at the same time?

So it kind of works the same way as our rent cafe for our tenant side.

it will have a link once it gets built out on our website along with the vendor or with the rent cafe so the vendor side when the vendors want to participate in this program they will get an email from us that's automatically generated say hey go to this link here's you know the information you need to order or enter to register once they enter that information then their portal you know they're online and it will show you

It will actually go back in history, I think 12 months, I'm not sure exactly, it might be two years, on every check that they've ever received.

So they'll be able to see the paper checks that have been written, plus going forward they'll be able to see that.

So it is a lot of build out, we do have a ton of vendors.

So as we get that online, and obviously there will still be paper checks for people that want that, but given certain mail situations and different things, I think this will be a lot cleaner, easier way to go forward with

All vendors, be it landlords, are traditional.

One other quick update.

We did submit our FDS report.

on the 14th.

So our fall score was one point away from a perfect score.

Congratulations.

That's open to celebrate.

That was nice.

And we have started to schedule our audit here for the fall and all that.

In your packet, you have an income statement for calendar for fiscal year 24.

Yeah, we also, both you and Zoe, we really appreciate you all providing the information in the reports.

We know that, you know, it takes a great deal of work.

We do read the reports, so it's helpful.

And I know this is one thing specifically, Mr. TC, that we ask for in terms of the data.

So thank you for providing that information to us and thank you, Mr.

Sales, for overseeing that in that regard.

And congratulations again on the near perfect score.

I hope Mr.

He's pretty solid.

He's pretty solid?

Okay, not great.

I got no complaints.

No complaints?

All right, Mr.

Sales, I hope you hear that.

Yeah, Ben, thank you so much for all of your work on this.

All right.

I think that concludes our report.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Executive Director report, Mr.

Yeah, I'm not going to take up too much of your time.

I did want to give an update on the SOP update.

So we have selected a vendor.

We're currently in the process of negotiating with the vendor.

It came in a little bit underneath our budget, and so there's a little bit of extra money left over.

And so I'm also looking at some potential training opportunities around governance and other topics that we're

And so I should have a signature on that document, a contract, probably hopefully by the end of this week.

Okay, so we appreciate that.

You even met the 60-day deadline.

Great job, Mr.

Now we've got to get the documents finished up and that's what we developed.

We've also had quite a few big wins when it comes to what we receive financially through grants.

And so as was mentioned earlier, we received $1.2 million in capital fund money.

It is something that we plan to receive and so we're happy that

and we received it, but it was something that we had already budgeted to go towards the parallel track work that's happening at Minky Madison and Riverside.

But we also did receive approximately $250,000 for a Ross grant for service coordination and public housing.

And so we worked to get that position filled over resident services.

We've also received four different grant allocations between CDBG and home funding.

One for Dogwood Preservation to replace some roofs on some units along Ridge Street.

Quotes came in about $300,000 and this city is providing approximately $150,000.

and funding towards that project.

We also receive funding for the eviction diversion program which will be working strategically to deploy not only as background but also services and necessities that are identified through property management and resident services collaboration.

We also received funding for the Economic Opportunity Coordinator, which we're currently in the process of interviewing for that position.

We'll be funding for a home ownership program for public housing to provide down payment assistance to families.

And so we'll be working strategically with partners to identify families that are interested in home ownership.

So it can be used through the voucher program or through the public housing program.

So I'm only going to speak for myself.

Thank you for this update.

I saw the numbers on some of these grants.

I love seeing more money in things like eviction diversion and renovations.

So we have more units available.

I think we've heard in this meeting how dire the housing crisis is.

Thank you.

We have some other ones that are currently in the works and we're looking to do and we're looking to see what money can bring in for the downtown building to potentially make those units affordable as well.

Dr. Goldblatt, I don't know why you only spoke for yourself.

It was grant money coming in to address the poor quality needs.

Thank you, Dr. Goldblatt.

Mr.

Sales, thank you for your report.

We appreciate that.

No.

Hey, Wes, can I also mention one thing around safety?

Really quickly, we've had a lot of safety issues and incidents at several of our sites and so we are looking strategically on what investments we need to make and what strategic partnerships we need to deploy in order to address those issues.

I wanted to make that statement because oftentimes residents think we don't care because they can't see an immediate action, but a lot of the things that we do as a housing authority in protecting residents rights, there's steps and processes that

have to take place before we can do things.

And so I want folks to know that we are working to address incidents and we're working strategically with partners to address incidents.

Thank you for that Mr.

Sales.

I know that Commissioner Bellamy wasn't here but we came up that I hope tomorrow in our meeting with the city that we can talk about safety as a city-wide problem.

You know the city just went through this holistic rezoning process and it really seems like safety is something that we need to bring the same kind of continued and sustained interest in to think about this as a city-wide problem and to think about how CRHA

can be partnering with other entities but a safer Charlottesville overall benefits all of us and I really hope this is something that we're able to discuss more fully.

We'll be sure to include that in our conversation with the city tomorrow, Dr. Goldblatt.

We'll appreciate you bringing that up.

I think, Mr.

Sales, there's one thing I didn't hear you say in regards to community engagement, or maybe you did, I may not have, I may have didn't hear, but it's my understanding also there's been a great deal of community engagement in which you and your staff have been taking place in, yourself, as well as our Deputy Director, Miss Glenn-Matthews.

Yes, so every month we have a monthly get together for the property managers.

The first one was a cookout at every site.

There was a lot of cooking on grills, some very hot days.

But we had really good turnout.

The residents enjoyed it.

And so we're going to do monthly events at every

It won't be a cookout like last week we had ice cream socials at Mickey Drive.

Our staff got to experience dry ice.

We had some talking about eating it, so I'm glad they did not do that.

but it was a fun experience and so we're going to do that monthly and we do at one site a month or if it's a small site we do two sites.

A site beautification day where all the office staff comes out of the office and works on the site to beautify the site and so we've done West Haven, we've done Mickey, we've done Madison.

I believe we have South First Street and Riverside up next.

And so those are other events that we do, but we do a lot of engagement through meetings as well that we have with residents.

We also hired a marketing and communication specialist to help us get some of that out there.

So she started, and so she's been working on press releases, getting our website up,

and easy here to use and then other modifications to our social media accounts and we'll be tracking the redevelopment process of like West Haven, the website and South First Street.

We'll be doing more of that on our website and our social media accounts.

We've also hired a language access coordinator who started and we actually had our first meeting with him being there and able to engage with

The other residents were happy to see it.

We were happy to see it.

And so we're looking at different ways where we can bring in like subcontractors from residents, like resident subcontractors that can speak their native language, but they can also speak English.

That's a great idea.

translate documents and do interpretation for us on like our redevelopment.

So when a resident's running through the slideshows, they can hit the button on their PowerPoint and hear the language, their native language on the PowerPoint like while the architect is going through the slide in English.

And so then we'll also have someone there that can also work with them and we can get their live feedback.

And so we're,

This is all new to us.

It's very expensive but we're making the needed investment because it needs to happen.

Our community is bringing in more and more refugee families and they're coming to our communities and we have to be able to engage with them and so we're making an investment.

We're probably going to need city funding to continue this investment because it's going to be costly but we have to do it.

Indeed, I think that's one of the items on which we'll bring up tomorrow as well with our city council counterparts.

I think that also plays a role in your last points, plays a role also with the safety portion.

We know that there are some communication language and cultural differences in which we're seeing.

within some of the communities that are now having to be in close proximity to each other.

And these are things in which we want to ensure that we're trying to mitigate on the front end opposed to the back end.

So I'm looking forward to that discussion.

Mr.

Sales, I would only ask also that you include the updates and the great work in which we're doing.

I know you put it in the report, but add that to your communications.

I also, I don't know what kinds of communications you have with city council.

Commissioner Payne might be able to speak more to this, but I think it's something that needs to be said at tomorrow's meeting with city council too.

I think they need to know the work that you and all of the staff are doing, this incredible work with the HCV program and with getting things digitized.

Indeed.

I think that's on the agenda, him giving a full report about that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Sales.

We appreciate your report.

Commissioners, anything further?

No.

Hearing nothing else, we can move towards adjournment.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

I just skipped it.

Sorry.

We are not moving towards adjournment.

I am backing up again two times.

I've missed public comment.

We have room for another section of public comment.

Is there anyone who would like to say anything?

OK.

Hearing no one moving forward or on the screen, now we can move forward to adjournment.

Thank you, Dr. Goldblatt, for keeping me honest.

Motion moved and seconded.

Can we call an all-call vote, Ms. Gary?

All in favor?

Hearing none, meeting adjourned.