Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board Meeting   7/28/2025

Do you know, um, was Brigid the only person who confirmed they won't be able to be here?

Okay.

Um, but I didn't hear back from Harvey here, so he should be here.

Okay.

Do you message Harvey here?

Need a minute to catch your breath?

Okay.

Well, we have a quorum.

I believe this everyone will be here.

So I will call this meeting to order.

Commissioner Rosenblith.

Here.

Here.

We'll have a brief moment of silence.

All right.

Well, for general announcements, I can begin.

We have two new commissioners.

One is not yet sworn in, so is not yet able to be here, but is Lise Clavel, and just some very brief background.

She has served as a deputy assistant to President Barack Obama, in addition was a senior advisor under President Joe Biden's administration, in addition to, earlier than that, been Tom Perriello's campaign manager.

here locally in his 2010 congressional race.

We do have Gillet Rosenblith here.

Sure, my name is Gillet Rosenblith.

I am a professor at the University of Virginia.

I did a PhD here at UVA, so I've been here since 2012 and I study public housing.

My dissertation was on public housing in the U.S. and I've worked with PHAR,

on some oral histories of public housing.

Great, well glad to have you with us.

Are there any other announcements from commissioners they'd like to make?

If not, we can move on to public comments followed by PHAR comments.

Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak?

Seeing no one, is there anyone from PHAR who would like to provide comments?

Seeing no one, we just covered the updates from commissioners and discussion, unless there's anything else others had.

If not, we can move on to approval of board minutes from the June 23rd meeting.

You'll need a fourth one.

I think we can vote on it if she abstains but either way it's fine.

Is there a second?

Commissioner Goldblatt?

Well it's good to see you all tonight and welcome to the board.

We have been working on updating our strategic plan that we all worked on together over the past year with SparkMill.

Wait just a second, I just realized.

So we adopted three central goals for organizational growth.

Residents first is not just something we like to say and have on our shirts.

We're looking at it as a workplace culture that we are adopting.

Community building.

This is, you know, the resident driven programs we're doing are driving redevelopment and preservation opportunities.

And we are in the midst of a lot of redevelopment happening right now, which I'll talk about more.

Inspiring transformation.

That's making it possible for our organizational structure to build capacity and also steward a healthy relationship with our community.

So I'm gonna go over a summary of the progress we've made on these goals.

So culturally with resident first also is part of our strategy with moving forward as an organization.

And we're transforming our practices in which we engage with the individuals that we serve and our community as well.

We've looked at having increasing resident participation.

One of the things we've been doing is increasing hiring of residents into positions where they're actually working within their own communities.

We have monthly events that are organized by the Resident Services Department and property managers in tandem that cover all of our sites.

We have site beautification that we've also been grateful for some of our city commissioners to be part of where we're out on the sites doing cleanups, planting flowers, and working on just making the curb appeal of our neighborhoods better.

We're working on a hiring guide that includes resident participation.

An example of that would be panels where we're looking at hiring a resident facing a physician that works with our community, making sure we have residents on the panel to help with those hiring decisions.

We've been spending a lot of time focusing on developing quality control systems across all of our departments.

We've leveraged local partners and city support to provide

You know, relevant wealth building programs, these are programs that the individuals who participate in them can actually see the needle move a little bit and they tie in really well by weaving them together with several things we're doing.

Our grants and development coordinator, she started in 2023 and it has been tremendous.

As far as capacity building, we have three full-time resident service coordinators that cover all of our sites.

We've expanded our family self-sufficiency program and we've also introduced a resident self-sufficiency program.

The family self-sufficiency program works with public housing and project-based vouchers and the ROS program works with just public housing.

We also have Jobs Plus that has a footprint in the West Haven neighborhood.

We have employer relationships that we've been expanding on with all these programs as part of self-sufficiency building as we look at meeting people where they are in their workforce pursuits.

The areas that have been really beneficial is our relationship with PHAR.

We've focused a lot on resident safety and stability, and we have some upcoming efforts with that that we'll be talking about more over the next month.

We're actively working with PHAR leadership to expand this collaboration, and PHAR staff have been included in some of our hiring panels as well.

We're collaborating with survey and community members.

That's going to be kicking off really soon.

We're doing satisfaction surveys as well as getting feedback so our programs can be more self-determined.

We're engaging the whole organization.

in initiatives that promote effectiveness.

We're transitioning into a trauma-informed housing agency.

We know it's gonna take us three years to do this, but we're gradually building it into all the changes that we have.

Our residents, our staff have all had this training and we're working on making sure all of our property management and eventually all of our staff have had access to that training.

These SOPs that you worked on with us over the past year were also worked on by all of our departments.

We have a trauma-informed care implementation guide that we're working on right now, and we'll be talking to you about that more in coming months.

And just looking at long-term projects for making sure that everything has that trauma-informed lens.

For community building, it's all about relationships.

The number one goal of the Resident Service Department this year is building relationships.

We have a lot of reoccurring meetings.

John and I attend the PHAR Advisory Council.

We're part of some local housing meetings with local housing leaders.

We attend meetings with some of the regional area as well.

And we're just looking at building our collaboration.

We've established communication strategies to improve some of these relationships.

We're looking at how we market our programs and our properties.

We're also looking at how we deliver monthly information to you and our community.

All our departments are now getting increasingly involved with our website, and I think especially with some of the

Assistance of our new IT department, you'll really see that transform.

We're working to improve our annual reporting as well, and this is just a part of that.

We're identifying and utilizing solutions lurking with on the environmental side with LEAP.

We're looking at energy use audits.

Our parallel track, which Mr. Collins has worked on very hard.

We've been focusing on energy efficient upgrades with that.

We've been looking at paying a lot of attention to the current political environment and just how funds change with that and I think that's gonna be consistent for the coming years.

But we continue to seek opportunities in all these areas.

We're looking at how to be more responsive as an agency.

Our property management is working on building capacity and seeing what is needed to make us be more effective.

We collaborate with both resident services and the property management team on safety meetings and we're working on some onsite elements to that.

Our parking policy has been something that's had many conversations with our community as well as how towing works.

We've included additional staff as support for our property management and also having some administrative support there to grow their capacity.

We continue to audit our staffs and work on building better structures for reporting back to you.

We're also focusing on leveraging some of these items.

We sent over 25 staff to trainings and conferences around redevelopment and the development affordable housing.

We've applied the seven grant opportunities to support affordable housing and innovative housing solutions.

and we've also completed a biannual training with our HCV landlords.

Our staff are going to continue to attend these conferences and we're also focusing on what conferences have the greatest impact.

We're also looking at how we can expand our partnership with city staff.

Collaboration is very important to us as we are asking our residents what it is they want and need.

This is also getting built into redevelopment goals.

We have regular meetings that happen for all of our departments as well as our management team.

We have an eviction diversion program that's also a collaboration between departments that I'll be talking about shortly.

Our management team meets on a regular basis now and that has been tremendous in helping improve some of fostering an environment that is collaborative.

We have been looking at ways our departments can work together to be more effective.

And with that, we've seen new standards evolve.

We're looking at working on policies together, also weaving in that trauma-informed lens that I talked about before.

Our SOPs that we worked on with you are established for all the departments and this spring they went into effect and we're also constantly looking at those.

We're working with staff and managers to look at these SOPs, make sure there aren't any gaps and if so, you know, focus on that.

We're creating a succession plan that's part of our success, but also making sure that if emergencies happen, we have something in place so that we can pick things up and continue business as usual.

We have had a great collaboration with UVA for interns.

This summer was one of our strongest programs yet.

And we had a VISTA program as well.

And our VISTA, Brigid Moss, was just amazing.

And we've now hired her to start at the end of August.

The annual plan's about to start again.

And annual plan review and update strategy is being developed right now in partnership with PHAR.

And we're also constantly evaluating organization needs.

We need to make sure we have the capacity to do what we promised.

We're regularly updating these needs for what we're doing now and what we plan to do with the future.

And I know Mr.

Sales will bring that to you on a regular basis.

Our grant writing program has been part of that and as well as conversations we look forward to having with you about establishing a non-profit entity, which in our current political climate with uncertain finances is more important than ever before.

Our resident satisfaction survey, as I had mentioned before, is gonna be launching.

Most likely we'll be starting to see results in by the fall.

and we just had a board item on here at the bottom.

We wanna work with you on this nonprofit entity and the next step with that will be taking it to city council.

Yeah, so any questions or thoughts from the board?

Can start with you Commissioner Hicks.

I know it's your first meeting, but please don't be shy to jump in with any questions or thoughts at all.

Any questions or comments?

Can you remind me where we left off?

I remember from strategic planning that moving forward on a nonprofit entity was a large priority for the board, and then probably

At some point the board would want to talk about how we need to coordinate on that to kind of keep that ball rolling.

My understanding is the next steps will be for the board to go to city council and make a formal request.

We've built it in with, as a mere organization, as we initially start our SOPs are already in place for that.

We just need to get permission from city council first and then we can proceed

Just one thought, Richmond's housing authority has been in the news recently and it's interesting reading that I think this

is a good example of how we're pretty unique in terms of the values we have and how we operate and this is an important reflection of that.

Two questions that came to mind.

One, I know at previous meetings becoming a trauma-informed agency has been referenced several times and you referenced tonight the training.

On the ground will be any paperwork that comes out of our offices, letters, flyers, notices.

We'll also have that focus to it because often we find the smallest thing, especially around our eviction diversion program, can be very triggering so we're going to be really looking at

how everything that comes out of our offices is designed.

We're also going to be looking at our office spaces, and I know Redevelopment's been working a lot on this as well, just looking at welcoming spaces for our community as they enter into them.

We're going to be having all of our staff trained even maintenance.

just in how they approach people and how they respond if there's a situation.

I would say capacity just capacity making sure we have the right people in place and the resources for that.

What would you say Mr.

I started looking at it as soon as Michael said that.

I'm like, that's probably it.

And it's really because we're actually doing changes.

And so a traditional housing authority almost acts as a warehouse for housing.

They bring folks in, you get them in the unit, and then you manage that unit.

Well, we're asking our staff to do a lot more than that.

so like the eviction diversion program alone is like stop rethink how you traditionally do an eviction and let's start all the way over because if we want folks to be successful we can't do it the traditional route of someone's late immediately send a notice and then that process starts well we're asking someone to say hey no let's rethink that let's put ourselves in their shoes and go from there

And I think that's an adjustment that our staff is making.

In a lot of cases, we have staff that have been doing property management 15 or 20 years.

and so they're used to it being this way and so with trauma-informed care we're asking them to rethink how they work and it's not just how a property manager works but it's how HR functions with our staff is how we function with each other so like if a co-worker's having an off day you're right you're recognizing that and

being prepared to respond to that

Yeah, I touched on the trauma-informed care piece.

I think the sustainable housing, I think that's going to be something that we're going to have to constantly talk about how we do that.

Because like Kathleen mentioned, a lot of those resources are drying up.

But like just two weeks ago, we were able to meet with a private donor who was doing her own PPA agreements.

and so she actually funded the PPA agreement at Sixth Street and South Hershey phase two.

And so it's gonna be like those strategic partnerships that just happened from a random phone call.

Great, well is there anything else on this slide?

If not, we already segued into it a little bit.

Sure.

All right.

OK, great.

This is a good segue because it's all about a culture shift as an agency in the way we provide services.

This has been a huge learning curve for us.

It's something our agency has not done before.

We're asking two departments that haven't, one is brand new and haven't ever had to collaborate before to come together.

We filled you in earlier this year on how the program would roll out.

This is just a reminder that also since we have some new incoming board members, I just wanted to include this in the packet.

but you know we also had talked before about how the late rent process works and I don't think we have Miss Banks with us but she's been my partner in designing all of this we also talked about a really hard thing the 72-hour termination around health and safety when something happens

that jeopardizes the neighborhood usually around violence and that this is something that comes into play and in these situations our eviction diversion program will not be engaging.

So we touched on all that before and I just put this in the beginning of the packet because just as a reminder we have some new folks with us and just wanted to make sure that's still in everyone's mind but just an update since we talked to you in February

We've been learning so much as we do this.

My partner in this has been TerAna Banks, who's our interim property management director, and she and I have found that we really need to

Be conscientious about people's privacy as we compile these lists.

So we've been developing a higher level report that's seen by fewer eyes that has everyone on it.

Because everyone on it is not just people who owe rent.

It might have an individual who does fall under

one of those health and safety situations.

It's everyone who's not in good standing so they might have failed a housekeeping inspection.

Their kids might have gotten in a fight with someone else's kids and caused disruption in the neighborhood but everyone is on this list so we're trying to really think about how we manage this list and also protect individuals' information.

We've created new forms internally that we use and

but also just reporting what we see happening with outside entities that are involved in the process.

We had 11 referrals over last month and this was for rent owed.

This month we're probably gonna double that number by the end of the month.

and some of these were carried over.

What we do on our form is we're building something where you don't leave the tracker until you're in good standing.

So you're gonna stay on that tracker indefinitely until we're able to help work with you or if unfortunately the resident chooses to leave our programs.

So we're doing a lot of staff training as we roll this out.

We are also talking about things like dignity and respect.

If we have residents who do not want to work with us or just aren't able to come to a place

where an eviction is going to be able to be stopped.

We want to make sure that someone's working with them and talking to them if they're willing about what are they going to do, where are they going to go.

So that training has been happening with our staff now.

Sometimes we do have individuals who do not want to work with us.

Our ROS program is working on seven referrals at this time.

I think we might have just added one more today.

That's the program that's Resident Opportunity and Self-Sufficiency and it just works with public housing residents.

It's been a great addition to our programs because you do not have to be in good standing to enter the ROS program.

FSS has worked on two of the eviction diversion challenges very intensely.

They were very challenging cases of people who were already in the FSS program and they were both resolved through a lot of work, car rides together and many meetings.

Our resident service coordinators are actively working on referrals.

The agency collected a little over $15,000 this past month and we had two evictions that were paused and several that are in the process of intervention.

Every family right now we're asking them to sign an authorization form when they move in which we did not have in place before.

Right now as we're approaching individuals that are not close to a recertification we're asking them to sign that authorization form giving us permission to have them in this program and for us to talk to other agencies.

but we're looking at building in new systems and actually policy that will probably be our first trauma-informed care policy looking at how we can make our community aware of this program and how it works and making sure it's what our community wants to see us doing.

Next month's numbers are going to be significantly higher as we're working with property management on sending every family as soon as they go out of good standing immediately to the program.

We were kind of in crisis mode the past couple months.

We had a lot of individuals who

I owed a significant amount of money I think it was about a quarter million dollars and we've been really focusing on that group but now we want to also make sure we're starting immediately as soon as the family is not in good standing to have a better chance of success.

We've built this protocol for the Resident Services Department about how to proceed once they make a referral, receive the referral, following up on the referral.

We talk a lot about documentation and tracking.

And the next step on this will be once we start working on aftercare with some of our education programs.

We had a lot of challenges, make sure it shows up all the way on here.

We've had a lot of challenges with people understanding the different programs, because as we said before, resident services did not exist before, and now it's there, plus you have all of these self-sufficiency programs.

So we designed this chart to really break it out for our property management team so they had a better understanding of how they could go about referring someone or where it might not be appropriate to refer them.

and this has been very helpful.

There's been a lot of time spent on relationship building and with that trust building between the departments and with staff because not only are they needing to build that with their community but with one another.

We also really looked at making sure people were thinking about different properties and what that meant as far as referrals.

All of these programs have an element of the economic opportunity program which is sort of one of the pillars of resident services.

This involves working towards reducing or eliminating reliance on housing subsidies and instead focusing on increased earnings.

Our resident service coordinators have also been getting training that our self-sufficiency coordinators hadn't placed before on how to do individual service plans.

That's something that we want everyone who's doing any type of case management to understand how to do and how to follow up on how to make it be something that, you know,

is what the person they're working with has asked for and not something they think they need.

We're spending a lot of time building our partnerships at the moment.

We're having conversations with local providers, asking what they could do, what they have been doing in our community, looking at their grant funding and saying, we don't see you doing this, but we'd like you to be.

And then we're building MOUs with them.

So expectations are understood on all sides.

We've been building an education program.

Our UVA interns this summer have been really helpful with that.

And we're hoping to roll some of that out this fall.

That will be tied in with, you know, we're looking at saying to individuals where, you know, we want to help you with your balance and look at budgeting.

If you're doing a repayment agreement while you're doing that, we also want you to be working on some of these trainings as well.

but we know every training isn't for everyone so we're trying to build in you know kind of a myriad of training so that we're you know definitely meeting people where they are because a budget class you know with with some people that you know there's something more pressing happening in their household and we that's what we need to focus on first and then we can get to the budgeting class so

We have been also making sure everybody knows how to get in touch with each other.

You know, we have a staff list, but sometimes we find that if you really plug it in to what you're trying to do, it makes a big difference.

So our next steps, we still struggle with transportation.

It's been an amazing partnership with United Way and their Lyft program, but you only get five trips and you gotta have a cell phone and know how to use that.

or else come down and have our staff help you do it.

But one of our goals as we do hopefully get a non-profit going is to be able to focus on having our own contracts with agencies such as Uber or Lyft.

We're looking at

Having walk-in social service appointments, we are building out spaces at most of our sites with either that we have or with community partners so that social services can have meetings that are walkable.

We're also looking at working with Marie Pool who is a clinical social worker with Region 10 with Lived Experience and she's been very patient with us as we carve out space for her to meet with residents in.

She's been spending a lot of time sitting in community centers and getting to know all of our residents.

We're also working with the Women's Initiative and several of their partners.

Child care continues to be a struggle.

And again, rent assistance.

A lot of agencies in town have run out of funding or there's new rules in place where they might not want to give funding if you already have a subsidy or if your balance is more than $1,000.

So that's been a real challenge for us and we're spending a lot of time circling around that and thinking about it.

We're looking at increasing services at the Crescent Hall Clinic, which is something we're really excited about.

Brigid Moss, who I already talked about before, our VISTA, is also a nurse practitioner, and we're so excited about her joining our team.

She's been helping us really think strategically looking at data, and we're hoping that she'll also help us, you know, re-envision how we can better provide services in our clinics.

We are presenting at the October Virginia Housing Alliance Tax Credit Conference on our eviction diversion program.

They had heard about it and they wanted us to come talk to contractors about it, the people who are actually building properties.

And so we'll be doing that.

And one of us, we're gonna be on the panel also for the most vulnerable.

in the conference after that.

Yeah, you're it.

Yeah, well, we can start with Commissioner Raudales this time.

Thank you.

This sounds awesome.

But yeah, I don't have any questions right now.

A few questions.

Well, first, I guess just high level thought.

I know this is something Commissioner Goldblatt had advocated a lot for getting these updates and making sure it's a continued focus for the board.

As I hear this, I just think a bunch of things all at once, like the impact of

how HUD looks at the agency for the amount of back rent that when people are evicted, obviously many of them may have no other place to go.

You mentioned the health and safety side of evictions that can happen as well.

Like anything in life, I'm sure there's some individuals who if they think they can get away with not paying rent may do that, but there's also a lot of people who have addiction or mental health or family problems that are creating a barrier

and just like all those things exist all at once at the same time.

All of which say this seems like a lot of work and a lot of really intensive work from a kind of a human and resource side.

So I'm curious.

I think for the resident services department and just sort of our development arm where we pursue grants, if we had more opportunities to secure funding around rental assistance, not just so we can pay balances, but we could build really strong programs.

You'd have a carrot of getting help, but we could also then talk about what could be built in about some of the challenges that an individual's facing.

I think instead of paying off a whole balance at once you know we could really start looking at we're gonna pay this much of your rent each month as long as you're paying as well and with the understanding that you're gonna work with us together on these items and you know maybe it's an opportunity to also bring in

you know more enriching education opportunities and exposure to them that the individual might not have

Chosen or known about before, especially now that we have a clinical social worker who is available.

I've been talking to Miss D with Human Services.

I'm really excited to talk about getting more SAMHSA graphics available on all our sites for individuals who didn't get the opportunity to learn how to read.

But funding for rental assistance, it's such a struggle.

Yeah, I would say this is probably the lowest amount of money we've received directly from the city for rental assistance, but it's probably the most effective.

So in the past, we received funds from the city, and we just deployed them on all delinquent accounts.

you paid off everyone's balance to get them back to zero but then again the next year you were looking at doing the same thing and I think we did that a couple years at almost a quarter million dollars each time and so this year I think we got 18,000

So less than 10% of what we would typically get or we got the last couple years.

But we were able to get folks into repayment agreements, structure them so they made payments and then the city money came in and so we got people on a plan to actually make payments.

They showed consistency when making the payments.

We got them other resources like budget,

financial literacy, budget management, and so was a collective of things.

But finding the rental assistance is now the hardest because you have some folks who have reached their lifetime cap.

But if they lose housing with CRHA, they have no other housing choice in this area that they can afford and they can't

get on federal assistance again without paying back that back rent.

So it's really a double-edged sword to where it screws them now, but also in the future, they are also unable to get housing without taking care of that balance.

Right.

Well, I know for the city, you know, there's a huge cutback of the pandemic rental relief programs that were available, the state programs, and then we shifted it to primarily pathways and then eviction diversion through PHA's Financial Opportunity Center.

And it's not shocking at all, but it sounds like, you know, the barriers, those programs, because they're also limited in funding, you know, imposed lifetime maximum caps,

Yeah, especially, I mean, substance abuse is rampant and we have individuals that really, you know, they're not ready to go.

We talked about this at the board retreat some too, but they're just, you know, not ready for recovery yet.

I know you can't you know talk about any individual cases or anything like that but are you seeing that there's like

What are the most common problems you're encountering?

You mentioned literacy.

I mean it's you know when someone doesn't pay their rent the money went somewhere else so often our staff are trying to figure out where where did the money go and we might find that there's repayment agreements I mean um payees needed maybe they're getting older and trying to age in place

Maybe they never could read or write and someone's been helping them and maybe that person has been helping them, hasn't quite gotten the money order for the same amount they thought they were.

That happens more than you would think.

And then we try to get other groups involved when that does.

We also, you know, we have folks that are prioritizing different things than their housing.

and it's not until they actually realize that the housing's about to go away that sometimes that's when they're ready.

Yeah, I would say jot it down three, mental health, substance abuse,

and then adult abuse where we have individuals inside of the unit taking advantage of someone of the head of household so they're either taking their money as soon as the check comes in physically or they are I think our last one it was like something like Kathleen just mentioned

they're going to get the money order and it's been eight months where they've been getting the money order and it's never gotten to CRHA.

And so we've brought in Adult Protective Services, for instances like that, we've tried to work with like, I think, is it PACE?

End of Age now, because they have a program where they will set someone up with the payee, we've worked with them in the past.

But it's always, or nine times out of 10,

One of those three that we're dealing with falling in that category.

And just to highlight, yes, Kathleen mentioned that we're at, you said 11 Kathleen referrals.

So we're averaging every month about 100 folks not paying their rent.

So in the perfect world, all 100

And then Commissioner Rosenblith had something just real quick.

Yes.

I'm hesitant to ask this because I feel like it might be asking if you can do more work than the work that you're already doing, but have people been

kind of tracking or building data sets from the eviction diversion program since it began.

And if yes, great.

And if not, is that something that we could figure out how to try to amp up capacity for moving forward?

It seems like we're getting a lot of important information from this and maybe having that information and kind of

Easily understandable, viewable way for folks might be a good way to kind of get support for people who might be funding it, right?

Yes, we are collecting with Family Metrics, which is a new case management system, and property management has been working with our VISTA, Brigid Moss, on new systems for reporting as well.

I think you just saw their new monthly report, which she helped with.

We're also, I mean, as a capacity area, we, you know, if someone has 10 referrals, and

The majority of them are about tenant account receivable TARs and that's what they're really trying to focus on and it is hard to focus on some of those other areas and I'm speaking to the choir but we don't have a lot of facilities here

to refer people to with chemical dependency and we have people who are actively using and we need to increase our partnerships in that area.

With mental health, relationship building is tremendous because if you have a staff person that, and we've built a relationship and we know every year that person struggles at certain times then we can

Be more proactive and supportive of them.

But we are going to have those unfortunate events.

And just having things in place for that will help.

But funding, funding is a big thing.

We definitely, I always tell them we're a scrappy department.

Because I think, outside of just the rental assistance,

Just hearing this, it's basically intensive social work, as well as just building authentic, deep relationships with residents.

Just for new commissioners and then the public as well, stepping back, just for context as well, what is the...

So the amount owed is, or the calculation for that is based upon the income and then the debt.

So we typically are arranging eight month repayments.

So it calculates, we put it, it's a formula.

We put it inside of the computer how much is owed, how much your income is, and it generates.

So I've seen them as low as like $35 in addition to their rent.

And then you referenced it earlier, but that number of the amount of unpaid rent and then the number of tenants who are driving that.

Yeah, so it's a little bit over 100 tenants and the dollar amount is now at 138 from what I can see.

And that's only looking at public housing, so it's not looking at city housing or the tax credit properties.

I only pulled the public housing report.

Right.

Driven by like 150 to 200.

Yeah, so TARS is one that we have not been able to master.

So we've done pretty good on everything else.

Like our financials look great besides TARS.

Occupancy looks good.

The physical inspection was the best we've ever had.

West Haven was at like 91 or 90.

TARS has been something that has kicked us every time.

I think they look for 3 to 5%.

We hover around 15%.

So we are really high for TARS.

The agency has historically ran a very large TAR balance.

It's been consistent.

And so this program is our first step at actually trying to address that.

by not just throwing money at it.

Every year in the past, we've just thrown money at it to get the TARs down.

This year is the first year we didn't just throw a significant chunk of money at it to actually try to lower that balance.

It will not be easy.

It will be something that we have to be consistent with.

Just in the past few weeks, I think we've stopped at least two to three evictions that had sheriff dates for lockouts.

and I think those families understand the sense of urgency that they have not understood in the past because CRHA has always bailed out thanks to the city providing a lot of eviction diversion money but this is the year where that was not the case and so families had to come to the table and really talk to us about how we address this situation and we actually now have I wouldn't say the right amount of staff

but we have more than one person that's handling it.

We haven't been there.

And so again, what's kind of the practical consequence of that?

Does that impact HUD funding?

So it has not impacted funding.

If the grading scale changes, then it will.

So I will say, when you say it has not impacted funding, we can't get to a high performer status.

with that rating.

And so with a high performance status, we would get more funding for capital fund.

So that will, I will say that is the impact.

You're not penalized from the money you already receive, but you can get the extra 10% in capital fund money that you would receive if you were a high performer.

That is what's holding that up, that score.

that TAR score because our physical score was great.

Our financial score was great.

I think we lost .8 points or something like that.

And then the management internal controls was good.

I think we have that number in here.

It's over 6,000 people.

I believe on all of our wait lists for public housing.

Between the one, two, three, four, and five, they were tremendous.

And then the HTV wait list is about 1,900 folks, 1,700, 1,706.

No, it's just like a lot of things are simultaneously all true at once and very difficult, but I definitely appreciate the

The update and the amount of work that's going into it.

As I said, for better or worse, when I see this the way I think of it, it's just like, what does this look like in terms of budget requests to city council in terms of specific dollar amounts?

And outside of city council, the partnerships that there's gaps in, whether it's region 10, or you mentioned there's obviously a huge gap on addiction treatment and all kind of multiple levels.

But yeah, that's kind of what leads me to think about

but I'm done, is there anything else from commissioners, questions, thoughts?

Thank you.

TerAna, are you present?

Kathleen, can you see?

I will handle this report.

So the property manager report, it's changed a little bit this time.

Just go around.

After your cover page, you'll have some graphs.

We'll go through that.

We're now currently tracking the amount of folks that come into the offices.

And so you'll find that on the first category, Crescent Halls receives a lot of visitors.

And that is not just strictly an office.

That's visitors coming through the front door at 921.

Kathleen touched on the collection efforts.

It's about $15,000 received.

this month in collections due to resident services and property management working on that.

Two team members received or completed the certified occupancy specialist training in public housing.

That is going to be a training that we continue to send staff to as the public housing regulations change.

There currently are some proposals out there that would deeply change how we operate and run public housing.

And so we have been staying abreast of those changes.

One is very significant.

that would change the number of families that can continue staying in public housing.

A majority of our families would not qualify to continue after the two years if there was a term limit placed on it.

I think the current policy or proposal would only folks who are disabled and elderly would continue to stay beyond the two years, but a lot of our folks would not.

And so we're looking at how that impacts our folks.

We actually started talking about that last year because these were rumblings that we heard last year.

Some of the big items, we currently have about 30 vacant units.

Yes, that number is high, but we have 12 of them that are in Greenleaf or Dogwood.

Greenleaf was a property that we acquired at the beginning of the year.

We've emptied out one whole apartment building because it needs a gut, a complete gut, and so we plan on gutting that building and then rebuilding it as

not SRO but we're going to be renting by the bedroom we're going to be offering that as an option and that is to try to help families that are losing housing due to cavalry crossings to sell of that property and then they also have three units that were vacant when we purchased the property that we're currently renovating and those will be leased up as soon as they're done

Okay.

The Mickey Madison, Riverside, and Scatter sites have six vacant units.

We have three of them are in, well three of them will not be rented out because we plan on deploying our parallel track plan on those units.

Two of them are at Mickey, one of them is on Ridge Street.

Parallel track is the complete renovation of public housing units that we do not plan on tearing down.

And so that will include bathroom renovations, kitchen renovations, interior renovations, flooring, doors, light fixtures.

And that site will also have the HVAC units replaced because we did not do it at Ridge Street during this last HVAC installation project.

West Haven has four vacant units, Crescent Hall has three, two of them are currently being worked on and should be done by the end of this week, and South First Street has five.

Also on here we're tracking the non-payment notices, those are the notices that go out to residents who have not paid, 38 were processed, two at Sixth Street in the Scatter Site, Six at Greenleaf and Dogwood, 16 at West Haven,

eight at Crescent Halls, three at South First Street, two at Riverside, three at Madison.

We have two notices to vacate, and those are both at West Haven, so we expect to have two more vacancies come online.

If you flip over on the next page, you have your haul-off containers that have been filed.

We have filed a total of 16, four at Mickey Madison, Riverside, and Scatter Sites, two at Greenleaf and Dogwood, one at West Haven, six at Crescent Halls, three at South First Street.

We have two that are pending court dates, and both of those are at West Haven.

And then we have two trials that are scheduled.

Both of those are posted at West Haven.

We have three pending court cases at South First Street.

Those are related to rent.

We have zero non-related to rent at any of the sites.

And then we have seven pending writs, two at Mickey Madison Riverside, three at West Haven, and two at South First Street.

and it looks like the next page actually tracks all of the delinquents and that includes folks that are no longer living with us.

And so that balance is $338,000.

Like I said, that includes families that are no longer living with us.

In a few months, we'll bring to you a write-off recommendation to write off the balances for families that have moved out because we are not likely to collect that money.

It doesn't say that we're not going to try to collect it.

We actually enrolled in the tax program last year to where other housing authorities enrolled.

So if a debt is owed to a housing authority, you can enroll that debt into the tax program where if a tax is supposed to be generated for that family, the debt is paid off first.

That will allow families in the future to be able to be rehousing public housing because that debt would then go to zero.

but that's something new we just signed up for last year so this year is our first our first full year of action following that.

You have to have a judgment and so a lot of the old cases like if someone moved out then we have not submitted those but the ones that we actually get a judgment on all of those will be submitted for collections.

and actually I was wrong about the number of public housing on our wait list is actually 2,553.

Since we have no purchases in progress, but I will say we got a phone call last week about someone looking to sell their portfolio.

And so we are engaging with that individual to figure out their plan of disposition, the length of it, and the dollar amount they will be looking for.

So far, I think we've identified 10 properties that they would be willing to get rid of soon.

Okay, I think that's all I have.

If you guys have anything, please let me know.

Any questions or comments?

All right.

Well, I'll just say on the federal changes, I know city council's already thinking about our legislative packet and what's going on with state coalitions.

It sounds like there's at least a possibility the state may have to create state-level voucher program and funding opportunities in a way it just never has before.

So if anyone out there has ideas, certainly let us know.

Yes, and so that is, I'm going to be providing an update.

I'm not the HCV program manager, though.

There hasn't been a lot of change in this program.

We were in shortfall last year, and so we have not issued any new vouchers.

We've just maintained our current voucher load.

We've also started talking about some of the new developments we have coming online.

Like Sixth Street will be utilizing 41 vouchers from the HCV program as project-based vouchers, and then South First Street is going to utilize 55

Vouchers and so we're going to be working with HUD to actually plot and plan the usage so we don't run into a shortfall in a few years and so going forward we're going to be pulling vouchers and setting them aside for that future deployment at those two sites.

So we're current at 459 participants which is half a million dollars in housing assistance payments.

and $63,000 in utility payments.

We have a wait list of 1,700 families.

Like I said, that number will not change.

We currently have 10 people that are unleased that are looking for housing.

The mainstream program has 37 folks housed.

We currently have a capacity of 40.

And so we have two folks that are looking for housing and seven on the wait list for that program.

Project-based assistance at Crescent Halls.

We currently have 50 families housed at that program, so we have two families that are going to be housed once those units are ready.

We do use the public housing wait list to fill those units.

Those units were public housing, so the commitment was to continue utilizing the public housing wait list so families would not have less opportunities to get housed because you have less units.

The crossings currently have 19 families

House, they currently have the capacity for two additional families, and they have a wait list of 1,239 families.

The enhanced voucher program has five, and those vouchers were actually created to keep families housed once rents increase on a previously project-based voucher housing type.

For the EHV program, we have 11 families.

We originally started with 15.

That program has a sunset.

And so once those vouchers expire, they go away.

And so you will not see that number increase.

You will only see a decrease.

And they're now actually talking to us about absorbing those vouchers in our regular voucher program.

We've been pushing back on that a little bit, but that has been the communication going forward.

Tenant Protection Vouchers, those were for relocation, we currently have eight of those Tenant Relocation Vouchers were also for relocation

We had eight.

So the tenant protection vouchers are for the families that choose not to come back to public housing.

So you start your project.

HUD gives you two different vouchers.

One is a relocation for public housing units that are coming back.

And one is a voucher for families that were living in that public housing unit who may choose not to come back.

And so the relocation ones are,

They both sunset but the protection are for the ones that chose not to come back to your community.

VASH, we currently have five of those but for our lease we have two people looking and so that's on their referral basis so we get a referral from the Veterans Administration for families and then we assist them from that point.

The fostering youth

Initiative, we currently have 17 families housed with two looking.

And portable vouchers, we currently have 13.

Those are vouchers that are ported in from other agencies.

So an agency can either absorb or bill.

And so if you see it as a portable voucher, it is being billed.

And so that total, we have 655 vouchers for almost $700,000 in housing assistance payments.

For the Sister Act program, we currently have 71 families housed under that program for a monthly HAP of $69,160 and that is a little above what we were budgeted for that program.

We should be at, with that dollar amount, we'll spend about $29,000 a year on HAP.

which is about 15,000 too high.

But we do have a reserve that we are gonna be eating in which is good news.

HDS inspections completed, 32 annuals were completed in a month, three special and six QC.

For recertifications, we completed 65 this month.

Annual certifications and pending pass due is 10.

We have been trying to address the pending pass due because that is heavily scored and so we're looking at other ways to bring in folks to get those recertifications done and so we're looking at rent cafe where residents or participants can scan documents to us instead of having to drop all the way to our office, find parking, and then get it to us or wait for us to make copies of it and then give it back to them.

and so we're going to be looking at ways that we can also send reminders like we have text.gov now we can send a text reminder saying hey your recertification is due instead of using the postal service which is the only way we're authorized to communicate with residents now that's our official form and so we're sometimes it takes them a week or two weeks to even get the notice when you only have 14 days to respond and so that's problematic and so we're looking at ways to address that as well.

because that number is something that will affect us in the future and so we want to get that number down.

I think that's all I have.

Any questions or comments from the board?

No.

No.

All right.

Short update, we went over through all of the last quarter at the retreat and since then our FDS and audited report for fiscal year 25 has been accepted by HUD and the IT department and finance is working on a way to do a paperless inventory basically of all of our resident files, all of our financial files, HR just the whole thing works easy to search and all that so we've engaged with RICO right now to kind of see

How big a project that would be because we got to keep so many years of records and eliminating a lot of paper waste and all that kind of stuff.

So that's kind of our big project right now.

That's all I got, guys.

All right.

Now we can move into our last public comment.

Hey everybody, my name is Brandon Collins.

I'm your redevelopment coordinator.

I work pretty closely with our West Haven resident planners on the redevelopment plan for that neighborhood that saw its first residents moving in in December of 1964.

Fun fact, I just discovered they put up a fence along the West Main Street side in 1985 that completely blocked access to West Main Street.

Saw that little tidbit today.

One thing that resident planners have struggled with is development on West Main Street.

There's a group called LV Collective that are seeking to build right by the basketball court

On Main Street there's two empty parking lots and they are seeking to build a 12-story luxury student housing complex on that property.

unfortunate just on its face.

But when you put it in the context of the resident developed master plan, it really has a huge impact.

Everything the residents had designed, which involved a lot of compromises because we can't fix everything about the past, particularly how it was dug out and how there's no connection to West Main Street, no accessible way to get to the rest of the world from West Haven.

We built a beautiful sort of plaza that's going to have two community centers on the side with an accessible switchback ramp up the slope there to take you to our brand new sport court.

and get you out on an accessible path to West Main Street as well as some stairs and stuff there.

It's beautiful.

The rendering that the architects provided really looks stellar and in place of that now you will see a 12-story wall.

and residents aren't terribly happy about it.

LV Collective has a meeting with West Haven Resident Planners and the 10th and Page Neighborhood Association this Thursday at 6 o'clock at the Jefferson School Auditorium.

I'm sure that residents would appreciate board support for what residents need out of this.

It has a huge impact on safety, lighting and just fairness and our ability to address

the mistakes of the past that CRHA has really embraced that and taken that on and I think the city is trying to support that and we just really want your support and telling these folks that you know something's got to give on this if not completely give on it so just throwing that out there.

Any questions?

Mr.

Any questions or comments from the board?

I will get a little political here, I guess.

I think this is a concerning moment that, quite frankly, I've kind of been waiting for.

Because our new zoning ordinance, I think, was a significant improvement over the old one and has a lot of positive things.

One of the things I think was a mistake in it is how extensively we did

The X districts, which are X5 and above, where you can go seven stories or above Byright, particularly because that's overwhelmingly going to be national student housing developers.

You can also build hotels.

And I think there's also a hotel slated for development on West Main that would oversee West Haven as well.

And in the new zoning, those districts have no discretionary decisions involved anymore.

The only discretionary decision point is the Board of Architectural Review.

whereas before there were special use permits where people could get to what I think they wanted which is kind of a community benefits agreement where you could work with residents to figure out very specific impacts and mitigate those you know at a very hyper local neighborhood level and those were taken away in the new zoning ordinance and replaced by all those projects would be required to have at least 10% of units be 60% of area mean income

or below affordable, or in those cases they'd likely pay into the housing fund based on a formula.

All of which is to say I don't think many people realize the implications of taking away any discretionary decision points for how extensive those districts are, especially because the only development there is going to be national hotel, or not hotel, student apartment developers.

And I would just say I think

I think this could be a very unfortunate moment because I think those residents because that mistake was made.

can go to that meeting, but there's very few leverage points remaining to actually change anything about it.

I do think the city is about to begin our annual process of reviewing the zoning ordinance and looking at what's working, what's not working, what did we get wrong, what did we get right, and I think any residents, any board members, any staff who are concerned about this, I would strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly urge you to

Email City Council, speak at City Council meetings, and attend the upcoming work sessions about reviewing our annual zoning ordinance to provide this perspective because it was one that was not heard during the development of the zoning.

because for a variety of reasons, just many residents who will be directly impacted by it weren't at those meetings.

So for a lot of council, that means it's not a problem.

It's invisible.

And I think it's really important to hear that.

We're also beginning on building small area plans in 10th and Page.

And I've seen that same exact issue that residents had no idea that zoning that allows seven, 10, 12-story student apartments with no

Discretionary decision points at all anymore is now the case.

And I think if that voice is not heard at the city council level, I don't think it's going to change, because I think a lot of people do.

And there's some truth to it, but a lot of people believe all new market rate supply, no matter what,

universally the solution, and there's no trade-offs.

And I think it's important to hear from public housing residents to make known how nuanced and complex these issues can get.

All of which say, unless that happens, I don't think there's going to be a change for this or projects like that.

So I would just very, very strongly encourage that.

Not to get too political or go into the history of it too much, but I'll end it there.

That's the truth.

All right.

Well, I'm sorry.

The fence is there.

Well, in some of the plans.

and the master plan that's looking at, they're gonna allow for our ability to get to West Main Street.

So far that seems to be all they're really willing to give on and we would like y'all's support to ask for more.

There may be things they can do, there may be things that we can't do, but we definitely need your support.

Is there a specific thing that you want us to say that we support?

Yeah, we can work on that.

For sure.

I mean, everything I said, you know, safety is a huge one.

You know, there are parts of the master plan that we set aside due to safety concerns, so having our path to West Main Street that's flanked by a giant wall

without a whole lot of space and a whole lot of lighting and access, you know, who gets access, what kind of scrutiny are folks going to be under as they're using that.

That's a big one, and so a huge disparate impact on safety and connection to the neighborhood.

And, you know, the other really is connection to West Main in general.

the center of economic and political life in our city.

I appreciate that.

And we'll definitely be there Thursday.

Hope others are.

And again, happy to connect to talk further.

Anything else?

Yes, sorry, so important dates.

Next CRHA board work session will be Thursday, August 14th at 6 p.m. here in city council chambers.

The next CRHA board regular meeting will be Monday, August 25th at 6 p.m. also here in city council chambers.

Redevelopment committee meetings every first Thursday of the month from 3 to 4 p.m.

August 6.

August 6 at 6 PM at City Space.

There will be a city council joint meeting with the CRHA board, which will obviously be a very important and hopefully productive meeting.

So definitely look forward to that.

Yes?

August 2, West Haven Community Day.

Yes.

Is the August 6th meeting, will we be given that Zoom?

Yes, so that will be accessible via Zoom City Space.

And as long as we have a physical quorum, you can participate virtually.

Now we really will go to public comment.

Is there anybody in person or online from the public who would like to speak or from PHAR?

Seeing no one, I will adjourn the meeting.