Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Work Session   2/12/2026

Hello.

Hey, how are ya?

Pretty good.

Oh, well I thought I would be and then it ended up being fast, like I had a five to six thing.

And it ended up not being that long, so.

Hey, hi, I knew what happened.

um well i'm walking in for my board meeting now but uh yes i will call you after okay all right love you no no no no no it's totally fine and i was gonna have to get off anyway all good okay love you

I read through your report.

I'm excited to hear about it.

I'm sad to see.

It's not y'all's doing, but just so it's getting worse.

Hi.

So I guess... Lise?

Yeah.

Is this not coming?

Her attendance record is a little tough.

Yeah.

Right.

There are rules.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll ask John.

I'm actually gonna meet with John.

I have a conversation.

It's like now we're being punished because there was ice and we couldn't get stuff done.

as far as I know we're gonna go to closed session right we are yeah I think that that's our first thing yeah we open in the data closed yeah

Bridge and I are saying like, it's Thursday.

You know, it's like, okay, here we are in the winter moving through.

Yes.

Like it's actually lovely.

It was like 60 in Richmond a couple days this week.

I'm like, what, what are we doing right now?

I could call him, yeah.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking given the space where

We were for the... What is her name?

Yes.

Clavel?

Yeah.

Like that way.

So I thought I was gonna be late because my daughter's swearing in for the Honor Society was right before this.

But she like wouldn't let me take a picture.

So the only thing I have is a picture of the screen they projected that says National Honor Society.

And she was very displeased with me.

they said dress business casual and I made her.

She's like I look like I'm going to my corporate job and like then we get there and of course 90% of the children are in weird outfits with like sneakers or Birkenstocks and she's like just kill me.

And she's like if you cheer

If you cheer or you draw attention to yourself, I'm going to leave.

My other children didn't really do that, but I guess it was pandemic when they were this age.

And now they're just like fully embrace all my weirdness and annoyingness.

and she doesn't mind most of the time.

And then there's just like certain situations.

Yeah.

See, I don't, I mean, I got really lucky.

But yeah, I don't know.

Do we have, do we need to wait for Maria?

Inevitably, yes.

Nothing's more embarrassing than a mom with boots.

I'm sure Javier will be here.

He usually tells me he's not.

Sometimes it's on that teammate.

We also could start

We don't have to have a quorum to start.

Because we don't have to vote on anything.

I just want to be mindful of Kathleen and TerAna's time.

Because after hours, I know you guys want to hang out with us all night.

and it is 606, that's probably out there right there, no?

Okay, well let's do it, friends.

All right, I call this meeting of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority to order.

Can I get a roll call please, Miss Carey?

Here.

Here.

All right.

Oh, there's Javier.

OK.

Can we, let me just confirm.

I see Delphine that you're on.

Well, I think because the one resident commissioner position's vacant, I think three of us is a quorum, just because that's a vacancy.

That's correct.

So how many commissioners do you currently have who have been sworn in and are currently served their term?

Six.

Okay.

So you do have a quorum physically assembled and you can vote to go into closed session.

Okay.

Is there another Zoom that we can use for closed session?

Do we need to have it on CRHA Zoom?

Yeah.

Okay.

I agree.

So let me, let's see, let me do the moment of silence, please.

Okay, so we are going to move to a brief closed session.

So upon the mission, well we'll get there.

Be it resolved that the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority

will convene in a closed meeting pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as amended the act to discuss the following matters which are specifically exempted from public disclosure by the code section referred to below.

Personnel matters involving the assignment, appointment, promotion, demotion, performance, salaries, or resignation of employees of the authority as authorized by section 2.2-3711A1 of the act.

May I get a motion please?

Aye.

Yes.

All opposed?

Okay, so we will move to closed session and we will be back as soon as possible.

Look, I knew you would be here.

I was waiting.

I was gonna try to get to the meeting.

I came up to the meeting and you said you was gonna join Virgin.

That's what I was waiting for.

and their administrative staff.

What's today, your first day here?

No.

Oh wow.

This was years ago.

All right.

Whereas the authority has convened a closed meeting on the state pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and whereas Section 2.2-3712D of the 1950 Code of Virginia as amended requires a certification by this authority that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law.

Now, therefore, upon motion duly made and seconded be it resolved that the authority hereby certifies to you that the best of each commissioner's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting, and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the authority.

May I get a motion, please?

All in favor?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Kathleen and TerAna, are you guys ready to give us the eviction diversion update?

Yes.

I'm liking that we get more gold paper clips.

I wanted to start off by just giving a plug to someone that few people ever see.

She's our grants and development coordinator, Katrina Bytes.

And she has really worked behind the scenes, but she helped us put together this report.

We were really grateful for her assistance.

We're trying to give a lot of our reports at Facelift and she's been really helpful with that process.

So back in 2025, Mr.

Sales and the resident service department and our property management team to come together and work on creating an eviction diversion program.

you know set up process and we've been to quite a few meetings about I'd say once a quarter to update everyone on that and this is part of that.

We're giving more of an overview of where the program's at tonight.

A big part of this whole program is making sure that we

The property management team identifies residents who are having housing instability and are referring them most often to resident services.

We're looking at what our actions look like when we're following up to these referrals and really trying to do a better job of tracking information.

The collaboration is a big part of this.

Good evening to the board.

So we put this together

It's pretty self-explanatory, but how we've broken it down is risk across all sites.

We kind of broke out the non-public market rate portfolio.

Typically, the people that really participate in EDP, for the most part, are our public housing, livestock, PBVD, that portfolio.

Now while other people do get some assistance, these are the main people.

So Mr.

Sales asked us to break it down by the dollar band and have how many households in each dollar band.

So under amount owed, you're gonna see it by band.

But we had the total, okay.

Yeah, so 215 families currently

at risk eviction.

And that just means they're not at the end of the cycle.

They have been identified and they have either outstanding rent or other outstanding issues, noncompliance, whether that's remitable or non-remitable.

So you will see those numbers there.

We wanted to kind of break it down to really

give a more micro perspective of what we are working with each and every day.

If you could scroll down just a little bit for me.

Thank you.

We'll go back to filings.

Sorry, Miss Banks.

Okay, so non-grant can be, it can be a non-compliance for, say, failed housekeeping.

It can be a non-compliance for conduct and behavior, repeated conduct and behavior.

I'm sorry?

No, non-rent is something, rent is, if there's delinquent rent, non-rent is other non-compliance issues, like a violation of the lease.

Different violations of the lease, if that makes sense.

No, the financial is the rent.

Just the rent, okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Just for context, I do like the amount owed in households.

Scale of rent from the high, I know it depends on your income, but that to contextualize also the number of households and then the amount owed.

Could you give just a ballpark figure?

um okay I think what you're asking is how like how many months does this cover like what is the span of what they owe yeah that would kind of get at it too okay um so we have it just it really depends um on how long

For instance, we have some people, and I think I've said this at previous board meetings, we have some people that owe money who we've had, and I want to say quote unquote, the court process, but we've either delayed it, continued it, or not suited it, and then had to come back and refile.

I think it's important to kind of throw in there too

A lot of these people that have actually received agency assistance, once that balance is paid, they come right back and start accruing, i.e.

what Kathleen is going to talk about later with the budgeting and finance.

Also, it depends on courts.

It depends on partner involvement, like are we trying to work it out with Legal Aid?

Do they have partners that are trying to help them

Does that answer the question?

John has his hand up.

Sales.

Thank you.

I'm just going to provide a little bit more context, hopefully.

So it's very hard to give an answer on the average.

I'll say we know our average rate charge is around $240 a month.

We do not move forward with eviction actions on any tenant unless it's at least 60 days old.

So we haven't collected rent in at least 60 days.

We moved folks into the eviction diversion program after not collecting rent the first month.

So when rent is missed on the fifth, that referral should happen.

and so folks are getting into the program faster and earlier which is important because these earlier touch points and interventions are important in what can save families because when large balances do build up which we do have families and some of our units have paid 1200, 13, 14, 1500 bucks a month in rent and so

missing a couple months could be really detrimental to getting financial assistance to help that family because a lot of organizations have monthly caps and annual caps and then lifetime caps and so early intervention is really important and so it's hard to say the average of the families in here but you will have families in here that may only own $35 because that's our minimum rent

But that $35,000 is important.

We need to have that touch point with that family to make sure that we are providing whatever services they may need.

Thanks, Miss Banks and Mr.

Sales.

Okay.

Okay, he moved down just a little bit, Kathleen, to the filings.

Okay, so we wanted to just provide a little context, and these filings actually should be, that should be April 25.

Sorry, I missed that in looking at the edits.

So you'll see the number of filings for rent, the number of filings for

Nonrent, which could be like maintenance, damages, et cetera, and then the rent and nonrent.

The total was 30 there for our subsidized portfolio affordable.

And then you can see the numbers for the non-public market rate portfolio.

Of those total 16 evictions were diverted through funds that were either obtained by working with our asset collections manager, reaching out for funds, as well as resident services, working with families to obtain funds.

And like I said earlier,

A lot of the families that we are seeing, once the balance has been paid, they come right back in.

And so we are, in our monthly meetings, we are talking about, like, what does follow-up look like?

And we are following up.

It's just, you know, the reality is, once a lot of people get that rent paid off, they kind of check out until it's time to check in the next time, if that makes sense.

We're trying to follow up, we're trying to evolve our response to kind of meet that need.

Unfortunately it's easier to get people to take money than to kind of dig in and get to the root of the problem, but we are trying to work on creative ways to

Do that.

Yes, sorry.

One quick question.

Yes.

So I believe the numbers were 15 were affordable and one was non-public market rate.

Okay, thank you.

And one quick second, TerAna.

In the, you scroll back up, and I will say that one non-market actually became a public housing.

Correct.

Because there was a subsidy issue, like that person was severely rent burdened, they were paying way more than they could actually afford.

And once they actually got in the subsides program, their rent was cutting, I think it was less than half

what they were actually being charged when they were in the non-public market rate portfolio.

They were living in the unit before we bought it but they were severely rent burdened.

And I just also want to point out

The eviction diverter is really, really big and important.

Yes, these filing numbers are big, and we need to get them a lot lower.

These filings are really costly.

The money you see owed, $9,010, we would never collect it.

And so we've lost essentially $100,000 there.

And then we've had to spend probably another $25,000 to $50,000 between turning units and legal fees.

And so it's really a lost, lost situation.

We have families that could not afford to live anywhere else.

and we've also have debt that we're never going to receive anyway.

Thank you, Mr.

And I do just want to clarify that it's not typical that we take somebody from a non-public market rate.

It just so happened that the stars aligned and

This person's name came up on the list for a unit right when they needed it.

And so we were able to work with agencies and get the balance paid off.

And they were able to move into a subsidized unit.

So I just want to clarify that.

Can you move down, please Kathleen?

Thank you.

So eviction, EDP participation, all sites, 106 families are currently enrolled in EDP.

98% of those families were deferred for non-payment of rent, or referred, sorry, not deferred, it's been a long day, referred for non-payment of rent.

And so the other 2% obviously would be for other issues, non-ranking issues.

88 participants have exited the program since August.

Those who have exited were in EDP for an average of 76 days.

18 new participants per month on average.

And then 82% carried over from the previous month.

And those again are just the people that pay rent late every single month who are referred standard.

We call them carryovers.

and although we are trying to work with them everyone doesn't accept the help and so we're working still working on trying to evolve that and then we have broken down I don't need to read everything verbatim but we've broken down the months

and then the numbers in EDP and every month when we meet we are pushing our teams to be diligent and be vigilant.

If you identify anything, not just money, but any needs that a family may have or come to you and speak about, let's get them in the eviction diversion program.

Let's find resources.

And sometimes it's not a reactive, it's a proactive, right?

We want to just try to recognize any issues that may become a future barrier.

Ms. Banks, we've got a, yes, we've got a couple of questions.

Go ahead.

So I just wanted to ask, so when we say that they exit the program,

I guess, how are we distinguishing it?

So does that mean they cured and they completed the program, but we don't count them as diverted eviction?

I just want to make sure I'm thinking about the numbers the right way.

Well, sometimes some people graduate and I saw you, Mr.

Sales, you can piggyback on me.

Just real quick, some people graduate and they get out of the program and then they move forward and do what they need to do.

You also have people who we tried for a few months to, Resident Services, Kathleen's team have reached out, PM has reached out multiple times and they either refuse to help

or they're just non-responsed.

So that could be a reason for exiting them.

It doesn't mean they won't come back in.

It just means we'd be kind.

Did you want to say something, Mr.

Sorry, just one thing just to clarify on that.

So they exit the program, that doesn't mean that they diverted, that their eviction was diverted.

Correct, for one reason or another, yes.

Okay, thank you.

We'll try to break it down a little bit more next time.

Really appreciate it, and I think we'll continue, we'll probably continue to ask you too many questions, and we'll all get there, but I think, especially when I see the increase in referrals, and like,

This is just something that we're all going to continue to deal with, certainly the current economy.

I'd be shocked if it wasn't getting worse.

That's a terrible thing.

So we're just trying to make sure we fully understand what you're telling us.

So then are the 16 who were diverted, they're not the 106 that's currently?

That means that you've served other people

So the evictions diverted are the ones that have been, those were actually filed cases.

Right, got it.

Filing in court, we came together as a team to try to figure out how do we, like, five alarm fire, how do we intervene in this?

Pending eviction to save this family.

Correct.

They're currently in the program.

We have not done a filing on them.

We're trying to keep them, keep a file from happening on them.

That's why we're intervening at the first month, like day number six.

Okay, that's really helpful, thank you.

I just think it's life.

You know, some people don't want help, some people don't want people in their business, some people never answer the door, never respond to a notice,

We've done phone calls.

We've knocked on doors.

We have Kathleen's team.

She can speak more to this.

They are reaching out.

Every month when we meet, there's always a handful of people or more that

just simply will not participate and will not respond.

And I just think that's people in general.

Everyone is not going to respond.

Everyone is not going to want to participate.

So that's also something that we talk about constantly and try to see how we can get around that.

Go ahead, Mr.

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of everything.

These are families who in a lot of cases haven't paid rent in months and so there's a little bit of anxiety there that the response from CRHA is going to be, we're going to evict you, we're not here to help you.

And so it's trying to change that norm.

and residents may have the right to feel that way because that is traditionally the case and that may have been the case in the past.

But this program was created to be the opposite of that.

And so it will probably take some time.

Those 16 aversions happen after months of trying to intervene before we ever got to a foul game.

Like the scenario with the

the family switching like there were multiple interventions at several different points and yes sometimes it takes over a year to process an eviction because of those several interventions because sometimes we'll say hey we'll give you a chance but you need to get to this point.

or hey, you make this payment and we'll make this payment.

So last year, I think we got $16,000 and so we created a program where we incentivize payments.

If a resident came to a table and made a portion of a payment, then we matched it.

It's going to be things that we're going to have to continue trying.

The interventions don't stop because we filed.

like if residents are coming to the table we are at the table ready to do a repayment agreement ready to call every agency that has funding available or that we may think have a funding available and work with them and now we have a new part of this program that

Kathleen is going to highlight later on.

That's going to also help.

And so the interventions don't stop once a filing happens.

But we are now filing now, which we did not do in the past.

and that's getting community members worried and so this we have to make sure folks know about this program they were educating folks about this program and all the interventions that we have already in the process and now we're creating these additional interventions all the way up until

The actual writ is filed and the sheriff is coming to the unit.

Okay, that's great to hear.

I feel like that maybe I just misunderstood what you had said maybe a couple months ago.

Sorry, I apologize for taking so much time.

It just feels like this is really important.

And I'm new and I'm trying to get my head around everything.

But I guess I had understood previously that if

if something had been filed in court that it was kind of hard to stop that ball rolling once it got rolling, once those funds had been allocated toward eviction proceedings.

That is almost absolutely never the case.

I think Delphine as our attorney can tell you that that is the process because of how long we have some of these cases.

That's all, that's pretty much it.

I mean, to the extent the board needs reassurance and we could certainly schedule a separate meeting to go back over the process, which I think we've done in the past, but John is absolutely correct.

It takes a long time because first and foremost, the staff and John make efforts to work with the family to see if there are alternatives.

We go through payment plans.

We work with the families to see if there are obstacles in their lives and things that we could help with to prevent an eviction.

So it takes many, many months before we actually get to the point of an unlawful detainer.

It's a really lengthy process.

and I have to say that the housing authority really does a great job of working with residents and trying to find ways to prevent eviction from happening.

But what the board needs to keep in mind as well is that some families simply don't want to work with us at all.

And so at some point it becomes also an issue of fairness as to making sure we enforce the lease and we give everybody the same

opportunity to comply with the rules and to work with us.

If a household simply has no interest in working with staff or answering the correspondence or meeting with us, then eventually it's just not fair to those who are paying their rent if we let other families not pay their rent or otherwise violate their lease.

And then you have the issue of families who are not in compliance because they have criminal activity

We have to protect the interests of the community as a whole and the safety of other residents as well.

So please keep that in mind but know that there is a process and it's actually a pretty lengthy process from the moment of a violation of the lease and the actual moment of termination of the lease and eviction

Great.

Yeah, I believe so.

Okay, so let's see.

So we continue to collect data, obviously.

We will continually be refining this internally at our meetings, at our team meetings as we go through strategies to improve.

We take what we've learned and kind of pivot as we improve the program.

And so I won't

reads you all the numbers.

The early result, the only thing I did want to say is it's 8,500 plus.

That number is higher than that.

Actually, last year, considering the economy and everything, agencies were a tremendous, tremendous help to our non-rent EDP participants.

We had one family in particular I think that over the last year or maybe 12 or 13 months came up with 8,000 in one account and then maybe 10,000 or 11,000 the second time.

So agencies really came through for our residents last year.

I know this year will be tighter.

Due to the change in the government.

So again, we are continuing to work through and see what that looks like since there will not be as much money available for just the non-rent issues by themselves.

So it looks like they threw in a median amount of background owed across the sites of $732.

And

Looking at the patterns of missed payments, late payments and debt accrual, as stated, there's a clear need for budget and financial education.

And as we've all talked about tonight, it's not the easiest thing once the debt is paid to get people to buy into helping themselves really just to understand budget and finance.

And so that's something we're still working on.

in media efforts to provide more information and technical assistance and auto payment.

I know that Mr.

Sales has been able to speak to this.

Our finance department has been working a lot on that, trying to get it set up for the sites that don't have it because some people do

want to use those automatic payments.

And then we also have people who are just, you know, they like to go get their monthly orders and bring them in.

So we'd like to have some diverse forms of payment, chronic non-payment, have an earlier intervention.

And so we have every move-in in 2026 is required between my team and Kathleen's team almost every single time to be a warm handoff and introduction to the family.

so that they can speak to either any issues that they may have, maybe something that we recognized on a landlord reference that we didn't necessarily deny them for, but we want to kind of get ahead of it.

Maybe it was some housekeeping issues.

Maybe it was some issues with the children.

I'm just throwing those things out there.

So we kind of want to get ahead of that.

And so warm handoffs,

for new movements so that we are meeting the family.

Kathleen's team is having a chance just to have an initial conversation and kind of catch anything that could be an issue early.

And then if it's a non-issue, just to build that rapport and relationship.

Outreach, I think Kathleen's team is also working on some more brochures and things that we can have

I just want to say thank you very much.

We've been very glad to see this and I know it's just like some pages but I recognize I want to acknowledge like how much work and how you know persistent you guys have had to be to keep

Keep pushing on this and trying to help people.

And it's tricky.

I'd like to echo that.

Thank you so much.

Mr.

Hey, can you scroll up a little bit, please?

So I just wanted to point out that the information in the top of the chart is only for West Haven.

So that information is just a little snapshot of what West Haven looks like and what West Haven has dealt with for the eviction diversion piece.

In the future, we will be able to break down all of these sites and be able to give snapshots.

There are some that are too small, but we can't because we'll be giving out confidential information.

But for the other sites, the larger sites, we can give this level of detail information on what the site looks like.

And so as you see, $38 is the lowest, $35 is our minimum rent, and there's a $3 late fee.

And so that's why it's $38 is the lowest.

And so 10% is the late fee.

That's what we'll have and in the future we'll be able to do that quarterly, maybe highlighting certain sites that we're seeing a lot of activity in.

And I just want to point out the deeper analysis.

The touch points with resident services and property management

It's really important.

We have a lot of programs that are really beneficial to residents financially.

So there's an FSS program where residents can come in and their income is locked in and rent is locked in and as their income increases, their rent does not increase.

Well, it does, but it gets escrowed and so they get their money back at the end of the program.

at West Haven, he has a jobs plus program so you have earned income disregard.

And so these are really good financial benefiting programs for residents and we need to make sure residents know about them and they're enrolling in them because for let's say I think we probably have

in public housing eligible units for, FSS is probably about 100.

But we don't have 50 residents in the program in public housing.

And so I think 50 is an easy number because when you think about it, who doesn't want to get all the money back that they paid in rent that's above what they're paying right now over the next five years?

I think people would love to have that benefit.

And so we need to make sure folks know about it.

They're getting signed up.

And the folks who are currently in housing that have issues where they can't get in these programs, that we'll work with them to get those issues addressed so then they can get in the program.

It's not benefiting any of us having these programs and not having residents in them.

and so these early touch points with both management, property management and resident services is going to be really important and key for being able to see this self-sufficiency grow because we've already started looking at the budget numbers.

HUD is cutting what we're receiving pretty large this year.

It's even larger than what they cut us last year and so

It's going to be important that we're collecting every dollar and that we are working with our residents because we have a large number of families that are paying $35.

And if you're in a jobs plus program,

Yes, you may still end up paying just $35, but the federal government is going to kick in and pay the rest while you're in the program.

And so CRHA gets a financially benefit.

Residents get the financially benefit.

It's a win-win.

It's that we need to make sure residents are actually signing up.

Thanks so much, Mr.

Sales.

I have just a follow-up question, I guess, which is in terms of kind of

being strategic about how to make sure that residents are learning about these opportunities.

You all are much better at that and have much more experience on that.

Kathleen, can you talk about what

not what, conversations, opportunities we've engaged with with PHAR on the eviction diversion.

Because we do see PHAR as being a key partner.

The eviction diversion.

Just as much as they're our residents, they're just as much PHAR residents.

They're PHAR participants.

We are paying PHAR to engage with them.

And so we need to use PHAR as a partner.

Thank you.

Yes and I also you know see this as an area of continuous improvement that we need to work on

We have, you know, when we talk about grant programs, sometimes we encounter distrust among individuals that believe they've seen things come and go and if they don't wanna do it, it's just gonna go away.

And the programs, you know, we didn't have a resident services department until about four years ago, so these programs were here.

And it's been a really long time since something like ROS or FSS was,

hosted by this housing authority.

So we are having to build trust with our community that this is a long lasting program they can benefit from and worth coming and sitting down with us to hear about.

We had a really great experience with the annual plan process this year where we talked about some of the grants, but we're gonna be looking at more opportunities

Really looking at more of a multi-faceted approach for 2026.

You know, we want to look at the lessons learned, what's not working.

We know just sticking flyers out is not going to do it.

We know door knocking isn't going to do it.

It's finding, you know, folks who have magic skills in getting people to show up and, you know, really focusing on getting them to be part of the process.

And sometimes it's phone calls, sometimes it's texts, sometimes it's social media, but we've got to

use all of those things.

We can't just focus on a few things.

We've been doing a lot of pivoting this year as we try different things.

And I try to ask my whole team to be willing to say, this is not working.

We've got to try something different.

We're looking at different trainings.

We've got two staff that have been doing mediation training, two staff that did participatory budgeting training.

We have one staff and some others, the whole team soon to follow that's doing training for Senior Planet with working with elderly, but we also see some of those trainings can be really helpful with families.

One of the big things that we started in the end of 2025 and have really

rolled out at the beginning of this year as roundtables.

And that is where you have the core staff or community members that are trying to assist an individual in crisis come together with permission from that individual.

Often it might be like our ROS coordinator, a property manager, and the resident themselves, and maybe resident service coordinators.

We've had some scenarios where maybe they bring in someone from, you know, a counselor from region 10 or another agency, but everyone comes together to, you know, support the resident and see, make sure everyone's on the same page.

Everyone understands what's going on.

And often these meetings were also finding out like a big ball that was in the air that no one knew about.

And that's able to make us realize

You know, what that missing piece was that we weren't addressing.

Unfortunately, many times it's addiction, which is really hard.

But it's, you know, it's kind of almost a gift if you can actually make it to the table so we can talk about it.

It's rare.

But domestic abuse is huge on that list.

Very hard to talk about.

You really have to have staff.

Our property management team puts a lot of time into this as well on building that trust so that the resident will actually confide in them what's going on in the household.

Least education is something we've been looking at from many different

perspectives, and I think what we're gonna do is just try to tackle it a lot of different ways and see what works.

We've got some PowerPoints we're about to roll out.

We're gonna see how visual presentations go, conversations, maybe see if Legal Aid and other groups could do some, our staff doesn't even have to be there while they do it.

It's just figuring out what works for different individuals.

We're also looking at

Mental Health Supports.

We've developed a really great relationship through region 10.

I want to credit the late board member, Alice Washington.

She worked tirelessly to talk to UVA and region 10 about really showing up.

And the Blue Ridge Center opened.

And we have Marie Pool, someone with lived experience, who's coming into our communities and working with all of our staff

to meet with people around some of the challenges they're facing.

She's a clinical social worker.

We have not made a lot of movement yet on substance abuse use and addiction resources, but we're constantly talking about it.

Prolific boxes, the sexy boxes, those are such a great resource to have.

We see so many people going to those.

For financial literacy and budgeting, I talked to city staff about this some too.

This is definitely one size does not fit all.

We need to have classes that are really basic about money coming in and out.

And then we've got folks that wanna talk about home ownership.

So it's a really wide range and we just need to

do a better job of figuring out individuals learning styles and the best way for us to approach them with this information.

We have so many folks that are working like several jobs and are just getting more behind every month.

And so building that trust so we can actually get to a point to have some hard conversations.

Where is that money going?

What's happening?

Is somebody in your life using that money?

Is it just that your teenager really wanted a phone?

You know, what happened?

And it's hard, it's hard to talk about that and it can be very embarrassing.

It's a vulnerable place to be in.

Funds for rental assistance are just drying up everywhere and I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more in a moment.

Just basic needs.

For a while there during COVID, it was so easy to find people's stuff, but that's really dried up.

We've had to get really creative.

We're trying to every month take a church we never talked to before and reach out and even if it's

Could you advertise to local groups?

Is there a place that people could drop off food or goods or something?

Is there a standing location where people could make donations?

Is that something that you all could accept?

We have a little bit of that right now.

Sometimes we're really careful because

We have, you know, sometimes our community is the most generous, but we also sometimes get donations that, you know, we have to be careful that they're in a condition that's best for the family.

And we also, you know, are looking at space.

We've got a real space challenge at the moment.

The summer is gonna be so exciting when, you know, South First Street comes online.

But right now, space is a real challenge.

are still very focused on food insecurity.

And Mr.

Sales had done some research and looked at a program in Flint, Michigan, where the housing authority there or housing commission partnered with the food bank.

And we were really excited about this program because they set it up so residents could work in the food bank and work off up to $300 of their debt.

and we started digging into those.

I met with our local food bank and realized that they're, you know, the size of Flint, Michigan, the size of Charlottesville, very different.

And they just don't have the capacity.

We learned so much though, because we learned that, you know, Loaves and Fishes, where a large portion of our community goes on a regular basis.

Our food bank isn't even big enough to supply them.

They're getting it from one of their affiliates.

But we did find out what we need to do to become a partner and be able to access resources to get shelving and actually set up cold storage and get the thing we really want is a vehicle and that is that we need our 501c3 because we cannot be a partner without having that.

One of the partners that the food bank has is the Stanton Housing Authority who does have a 501c3 and through that they have set up a food pantry that we're going to go visit April 1st and just look at the size of it.

I'm already reaching out to them to get better ideas about space requirements.

Their model isn't exactly what we want to do.

They just have a really big open house once a month.

We're looking at something that

can actually deliver to sites and have more of an emergency feel.

But partnership with redevelopment, we're gonna be really looking at some of the spaces that we might have coming online initially at South First Street phase two.

But this is really exciting for us because it's an opportunity for individuals to work on paying off some of their debt.

Mr.

Yes, and I also wanted to give an update on the nonprofit.

That should be going to the city council maybe on Tuesday, if not on Tuesday, the Monday, the first is March 2nd.

So the first meeting in March, but it is in the,

No, I think we should be good.

We were able to make a pretty good argument about the

and how other housing authorities, this is the norm.

Delphine gave us some really good material that the city council, well, the city has not pushed back on.

I've already had any questions from them about it.

And so I think we're all good.

We'll be prepared for that.

And so I do think we're in a really good position to get that going so we can move forward with this expansion.

Because one thing that we know is that there's very limited rental assistance funds.

A lot of the programs have guidelines to receive assistance.

Don't go back up, Kathleen.

They're a very limited number.

I just want to see where the expansion policy is.

They're a very limited number of resources and they are requirements and there are a lot of lifetime restrictions, annual restrictions.

And so we have to look at other options to address our issues with eviction diversion opportunities.

and so the cost of eviction is really high and so the answer is not mass evictions.

Number one, we could not afford it and you would just have a bunch of vacant units because there's no way we could afford to turn every one of those vacant units.

No way we could turn 100 units.

And so we need to look at other options.

And so the expansion pilot is an option to get folks in who have $500 or less.

or maybe they owe a little bit more than 500 and we are working with them on other interventions like maybe we have, we're talking to The Haven about some of their rental assistance funds or we are working with Pathways and Pathways have committed to a certain amount but we need to get to a zero to keep them from being evicted because they've gotten to the point where we've already filed on them

and so now to really intervene we actually need to have money at the table or if we've gotten to the process unfortunately where we've been awarded the unit then you have to actually have it down to a zero dollar balance and so now we're looking at hey how do we intervene when there's very limited resources

in the community and this family really has no other options and so we're looking at this pilot program where individuals can work at the food bank or another nonprofit and so we're going to be looking at other nonprofits to see what other opportunities are out there in the community where nonprofits and agencies are going to be able to get

really free labor and resources and good resources and labor from our community while the resident also is getting job skills, some additional knowledge, they're building social skills as well and they're also paying down their balance without having to come up with the money themselves.

and so CRHA at that point we will zero out up to $500 per the families and so we're valuing it at $15 per hour which is what city council I think passes a livable wage and so we're I think Flint did at $10 an hour but we're doing at $15 I think their max was $300 and so we've increased our max to $500.

as part of that initial expansion.

And then we'll see how this works.

But right now we are trying as many things as we can to help.

And so we're constantly researching to see what all the agencies are doing across the country to see if it works here.

We can't stop trying.

And then the last part we had here was just around assistance.

We are really struggling now to find assistance for families who do owe rent.

There's lifetime limits.

A lot of our local churches have also

said we've seen you before.

We need to focus on another family.

And they're just getting so many requests.

They're overburdened as well.

We hear over and over again that they're gonna go back to their congregation and have to have bigger conversations because what they thought was enough for the year was gone in months.

We are looking at

The number that we looked at once we put things together was 2,704.

Going towards rental assistance for arrears, educational opportunities,

We're really just looking at different ways to support people.

We have individuals that want to do some technical training and sometimes you know we have funding for it, sometimes we're able to partner with economic opportunity with the city and cover it but other times it's not covered and so whenever possible we have them

you know do financial aid but we just recently did some cooking classes and you had to have a school-aged child living in your home to qualify for the funding that was available at the moment and we had to you know pull from some grant funding to cover some of the other interested folks but we know we could do that class many times that a lot more people show up but there is not funding for it.

financial literacy and education we are really wanting to get creative here we want to have you know if people are going to come and we're going to do we've even looked at some fun boot camps other areas are doing where if you come to all the trainings you get five hundred dollars at the end but you have to show up at every single one which is a big incentive you know to come to all these

but we're looking for funds for things like that.

Funds to bring in trainers.

We've got people in our community with lived experience that do amazing trainings but we need to be able to compensate them to come.

Especially as we've got a lot of people that experienced incarceration or other members of their family did and bringing in trainers that also have this lived experience is a lot more meaningful often than having our staff do the training.

barrier navigation, so something that, you know, I was saying it hit me in the face lately, but it's just so many people we're working with right now owe money for, you know, with the DMV that's causing them not to get their license back, their license has been suspended, insurance costs, just getting a car,

Over and over again we're finding folks with multiple points and we want to be able to start some cohorts around helping people have a valid driver's license.

It is a game changer to actually be able to do that and have a vehicle.

We have a lot of people driving vehicles that don't have driver's license and the cars are not registered.

They're in danger every day.

We really worry, you know, some of our families that our English learners fall into that and that's not a good, you know, they're risking a lot with that.

We, you know, we're finding our self-sufficiency program, which Mr.

Sales was just talking about.

We,

Since our program is new and hasn't been here for decades like most housing authorities, we don't have a pool of money that's been collected over the years from individuals who might have defaulted that could go to help other residents.

We're starting from scratch with that program and every week we have someone that has a need that might be

you know something as simple as getting a school transcript that's 20 bucks but we really just want to have a little bit of funding available to help with that and you know all of our all of our programs we we want to make it more approachable if you come to a class we want you to walk away with something it doesn't have to be a gift card it might be a gift bag

Our youth coordinator's been doing some really fun stuff where he's looking at on a Saturday once he starts his youth council that they won't just get a box lunch.

Inside the box lunch are going to be some gifts.

It might be household stuff.

He's going to mix it up.

But something just to show that we care.

And we want to be able to do more of that at our trainings.

But just at the core of all this, just having some funding to help incentivize people coming in to talk to us so we can help them when they're behind on rent.

The two biggest things are, number one, people not showing up to talk to us, even though we've tried many ways to reach out to them.

Number two, they do come and they've maxed out everywhere.

They've been coming to us on a regular basis.

We know them well.

Maybe they're finally at that point where they're ready, but they've maxed out all their resources.

We do know it often takes several times to get someone there.

There's just so many things going on in people's lives we don't know about.

These are kind of the numbers we were looking at.

And Mr.

Yeah, I will say, so in the past, and one reason why we developed the eviction diversion program, when it got to the housing authority, the housing authority has historically had an issue with not collecting or anything.

And so,

The pandemic only made it worse.

I get families who traditionally paid rent, but because there was this moratorium on evictions, and then we had organizations and foundations paying rent, just out of the goodness, just saying, hey, we're going to pay rent for families for two months.

You had that happen.

And so then it became a snowball effect.

And so families who traditionally always paid their rent, who had lived in public housing for 15 years, then became a family who was at risk because they slipped and they could not catch up.

And so in the past, we've asked the city to wipe off balances and

and then we've gotten back to that same dollar amount or more the next year and so last year we said hey we can't do that like that is not fixing the issue at some point we have to fix what's going on and the only way we do that is by hey we have to get super super super involved we need to be boots on the ground and we have to

have these interventions where everyone's coming to the table and figuring out what's going on.

We've been doing that.

I think we have the numbers to show that we've been doing that.

I think we also now have, we can show that we have families that have come to the table that we can't find assistance for because they've met that lifetime cap or they've met that annual cap or maybe they're not affiliated with an organization or a certain church.

And so a church will not provide for that or that family.

And so

We need to get assistance if we want to keep families in the program because there are a large number of families that have relatively large balances.

There are families that as you have seen throughout the year that we've taken off

because we've actually moved forward with victims because I think there was a family at South First Street that had $24,000 worth of just the South First Street balance, which I think was more than half of First South First Street.

And so there wasn't any options in it.

and so we had to move forward with something else but we do have families that are engaging with us that have no other means to pay and so we are looking at creating a program where it's similar to the MATCH program that we did in the past where we put families on payment plans and as they make payments we are then making a payment on behalf of them from this balance

The problem is CRHA cannot afford to eat the old balance.

It's just financially impossible and we can't zero it out like it wasn't there because then we're doing a disservice for all the families they actually paid rent.

and so we need to come up with the mechanism.

We think based upon what we've done in the past with this $16,000 pilot program that was funded by I believe CDBG last year that the mixed payments with the match from the resident and a match from the program works.

It continues the engagement because the individual's on a payment plan and so they're constantly meeting with us and we're constantly engaging with them and we're also going to tie in budgeting and financial literacy.

There's a big issue back in the day or maybe just 15 or 20 years ago, payday loans were the thing.

Those are, well they probably still are the thing but the bigger thing now is the

Arne, the same day pay.

They're not even payday loans.

Well, I guess they are payday loans, but they're not really because you're getting money for the money that you're going to get from your paycheck.

And so by the time your paycheck hits

Most of your paycheck is gone.

And so we didn't know that this was such a big issue in the community until we started talking to the families and analyzing their actual statements.

And it's like, when you see that, yes, they have their direct deposit hit, and then they have a daily pay, take out almost all of the funds that they should have gotten that day because they've already spent it.

And it's a budgeting, financial, and a resource issue.

and so we are trying to tackle the resource issue with the Jobs Plus programs, looking at other workforce development opportunities.

Section 3, CRHA has done a lot of hiring of residents.

We can't hire every resident, I wish we could, but we are trying to do our part and so

It's going to be multiple different things but we have to start with budgeting and financial literacy because that's really the entry level and where we're seeing folks.

We're getting folks who have never rented a apartment before and we have a preference to get folks who have been homeless and so we need to be able to provide more resources than we've provided.

We are doing way more than what we've ever done as a housing authority and I'm saying that and I've only been here five years but Kathleen you've been here a while, a couple stints and so you know what was previously done and we've done more than we've ever done before and we still have so much more to do because we have taken on the challenge

of saying, hey, we are going to serve everyone and make sure everyone is safe in housing and trying to protect everyone in their housing unit.

And so it's a big task.

All of us are up to it, but we do need some financial assistance.

And so we're going to put in a request with the city, but in the future, this will look like nonprofit funding requests.

The same thing that like PHA puts out

I think they do it once or twice a year where they put out opportunities on like even their LinkedIn because connected and so I see it and so we would be essentially doing the same thing but initially we're going to come to the city for funding requests to meet this.

We want to put it in front of you guys so you guys see it and know what it is.

Yep.

Great.

And so does that, like, would it be helpful for us to, like, are we going to have, are you going to have an individual meeting, or do you want us to show up to a, like, city council meeting, or what does that look like?

I think sending emails to city council because we're gonna put this in.

I think sending emails is really good.

When it does come up, I think coming to city council or sending in an email when it does come on the agenda and it's published would also be good.

I think all those things make sense.

I mean, I think emailing

City Council.

Our budget process is currently underway.

I would guess this would most likely come from last year's year in budget surplus.

But attending budget work sessions and advocating

for this to be a priority, again, emailing city council, speaking at city council meeting, public comment, just advocating for it being a big priority is important.

I think like all things with the city, just repetition is the most important thing for getting it on the radar of all of city council as a priority.

And we did recently approve somewhat similar

Scale of allocation for Piedmont Housing Alliance for work that's somewhat similar on their end.

So the issue has at least been on the radar of city council.

That's a good answer.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Well, thank you guys so much for this presentation and the thoroughness.

And I know a lot of work went into this.

A lot of work goes into doing the work.

So you have the data.

So appreciate that.

Thank you.

It's really helpful.

Hello, my name is Sophia Marrero and I'm a community organizer at PHAR.

So one of the things I wanted to talk about today was we put out a campaign to collect supplies previous to the snowstorm that happened a couple weeks ago.

Wendy Gao was the lead on that.

She contacted every single resident that she knew, went to knock on doors and asked what they needed,

how much of it, all that stuff, water, food, supplies, all that.

And it was pretty successful.

We also put out a campaign, our social media person put out a campaign on social media asking for donations.

And that was also pretty successful.

I personally went door knocking at Riverside and was able to contact some residents who needed

who honestly just needed anything of anything they would just take whatever because as we all know and as we all saw there was like nothing left in the grocery stores so it was a rough time but I just wanted to bring that to y'all's attention and say that that was a big win.

We hope to be able to mobilize when stuff like this happens especially for public housing residents

and in order to make sure that they have the supplies that they need and so I know I personally I know that the week that the week right after when the snow was everywhere and like every car was like snowed in I know that that was really difficult for residents as well so I want to make sure that we're talking about you know snow clearing we're talking about

access to roads, we're talking about power, water, all that stuff because that is important for residents.

And then I wanted to talk a little bit about some upcoming events that we have, so interesting conversation today because we are having a financial literacy event on March 2nd at 5pm at Creston Halls.

We've had one before at South First Street and we didn't have like a huge number of people, but the people who did come did state that they found it very, very helpful and they did connect.

This is done in collaboration with the Piedmont Housing Alliance and they did say that they found it particularly helpful.

and one of them actually reached out to a financial coach afterwards so I thought that was a win.

Additionally, we'll be giving out some candy for Valentine's Day for kids tomorrow and Saturday.

We also have Bingo at West Haven on February 18th.

at 2 p.m. Additionally, we have the Community Power Lab led by Wendy, which is on February 19th at 6 p.m. And there will be food and drinks at all these events.

And I also wanted to talk through a little bit of the collaboration we're currently working on doing Know Your Rights and working with the immigrant population in public housing communities.

Specifically reaching out to organizations like IRC, Simbarreras, and trying to make collaborations, trying to get something in the books, trying to figure out what the best way is for people to know their rights, to know what they should do in these types of situations.

Obviously it's a very tense situation.

It's a very stressful and anxiety-ridden situation for these people and so sometimes it can be hard for people to actually come out because of fear that something might happen to them.

Fear of, you know, anything and so we want to make sure we're doing whatever we can and thinking about the best ways

to really think through how we can best help the community and give them the resources that they need.

So we're also working on some youth events.

I know Miss Asia is currently working on some youth events.

She's also working on a resource fair that will happen at South First Street with just a lot of different community organizations in the

in the community.

And I know they're also looking to do a youth bingo.

Bingo is very popular among PHAR residents.

So we love doing it.

But yeah, that's just kind of an overview of what we have going on.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Do we have any other, I don't know who else would comment actually based on what I see.

Okay, that concludes our agenda for this evening.

Thank you so much.

This is probably our longest meeting in a little while, so thank you everybody for hanging in there and staying engaged.

Can I get a motion to adjourn please?

All in favor?

Yes.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good night.