Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board Meeting   7/27/2026

Good job.

I'm so sad that I'm out of those fruit bars.

That's what I really want.

I was accused of eating all the good flavors.

It comes with 12.

The accusations.

I don't know.

I asked, well, I asked for a different room.

I didn't have to.

but he has, he has one minute.

That's, yeah, that's good.

How was the evening with joy?

Yeah, I saw that.

I don't know.

It looked amazing.

I kind of go, but neither.

Hey Kathleen, save the date for the Halloween Spectacular, my favorite day of the year at West Haven, October 24th.

is that a, what day is that?

Nice.

This is the prolific in City of Promise one.

Yeah, we work with them.

We'll start our, I wanna start collecting Halloween costumes earlier to try to get more.

No matter how many we get.

There's never enough.

Yeah.

Well, Halloween is actually on a Saturday, but we thought that would just be too much.

There'll be enough things.

Yes, ma'am.

Commissioner Moss?

Here.

Commissioner Hicks?

Here.

Commissioner Rosenblith?

All right, we'll take a moment of silence.

Okay.

First up this morning, we have board elections.

I believe our open position is Vice Chair since Commissioner Rosales, although I guess you guys could impeach me and somebody else can be the Chair, that's also an option.

So, looking for nominations for Vice Chair.

I don't think so either.

Is there a second?

I second, yeah.

So a nomination is in fact a proposal to fill in a blank in an assumed motion that Gillet Rosenblith be nominated or be elected to the specified position.

Oh, I don't like that.

Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me now?

Okay.

Okay.

So are there any other nominations for vice-chair?

Okay.

If not, the nominations are closed.

Commissioner Moss?

Yes.

Commissioner Rosenblith?

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Motion passes.

I don't think we have any other open.

We had a treasurer at one point, but we haven't had that in a while.

So I think that's it.

for that.

Okay.

General announcements.

The next board session is going to be on Thursday, August the 13th at 6 p.m. Our next regular board meeting is August 24th at 6 p.m.

Redevelopment Committee meeting every first Thursday of the month from 3 to 4.

Safety Committee every third Wednesday from 12 to 1.

Resident Services Committee quarterly on the second Tuesday of the month at 1 o'clock.

Just a general announcement, an additional food pantry was added by Prolific as of Friday on Riverside.

So we're making our way around.

I don't know how many that is right now.

We've got at Mickey, Madison, South First Street, Sixth Street, West Haven, Riverside.

So yeah, so that's good news.

I mentioned to Kathleen the annual Halloween party at West Haven with City and Promise in prolific will be on October 24th.

Time to be determined.

Any other announcements from other commissioners?

No.

One thing we were looking to discuss, and I don't know if we need Mr.

Sales, is the board offsite, targeted for September.

and that would also require I think Delphine Carnes.

Yeah, I think so.

So we can follow up on that but just know that we are going to be looking to have one.

We'll just need to figure out dates.

And the focus, sorry, the focus of that will be on reviewing and updating the board bylaws.

Okay.

Good evening, my name is Annette Wilcox.

I noticed some nice new changes going on and I for two

years I haven't seen the Wells Fargo bank for me to do my have a checking account it closed down for two years ago and I missed it and on Belmont Avenue the

I was wondering if I have any questions, I will try to ask Chris.

For those of you who know Chris Genzic, ask Chris if he knows something about what new building's gonna replace Belmark Market.

We just got closed down because of the size issue.

Hi, I'm Emily Dreyfus and I'm an organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center and on the PHAR Advisory Council and I just wanted to let people know that PHAR board elections are now underway starting tomorrow.

Last month I was here talking about the nominations and we got a lot of nominations which was very awesome including several from the scattered sites and smaller sites so that's a good sign.

and West Haven Community Day is Saturday, starts at 10 with the resource fair and I wanted to give a shout out to Commissioner Hicks for his recent media work.

He always does a great job with that so it's wonderful that you're carrying that message out there.

and lastly wearing my legal aid hat I wanted to ask if a communication has gone out to all the residents yet to inform them of the rent receipt policy change because they got a written communication as you probably remember a few months ago maybe two or three months ago saying that no rent receipts would be provided but have since agreed with legal aid that people are entitled to at least proof of payment

before you already can send a receipt.

And we've been asking to have that communicated to residents so that people will be reassured.

Thank you.

OK, next up, seeking approval of the board minutes from June 22nd.

Can I get a second?

Second.

Commissioner Moss?

Yes.

Commissioner Hicks?

Yes.

Yes.

Great.

That passes.

The draft policy for education reimbursement.

I don't know who's supposed to talk about that.

Okay, I guess we can table that for now.

What about the draft minimum rent policy?

Okay.

Good evening to the board and everyone that is there in person.

So I guess I can start with Emily's question regarding the rent receipt policy process.

It wasn't a policy.

It was a rent receipt process change.

All the residents have been notified.

In addition, we are having town hall meetings two floors at a time.

for residents that perhaps can't read and don't understand the notices that's gonna be happening this Thursday in addition to the monthly, I'm sorry, the monthly meeting with the residents association there in the building.

And so it's going fine.

We haven't had any issues and everyone is getting what they need.

as far as that process change.

So I'm gonna jump over to the report.

We just want to highlight tonight the decrease in TARS, which has been pretty significant.

The large amount of assistance that staff and resident services and PM worked

very diligently to get in the last month in the amount of $26,740.

It's extremely high for this time of year if you know anything about funding and with all the policy changes with the current administration.

So we are excited about that and continuing to work on that with the EEP program as well as other issues and concerns

Let me jump over here.

We also wanted to highlight, as Emily said, West Haven Day is coming up.

We also have scheduled Creston Hall's beautification day.

We did not leave them out.

They wanted to be a little more intentional about their beautification day because they don't have a lot of outside.

So this year we will be, of course the painters will be painting the hallways and common areas, but we're still asking for volunteer partners to come out so that we can get the buildings, the cleaning, cleaning stairwells, fences, those things that don't necessarily get cleaned every day.

The residents are super excited even though they're not required to attend.

They are just excited to have that attention.

So that is gonna be September 11th from 9 until we finish.

Again, we won't be doing paint, we'll be doing more cleaning.

But if you can join us on September 11th at 9 a.m. into Friday.

Come out and help us with pressure calls as we close out beautification days for 2026.

Also, Mr.

Sales asked me to highlight the previous round of unlawful detainers that were filed.

If you look, you can follow the stats, 11 filed, and going through the process, we only had one that we got judgment and possession of, so we were able to

Edith Divera continued 10 of those.

And so I think we are seeing the process work.

Our goal is to have zero to five zero, to have zero of anything, but there's a reality that we face, but staff has really stepped up.

Resident services has been extremely helpful.

As we mitigate not only rent issues, but

housekeeping issues, a lot of mental health issues coming to the surface during this time of year, especially in our aging community.

And so we are just happy about everyone working together to mitigate those things.

We had another staff member get certified with their public housing sort of occupancy certification

in the last month.

So we're excited to see staff moving towards really taking the courses, passing the exams and getting certified and knowing the work, the technical work that they do every day that's so important when you are working in the communities that we work in every day.

Upcoming safety meeting on August 12th.

If you would like to be added to the invite for virtual or you know anyone who would like to be added, please email anybody.

You can email Miss Carrie, myself, a member of the property management team.

I would be happy to add you for whoever you're recommending so that they can be involved or join us in person.

We had our second annual South First Street community day, which was a huge success.

And with South First Street phase two coming online, we look forward to next year being even bigger for South First Street and the scattered sites joining them.

I believe that is everything that we wanted to highlight.

That was a mouthful tonight.

No questions.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay.

HCV program.

Good evening.

Sorry for my tardiness.

We have not had much change with HCV program.

We're still at a 427 participants for a half of 479,000.

The wait list is still 1,727 families.

It says one unleashed unit.

That's because someone is searching with the voucher, but we have not pulled from the wait list.

The mainstream program is steady at 32.

That program has a capacity of one to 40, but we are shortfall.

And so that prior to that,

Vouchers are locked at 32 right now.

South First Street, I mean Crescent Hall, sorry, 50 project-based vouchers, we have two vacant units.

South First Street has 23, that means we have one vacant project-based voucher unit.

The Crossings has 16 occupied units, so they have about, I think, six, no, five vacant units, I'm sorry.

EHV enhanced vouchers, we have three and so that number is going to continue dropping as families come off the program.

The EHV program, you currently see that those 10 families are going to roll into the regular program as of this month and so next month you'll see that program will drop to zero and those families will roll over to HCV.

Tenant Protection Vouchers, we have eight families under Tenant Protection Vouchers and seven under Tenant Relocation Vouchers.

Currently have four VASH with the capacity of one.

We have 16 Foster Youth Vouchers leased up with nine open.

In Portable Vouchers, we have 16 Ported Vouchers for a total capacity of 612.

and for SISRA we are at 65 families for HAP capacity of 71,000, which is slightly over our average.

So we are shooting for a 70,000.

So we're spending more than 90% of the money that we've received from the city on HAP.

We have two new emissions.

Those were in the project based voucher programs and 12 folks that are searching their hourly in the program, looking for new homes.

That is all I have for HCV.

Questions for Mr.

Sales?

No.

I'm just gonna share real quick on the screen West Haven Community Day is gonna be this Saturday and I really encourage everyone to attend it's gonna be at starting at 10 o'clock

And we have quite a few folks that we know well that are going to be in the dunk tank.

Mr.

Sales is the very first one in there.

so we're hoping to see you all.

I've attached some materials.

I've had a few people ask what it looks like some of the things we're using for door knocking and outreach so I just attached some materials for that for the eviction diversion program.

We have some new staff.

Rico Harris is one of our new resident service coordinators and it's been adapting more of a boots on the ground model where he's just in the neighborhoods a lot every day and we're seeing a lot of traction from that.

We also have Avista that we've been awarded who starts on the 10th and she's going to be working really closely with Katrina and I with grants and development efforts.

Her name is Camilla Lightfoot.

She has a bachelor's in computer science and we really are hoping to have her look at creative ways

to be looking at our software and other systems to train staff in some ways but also look at how we can get more data from our eviction diversion program and other efforts.

The next big thing I just wanted to bring up is we're gonna be launching donuts at the bus stop again.

School starts on the 12th.

It's a way of welcoming kids back to school.

We have warm donuts from Krispy Kreme as well as bananas and fruit and juice and water.

If anyone's interested in joining us at these events at each site, please let Mr.

Sales know and we'll get the times to you and locations.

Our youth program has four field trips this week.

They're going to Richmond, DC, and two trips to Kings Dominion so they can get all the kids there.

Everyone's really excited about it.

We're renting a 15-passenger van and also using the minivan.

The kids really wanted to go to the International Spy Museum in DC, so I'm really excited to hear about that.

It's an immersive program.

and then the trip to Richmond involves the Science Museum and David Busters.

We're continuing to work on meetings with residents to talk about what kind of activities they want in their spaces and how we can best assist with that.

We're working

One of our part-time staffs, Zoe has helped us draft an emergency plan and this fall we're gonna be rolling out community meetings on that.

She's also been working with the fire department with that plan.

We're also gonna be partnering with property management on a fire drill at Preston Halls, which is part of that.

So Resident Services is continuing to work on partnerships for addressing what to do when violence happens in our community.

We've had some staff with boots on the ground with it, but we're also just looking at different ways to approach prevention and also just to be there when things happen.

And the other big thing,

We've started planning meetings for the 2027-2028 annual plan.

They started in June.

We're having a resident advisory board meeting tomorrow as we're working on planning for that.

But at the same time, we have an amended version of our current plan, the 2026-2027 plan.

that was posted July 1st.

The public hearing for that will be held as a hybrid meeting at the West Haven Center on Tuesday, August 18th at five.

And at the next board meeting on Monday, August 24th, we will be bringing the amended plan to hopefully be approved by resolution to the board to then be submitted to HUD.

We anticipate posting our plan that we're just starting to work on at the end of October.

So two things happening at the same time.

Just one.

The new form for the EDP, the sign up, is really a good idea.

Is it going to go out with late notices with rent?

Is it when they meet with staff?

When they meet with staff.

I started using it a couple months ago.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Just a couple of things to highlight are, since last semester or two, the audits for South First Street phase one and Crescent Hall has been completed.

Clean audits, no issues on either property.

Since we just finished our first quarter of our fiscal year, we've done some budget to actual comparisons.

Throughout public housing,

was actually a lot better than I expected.

We had a little reduction of what we projected tenant rents to be.

Some of this is due to some terms taking a little longer.

However, in some properties, they performed better than we expected.

So our total variance is only about 5% across the board.

And expenses, we've reduced those quite a bit.

This is probably due to keeping a little better eye

everything in maintenance and a stricter PO system and trying to reduce as much waste as possible with our smaller budget.

Okay, we will now move to closed session.

Be it resolved that the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, the 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 codes

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 and consultation.

I'm supposed to kill it.

Yeah.

Oh.

Okay, sorry everybody that got weird.

Consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to actual or probable litigation where such consultation or briefing in open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body as authorized by section 2.2-3711A7 of the act.

All in favor?

Yes.

Okay.

I got here a couple minutes late, so you might have already done this.

Okay.

I will open for public comment.

All right.

With no public comment, that concludes our agenda for this evening.

All in favor?

Yes.

I know we're out of the meeting.

Can folks let us know your availability to walk or do a tour of South First Street phase two?

We just received the first set of units, like 23 units,