By Michael Martz
Published in Richmond Times Dispatch November 16, 2009
When Anthony Scott took interim control of the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority in 2006, departing Executive Director Sheila Hill-Christian had a word of warning about its housing-voucher program for needy families.
"She said, 'You've got to get in there and figure out what's going on with it,'" Scott recalled. Focused on the authority's strategic plan, Hill-Christian hadn't been able to address increasing concerns about management of the program.
More than three years and three federal audits later, the housing-voucher program remains the greatest vulnerability in an authority that is otherwise poised to play a pivotal role as partner to Mayor Dwight C. Jones as he enters his second year at City Hall.
RRHA has revamped the voucher program to serve more families, only to face a projected shortfall of $600,000 on Dec. 1 and an additional $600,000 in the coming year to pay rents for low-income families under increasing financial pressure. The program is still on the "troubled" list of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which will reconsider the designation next month.
At the same time, the Jones administration is looking at new ways of using the housing authority -- or not -- in economicand community-development projects in Richmond, including the sale of the GRTC Transit System headquarters on prime property near the Fan District.
"No housing authority can be all things to all community development needs," said Peter H. Chapman, deputy chief administrative officer for economic and community development.
Chapman said in a recent interview that the Jones administration is still mulling its proposal to use RRHA to buy, hold and seek a developer for the GRTC property, valued at about $5.4 million, on West Cary Street.
"No decision has been made," Chapman said. "It is not a foregone conclusion that we are going to use the housing authority as the vehicle for acquiring and holding that property."
City and RRHA officials said they never considered developing low-income housing on the property, but could use the authority to shape the project for interested developers.
"Tell us what you want to see happen," said Scott, who became executive director on a permanent basis in early 2007. "We can turn that into a viable plan that can get built."
The authority will have a key role in the new Development Council that Jones plans to establish to guide economic and community development priorities. That role will include redeveloping the Dove Court public housing project and adjacent Carrington Gardens Section 8 apartments, which RRHA already has demolished, as well as the much bigger task of redeveloping Gilpin Court, the city's oldest public housing project.
"The housing authority is perfectly positioned and capable of doing what it's charged with doing," said Hill-Christian, who also served on the RRHA board after leaving as executive director.
. . .
RRHA, founded in 1940, is used to wearing many hats -- managing more than 4,000 public housing units around the city, issuing portable housing vouchers to an additional 2,900 families, and acting as the redevelopment arm of the city in blighted neighborhoods.
It is a tool for acquiring land in high-profile projects, such as the transformation of the Miller & Rhoads department store into a Hilton Gardens Hotel and the creation of Richmond CenterStage on the opposite side of Sixth Street. It runs downtown parking garages and owns, among other things, the Richmond Coliseum.
"Heck, we own the state library," said Elliott Harrigan, chairman of the RRHA Board of Commissioners, referring to the Library of Virginia at 800 E. Broad St.
Harrigan, a businessman and real estate developer who joined the board in 2004, said, "I didn't realize, prior to going on the board, the scope of RRHA's responsibilities."
The question has been whether RRHA is capable of carrying out such a wide range of duties. The authority has been criticized by HUD for its financial management of programs, particularly for vouchers, and by private developers who say the RRHA can be an unwieldy partner in real estate projects.
Toni D. Schmiegelow, a spokeswoman for HUD's Richmond office, said the government has "seen significant improvement" in financial reporting by RRHA, which recently hired its first chief financial officer, a former official at Genworth Financial.
However, HUD put the Section 8 voucher program on its troubled list three years ago, initially because of record-keeping problems. The Office of the Inspector General launched a series of three audits. One, released last year, found that 674 families weren't getting help they deserved and thousands more were stuck on waiting lists, while RRHA had more than $7 million in the bank for the program.
Scott said the voucher program had been managed poorly. It didn't even have a position for program director, which he re-established and filled by mid-2007. The authority spent money on a new software system and other ways to improve management of the program.
"We weren't just sitting there with our hands tied, pretending as if everything was OK," he said.
This year, the RRHA stepped up efforts to reduce the waiting list for vouchers and increase its utilization rate to more than 90 percent. In late spring, Scott said he learned that HUD was requiring the authority to spend $2.7 million more of its reserves on vouchers, with a corresponding reduction in federal aid.
Instead of a $1.6 million surplus at the end of the year, the authority now expects a deficit of more than $600,000 and twice that by the end of next year. It has pulled back vouchers from 163 families that need them. The total $1.2 million shortfall is double what Scott estimated late last month to the City Council, before RRHA tallied the costs from October.
RRHA is hoping for federal relief from emergency appropriations aimed at fixing what has become a problem with housing authorities around the country, but it also is asking for a backup loan from the city.
Chapman is working with RRHA to get a firm figure on how much money it would need and how the authority would pay it back. "We are expecting repayment of the loan, whatever the amount is," he said.
At the same time, he expects the authority to make major changes in how it administers the voucher program. "What is clear is that long-term reform of the Section 8 program are in order," he said.
Chapman also wants the RRHA to focus on its role in helping low-income families find housing and, ultimately, learning to be self-sufficient.
That's a job that RRHA says it already has set as a priority as it attempts to transform public housing and the communities around it.
'We're not interested in the same 4,000 families living here 10 years from now," Scott said.
Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or mmartz@timesdispatch.com.
Showing posts with label Anthony Scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anthony Scott. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
RRHA Freezes Rent Subsidy Program
Richmond's housing authority is freezing its rent-subsidy program because of a financial jam.
The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority's move means that 130 families who received vouchers for subsidies within the past two months won't be able to get the help.
"We're telling them, unfortunately, we don't have the funding," said Shawn Williams, director of the authority's federally funded rent-subsidy program.
"It just wouldn't be right. Their name would be on the lease. If we didn't have the money to pay the subsidy, the landlord could ask them for the full amount," she said.
But the freeze caught Shellette Williams, who uses a wheelchair, just as she thought she and her four children finally had come to the end of a five-year wait for the rent subsidy that would allow her family to move from her mother's house.
There had been some back and forth over the rent, but she negotiated a reduction and tried for days to get word to the RRHA.
The authority "finally calls me back today . . . and guess what?" Williams said. "I have been packing for over two weeks. . . . Now we have nowhere to go."
The subsidies, often known as Section 8, or the Housing Choice Voucher Program, involve a three-way agreement. Once a low-income family qualifies for the program and finds an apartment, they sign a lease with the landlord and pay 30 percent of their income as rent. The authority then pays the landlord any difference between the family's payment and the actual rent for the apartment.
Because of its new financial squeeze, the authority is asking the city for nearly $420,000 of funding in December.
RRHA needs the money to cover rent subsidies for 84 families, separate from the 130. This group already had found a place to live and, unlike Williams, either have moved or are about to move.
"The mayor didn't hesitate for a minute," said Anthony Scott, RRHA's chief executive officer. "We felt it was wrong to disrupt people's lives by canceling those."
But paying those vouchers will leave the authority walking a financial tightrope for a while -- a tightrope that other housing authorities, including those in Winston-Salem, N.C., Boise, Idaho, and Birmingham, Ala., have managed by stopping subsidy payments to some families who already were receiving them.
"Everybody's being affected," said Virginia Supportive Housing spokeswoman Candice Streett. "In the program, you're supposed to contribute 30 percent of your income towards rent. As people lose their jobs, the amount housing authorities have to subsidize is going up . . . but there's only so many dollars coming out of the federal spigot."
At RRHA, for instance, the monthly cost of rent subsidies has climbed from about $1.4 million or $1.5 million earlier this year to $1.9 million for September, Scott said. The money all comes from the federal government.
Scott is hoping that Congress will approve funding increases for rent subsidies when it considers the issue next month, and that U.S. Housing and Urban Development officials will increase the department's payments to RRHA when they next review the authority's program, in January.
Those payments reflect the amount of use by an authority. In the past, that was a problem for RRHA, which was blasted by federal auditors last year because it managed its waiting list so poorly that nearly 675 families didn't get housing even though funds were available.
Since then, RRHA has ramped up the rent-subsidy program, spending about $1 million a month out of a $7 million surplus that it had built up over years of mismanaging the waiting list.
The result is that it has cut the waiting list from several thousand to 1,200, and that nearly 3,000 Richmond families now receive rent subsidies, up from fewer than 2,500 two years ago.
Now, the authority has to wait for HUD's review to recognize its stepped-up activity.
If HUD does not increase payments to RRHA, the authority could end up with a $6 million deficit by next September. It would have to cut more than 1,000 families from the program to break even financially, according to internal RRHA financial projections.
"This is serious," said Richmond City Councilman E. Martin Jewell, a longtime housing activist. "It sounds like they've gotten into financial trouble again . . . but for many people, RRHA is housing of last resort."
HUD Richmond office spokeswoman Toni Schmiegelow said it is up to agencies such as RRHA to take steps to stay within the budgets HUD sets for them.
"The authority appears to have made an assessment that it needs to manage its program differently in order to control and reduce expenses to otherwise operate within the budget," she said.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/RRHA05_20090904-215807/290822/
Write Your City Officials!
Please take a moment and write your city officials and declare your support for the three concerns and demands as presented by RePHRAME (Residents of Public Housing in Richmond Against Mass Eviction. Contact information is below, and the three concerns and demands are:
2. Current residents should have the right to return to newly developed public housing without any additional screening or requalification process. In the past, additional credit checks and other screenings (above and beyond those to which public housing residents are routinely subjected) have been used to effectively prevent previous residents from coming back to the newly developed housing. We believe redevelopment should not be used to get rid of residents who have done nothing to warrant eviction.
3. Public housing residents should have a meaningful voice in decisions regarding their housing and communities. Currently only 1 out of 7 RRHA commissioners is a public housing resident. RePHRAME proposes adding 2 additional seats to the RRHA Board of Commissioners which would be filled with RRHA residents.
:::: Richmond City Council
President Kathy Graziano, District 4
Mobile: 339-8393
Alternate: 640-9594
Office: 320-2454
Kathy.graziano@richmondgov.com
Vice Chair Ellen Robertson, District 6
Mobile: 314-7658
Office: 646-5724
Email: Ellen.robertson@richmondgov.com
Bruce Tyler, District 1
Mobile: 357-6007
Email: bruce.tyler@richmondgov.com
Charles Samuels, District 2
Mobile: 690-0898
Office: 646-6532
Email: charles.samuels@richmondgov.com
Chris Hilbert, District 3
Office: 646-6055
Mobile: 306-0875
Email: chris.hilbert@richmondgov.com
Marty Jewell, District 5
Mobile: 332-3654
Office: 646-5724
Email: marty.jewell@richmondgov.com
Cynthia Newbille, District 7
Office: 646-3012
Email: cynthia.newbille@richmondgov.com
Reva Trammell, District 8
Office: 646-6592
Mobile: 240-5050
Reva.trammell@richmondgov.com
Doug Conner, District 9
Office: 646-6592
Mobile: 512-0500
Email: doug.conner@richmondgov.com
City Hall, 3rd Floor
900 East Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23219
City Hall, Suite 201
900 East Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23219
:::: Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority (RRHA)
Anthony Scott (CEO),
dpjackso@rrha.state.va.us (recipent: Asst. Doris Jackson-Crocker)
Anthony Scott (CEO),
dpjackso@rrha.state.va.us (recipent: Asst. Doris Jackson-Crocker)
Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority
901 Chamberlayne Parkway
Richmond, VA 23220
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