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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHousing Commission Board Minutes April 24, 2024 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 Minutes of April 24, 2024 Commissioner Henry called the meeting to order at 5:32 p.m. Ms. Shirey called the roll. PRESENT AT ROLL CALL: Commissioners Emma Henry, Loria Hall, Ashlee Barker, Heather Taylor, and Don Sober absent. STAFF: Steve Raiche Karen Chase Kim Shirey Victor Verchereau Guests: None Commissioner Hall motioned and Commissioner Barker seconded a motion to approve the minutes of the March 12, 2024, commission meeting. The Motion was approved by all members present. Public Comment: limit 3 minutes per person • Jodi Washington — She wants us to be careful on the contracts that we approve. Specifically, L-Town Jubilee, she does not know the people she is trying to council. She got into an altercation with me, and I do have a PPO. I have a letter from David stating how he felt when L-Town Jubilee came to his house. She is leaving a copy of the letter. • Daniel Arnold — Been with LHC with section 8 does not understand current rent, how is it calculated. It looks like the utility allowance was not calculated in. He was asked if he had reached out to his case worker. He just received his paperwork and just wanted to know how it worked. We will make sure someone reaches out to him and set up an appointment to show him how it was calculated. • Mike Karl — homeless advocate in Lansing. He heard about this through David that we have a contract employee that was administering Permanent Supportive Housing Services. We already have case workers for the PSH program. They are coercing them to get regular voucher programs. The PSH program already must have a case worker assigned to them. L-Town Jubilee is going into their houses and scaring them into thinking they are going to lose their housing. All homeless should have an HDMIS ID. HDMIS is a homeless data bank to get the max benefits and protections. Please consider who you hire to be in charge of our most vulnerable population. Linda Karl Mike's mother agrees with Mike's comments. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 1 of 7 ti4�1 1,■: i:f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 • Andrez Chu ney ICHD — I just want to get more involved with the community and have a better understanding of how all the programs work. He just wanted to interduce himself. Action Items: • Resolution 1367 — Donation of LHC Van to GAPs — Victor Verchereau explained about the organization and why they have a need for the van. We will take them in to make sure they are road worthy. I personally make sure they are cleaned. We are working with a charity. They assist people that are coming out of homelessness to make sure they do not fall backwards into homelessness after they are housed. Currently GAPs are renting U-Haul vehicles to pick up donated furniture items and merchandise and take it to residents that are getting set up. This will help GAPs with the cost instead of renting U-Hauls. Commissioner Taylor asked what year the van was. It is 2009. We had an event at LaRoy Froh to invite families to a dinner and then after dinner inviting families to the free store that they brought for the families to get items they might not be able to purchase. GAPs are headquartered in Okemos in a large red hip roof barn to go to their free store. They are a local charity. GAPs have been around for a number of years. Commissioner Barker motioned Commissioner Taylor Seconded to approve the donation of the LHC van to GAPs. Motion was approved by all members present. • LHC Board Policy on Conference Attendance — Proposed. This policy comes from the change in by-laws about attendance at the board meetings. The discussion was also about having a policy for attendance at conferences. Commissioner Taylor has a couple of things to discuss. Item number 2 commissioner must be in good standing with LHC administrative policies wants a better understanding of the policies. Commissioner Henry states that it has to do with the attendance. Commissioner Taylor wants to table until some more clarification of understanding the policies better. Commissioner Henry motioned Commissioner Hall seconded to table this discussion until next board meeting. Motion was approved by all members present. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 n "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 2 of 7 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 Informational Items: Finance Report March 2024 • Purchase of the vacant lot here on the corner before the end of the month. • We are starting our fiscal year 2025 budget July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. We must adjust because of all the changes being moved from public housing to RAID housing. The dollar amounts are different. Funding is different. Housing Choice Voucher March 2024 Jennifer Burnette provided a brief overview of the March 2024 HCV Reports • In the month of March, we issued five regular HCV vouchers, 1 VASH orientation and six vouchers were issued. • We have twenty-one that are issued out searching or pending inspection with VASH. Five in the application process. • We have seventy-five applications that were mailed out during the month of March. Twenty-seven regular HCV that are currently out searching for units. We have 102 applicants that are pending documentation or final approval. Then we have fourteen units that are approved and pending inspection or pending lease up. We will be depleting our current waiting list soon. We will most likely open our list next month. • We just sent out eighty applications and we are going to send out another seventy-five in a couple of weeks. • Side note from Commissioner Henry. There are some shared living spaces, can they use a voucher for these. Kim, no because the resident will not have any control over shared living space. It is hard when doing a HQS inspection for who will be responsible for different items like a hole in the wall or stove not working who is responsible. Asset Management Report March 2023 Public Housing (PH) Scattered Sites — Karen Chase • Public Housing Scattered Sites we currently have sixty-seven units left in public housing. Sixty-one of them are occupied, which is an occupancy rate of 91% at the end of march. There were zero (0) move-in, one (1) move-outs, and zero (0) transfers. • Out of the six units that are vacant. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 3 of 7 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 • There was a total of twenty-one open work orders. Discussion Items: • Resident Member Services Overview—Victor Verchereau • There has been a bit of a journey as it relates to resident services. I am excited about the progress that has been made. • It has been challenging with pandemic and the construction with RAD has kind of shuffled things around a little bit. • The following are five pillars of independence to help residents to overcome their challenges. o Food Security o Finance education management and mentoring. o Education development — ultimately literacy— how can we help them further their education. o Employment skills o Employment support • Mr. Fleming asked me to put together all the resident services to tell a story. In the board report there is a rough draft that tells some of the resident services activities that are going on. How are you helping? It is part of the story. To be able to tell the story to the City of Lansing and other officials. • Challenges are residents see things being thrown at them instead of helping residents to impact their lives. • To get the information out there we have information on our website and Facebook and a newsletter. We will be creating a brochure by Edge. • Question by Commissioner Henry are all the services new, old or are continuing. The one thing Vic is trying to get started again is Head Start. • One program that is exciting is the Dolly Parton book program. • The Potter Park Zoo free passes for residents. • Andrez Chuney — I work on a community garden project. Trying to create gardens as a means to build relationships with homeless people and low-income people. Have you thought about having community gardens on these housing complexes? • Vic— Brian Westen is one of our residents and is a master gardener and has an amazing garden in Capital City. Hildebrandt and Waverly Place have raised garden beds that were built during the RAD. La Roy Froh is in partnership with Risdale area garden, which is TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 1121 "Equal Housing Opportunity Lk Lansing Housing Commission nidrd Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 4 of 7 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 behind LaRoy Froh, and we supply the water for that garden. We are also working with them on fencing. The police want a bit of a barrier at the back of our property and do not want to block off our residents. • Jodi Washington would love to partner with Vic. We are a federally qualified health center. We treat everyone with top notch medical care. • Mike Karl — have you thought about registering people to vote? Vic— it is a little outside our scope. If I can get a group together to pass on the information I will look into it. • Development Update — Kim — Riverview 220. We have two phases. Phase one is the building across the street. The city council did not vote to sell us the parking lot next to the proposed site for phase one across the street. We were able to secure a second site down the block next to the old Lansing State Journal building which will be phase two. We were approved yesterday by MSHDA to move our tax credits and funding to the new site since the old site fell through. Phase one is going to be fifty-nine units 52 are two bedrooms seven are three bedrooms. Phase two is going to have an additional fifty-five units 11 one bedrooms and thirty-six two bedrooms and eight three bedrooms. Other Items: None Deputy Director Comments: • Last month we brought to the board that the Coc voted to not fund one of our PSH programs for the new grant year. We have been in numerus talks with HUD to see if we can move those participants to another grant or if we have to find alternative funding for them. I just had a second conversation today. The HUD representatives are still trying to dig through regulations to see if I can move them from one grant to another. As you recall, this grant ends September 30th. It is because the Coc decided they wanted to focus on the coordinated entry grant so that bumped this PSH program to what they call a tier two which does not guarantee funding. At the last Coc board meeting I again reminded them that this was their choice that they chose when they decided to put these grant applications in. I also told them they need to step up and figure out how to house 24 individuals. Still working diligently to come up with a solution. • 1 went to a HARA NAHRO conference in Port Huron this past week where there was a lot of discussion about leasing struggles throughout the state and changes in HUD verification systems which are used to monitor PHA compliance. Their current system is set to go offline on August 8th. They have not start time for their new system. We are not TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 5 of 7 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 sure where that is going to put us for our compliance. They just tell us more information is to come. Executive Directors Comments: Given by Kim Shirey • As Steve mentioned in his report, Doug is hoping to close on the lot on the corner of our parking lot no later than May 1st they are hoping in the next week or so. • The Annual Plan Notice is basically any planned changes to the way we conduct business in our LIPH program, our PBV program, and our HCV program. That annual plan notice is going out this week. There are going to be a lot of proposed changes because of the HOTMA changes we talked about at the last board meeting. HUD regulations are changing as it comes to assets, deductions, reporting requirements and things like that. • We had a kickoff meeting yesterday to secure HR services. We signed that contract, and it began April 15t". They are going to review our policies such as our attendance policy, our dress code policy, our performance review policy. And stuff that as we have grown as an agency has been put on the back burner and our policies need to be updated. They are going to start working on our employee handbook and our policies in the next couple of weeks. • We also sold another home to a resident 2600 Dunlap. It is our fifth resident sale. We closed last week. • As part of the city charter, we must provide what we call the year in review. We have proved to the city our accomplishments for 2023 along with our challenges. We have that getting ready to be submitted to the city council. • Doug was at the Washington legislative conference a week ago with NAHRO where he met with both our representatives along with representative Slotkin to discuss housing related issues. • Commissioner Taylor asked what the name of the HR service was we have contracted with. It is HR Collaborative. She also asked if the board would get a copy of the information that we consolidate. If it is a major policy change it will come before the board. She also wants to ensure that it includes DEI training. Which it will. Development Activities: Other Activities: TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 n "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 6 of 7 tO . Qf Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 President's Comments: • Any updates on strategic planning or if the board will need to pick a date. Kim, I think we were waiting to see if it was something you wanted to do in conjunction with the board meeting days or if you wanted have set aside dates. Doug is still waiting for that collaborative decision and if it has been provided it has not been shared with me. Other Business: Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 6:50 p.m. Date Emma Henry Board Chair Date Doug Fleming, Acting Secretary TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 n "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting May 22,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes April 24,2024 Page 7 of 7