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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHousing Commission Board Minutes October 23, 2024 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 Minutes of October 23, 2024 Commissioner Henry called the meeting to order at 5:33 p.m. Mr. Fleming called the roll. PRESENT AT ROLL CALL: Commissioners Emma Henry, Loria Hall, Heather Taylor, Bryan Jones, Ashlee Barker. STAFF: Doug Fleming Kim Shirey Steve Raiche Karen Chase Guests: None Commissioner Hall motioned and Commissioner Taylor seconded a motion to approve the minutes of the August 28, 2024, commission meeting. The Motion was approved by all members present. Public Comment: limit of 3 minutes per person Action Items: none Informational Items: Finance Report September 2024 • A summary of the audit was presented to the board. Our audit was finalized this past week. We did get an unmodified opinion which means someone has come in and looked at our books and agreed with the way we are accounting for the way we reported stuff, and we are in compliance with HUD. We are always happy to get that, and it keeps us on the clean and narrow. • Another thing we have been involved with is a single audit, which is basically a test of our controls and compliance with HUD rules that they make, and we try to comply with those. This year they didn't have any findings. That is a step up for us, as you know we did have a couple of findings last year. • The last thing there is the last page of the summary breaks out for you just how much money we do get from the federal government from HUD and where it kind of comes into so it's a lot of money that goes in and out of our agency. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting November 25,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes October 23,2024 Page 1 of 6 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 • Emma added that the finance committee was able to talk with the auditors yesterday. One thing that I wanted to point out is we have no findings this year, last year we did and that means we were a higher risk auditee and so it is a good thing. Because we had a higher risk auditee, they have to look at a higher percentage of our documentation and even looking at a higher percentage they didn't find any findings this year. So, we are not only are we meeting the base minimum of the standard auditing covers, but we are actually meeting above that and that will be in place for two years. We are on the path to success and clean audits going forward. • This was a new to us auditor this year. It was nice to work with an auditor that has experience with working with PHAs on the accounting side. I was very excited to get the audit in a timely manner. This auditor had to test 40% of the files instead of 20% and still got it done. • We are in line with our budget for the first quarter. No other concerns. Housing Choice Voucher September 2024 Kim Shirey provided a brief overview of the September 2024 Housing Choice Voucher Reports • We are still not conducting orientations for HCV due to our short fall. The executive team and Jennifer have a short call meeting next week to hopefully finalize what their plan is to balance us out for at least the rest of the year and their projection for 2025. That will help us determine if and when we can start to pull again from the waiting list. • Kudos to her team, like Steve said with the auditors, her and Lisa and the HCV team as a whole come back with a clean audit which is no small feat especially with the new auditors who I think are looking at it more with a fine-tooth comb because they're trying to prove that you made the right selection. • The new auditors were a breath of fresh air to be able to have them sit at the table and if they had questions or they thought they were missing a document it let have that face- to-face conversation. They were very good in that respect, and they were very thorough and very focused. • Question — Emma, I heard that MSHDA is not issuing new vouchers, LHC is not issuing new vouchers so its not just a LHC problem, but have you had any conversations with HUD or MSHDA or anyone else in this industry about like what we do about this and what's coming. That was a hot topic at the national conference about the shortfall which is happening all over the US. We will just have to wait and see after the election to see what will happen. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 n "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting November 25,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes October 23,2024 Page 2 of 6 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 Asset Management Report September 2024 Public Housing (PH), Scattered • Public Housing currently has 66 units left in public housing. Sixty-two of them are occupied, which is an occupancy rate of 94% at the end of September. There was one (1) move in, two (2) move outs, and zero (0) transfer. • There are one open work orders at the end of September. • The receivables have gone down. Next month's will be even better. • The four units that are empty, I do have someone for every unit. I am just waiting for the unit-turn to be completed. • Question — how many maintenance do you have. I have one for public housing. the rest for the management company. If Jose gets behind, he will get help and vice versa he will help if they need it. Deputy Director Comments: • Our PSH programs there were ending at the end of September, I am happy to report we went to the Ingham County Land Trust and asked them for $50,000 to help support the PSH programs and they said yes. So that was a win. I also went to the City of Lansing for $50,000 and I am still waiting for their response. Last week Dr. Coleman, who runs the HRCS, the community department within the city, said I haven't forgotten about you and will get back to you soon. We are halfway there. The goal was 100,000 and if the city comes through, we will get there. • Our HCV team Jennifer spoke at the last board meeting about asking the board to approve the CMAP, which is the scoring for the HCV department into the HUD system. We got our formal letter back a couple of weeks ago indicating that they agree that this agency is a high performer based not only on the data she submitted but the information that we send to HUD every month. So, kudos to her team and Lisa who supervises that team for once again keeping that high performer status. • Our MSHDA team came back as a high performer as well. • 1 went to the national conference and sat in on some sessions regarding grants that are challenging to manage and found the answers we already knew. • 1 also sat in a session that focused on women in leadership. It focuses on having a work life balance. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 n "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting November 25,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes October 23,2024 Page 3 of 6 :: : Z i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 Executive Directors Comments: Development Activities • Still working on the Hollister building. We are having regular meetings with the Boji group to see if this is something we can do. If you remember we discussed purchasing the building and turning it into affordable housing. • Riverview 220 and Grand Vista contractor selection have been made. We did do an RFP, and it was broken down to 5 categories. It ended up being the same contractor for both projects. Wolverine emerged as the leading proven experience, availability, professionalism, and cost estimates. • We want to be in full construction by the first quarter of next year on both projects. • 5% pilot denial, if you haven't heard or read or seen. The City Council voted unanimously against our 5% pilot. I went to five separate meetings when you do a pilot and never got any negative feedback during any of it. The last committee meeting the union showed up ad opposed the deal before we even bid out the job. They are now in the bid process and to be politically correct we sent the bid request directly to the union. • 1 think you as the board of directors should invite the city council to our board meeting and/or schedule a time with a couple of council members at a time and show them some of our properties and what we do. • Long range planning, you should have a draft of all the stuff that we gave them, they should have it to me by the next meeting. • At the NAHRO meeting in Orlando, Kim covered a lot of that. I went to a lot of the development stuff as I always do. You know there is creative financing development partnerships, fair cloth utilization which is a crazy thing whereas you take units out of a public housing HUD gives you the right to build more public housing, let that sink in. So, you get rewarded for taking units out of public housing by giving you the ability to build more public housing and the public housing that you can build comes with really crappy rents so you really can't build it. Budgets were a big topic; the shortfalls were a big one. Kim dealt with those. We did pick up our award down there, one of our member service programs it was for infant mortality program that we did with Ingham County Health department that Vic organized that with a couple of proprieties. We got a national award for that. We also got an award from our insurance company for very low loss ratios in our liability. It was from HAI. • MI NAHRO — I did a presentation up at the MI NAHRO conference. I'm on that board too. We did a presentation on how to use project-based vouchers to do development deals. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 n "Equal Housing Opportunity" L` Lansing Housing Commission Both i Meeting November 25,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes October 23,2024 Page 4 of 6 k**Y�•: i f Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 • We sent staff up north to that conference for INSPIRE training. It is the new inspection system. LHC sponsored the training. We sent our maintenance up to do the training and got certified. • Our annual staff celebration is going to be on December 19th, but we have a twist this year. I think we are going to do it in Grand Rapids at the Amway Grand. This came from a survey that was conducted with our new HR Consultants, and we are going to tie the annual holiday party with a short afternoon training. • 1 did do a presentation for a TV on discover greater Lansing. It was a 15-minute segment that will be airing at 9:00 pm. As soon as I know the air date, I will let you know. • August is Advocacy month for NAHRAO. Letters were sent to the Congress for different topics. • Fall Festival at two properties. There were a lot of activities for the kids to have fun. There were a bunch of agencies there. SouthSide Smitty was there. Residents got a free meal. • We sold another house to the residents a week ago for a total of 10 sold to residents. • The board voted on the pumpkins that were decorated. The winner will get a gift card. President's Comments: • Commissioner Taylor had a few things to go over from the Orlando conference. She found out you can become a certified commissioner. There are a couple classes that need to be taken to become a certified commissioner. She is very interested in doing that. • 1 learned an interesting thing that one of the housing associations has a technology group that works with residents to create a better rapport or identify some of the needs that they may have, and they work with the elderly. They created an app that can be shared with other housing authorities that do wellness watches for seniors and keeps them engaged with technology. It can also be used to have their heart rates and blood pressure monitors and a check-in with the housing authority, so they know they are ok. • In the sessions they also said that commissioners should do more site visiting, going out to see the sites and seeing all the great things that Doug and his team are doing. • 1 found out more about HOTMA, they said it was introduced a bit too early. There was a lot of money in training, and it is not even rolling out yet. • Board members should become board family members and should spend more time together. TDD/TTY#: 1-800-545-1833 Ext.919 "Equal Housing Opportunity" Lansing Housing Commission Board Meeting November 25,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes October 23,2024 Page 5 of 6 tO . Qf Lansing Housing COMMISSION 419 Cherry St., Lansing, MI 48933 Telephone: (517)487-6550 Fax: (517)487-6977 • Emma — there is a training in Miami. Please connect with Kim to let her know if you want to go. This is for Executive Directors and Commissioners. Other Items: None Other Activities: Other Business: Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 7:13 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 November 25,2024 Lansing Housing Commission Minutes October 23,2024 Page 6 of 6