CDA Updates on COVID-19 and Armed Security Guards

DATE: May 26, 2020

TO: CDA Board

FROM: Deborah Rakowski, Housing Operations Manager Madison Community Development Authority

SUBJECT: Housing Operations Report

COVID Response

• CDA offices have remained closed to the public. CDA staff continue to be available via phone, email, mail, or via the locked drop box at located at each office.
• CDA Service Coordinators have continued to check-in on residents to ease feelings of isolation and are providing resources such as food and mental health referrals.
• Maintenance staff are continuing to only respond to emergency work order requests and disinfect properties 7 days per week. Apartment turns have continued during the pandemic.
• The Admissions and Eligibility team has screened 20 applications for the Mainstream Voucher Program. The Section 8 team has conducted virtual briefings and issued 8 vouchers to date.
• CDA staff have continued to prioritize and process a large volume of Interim Re-exams for all programs. Interim re-exams adjust rent for residents based on reported income changes. Residents are encouraged to report any income changes as quickly as possible in order for CDA staff to process these changes timely.

Public Housing & Multifamily Housing

• Current Occupancy Rate is 97%. Apartment turns have continued during the pandemic, however, some residents are not able to move into vacant units. CDA staff have continued to lease up units when possible and are working to provide virtual showings of units.
• The YTD turn rate is 2.3%, well below the 10% benchmark for subsidized housing.
• CDA’s Public Housing Assessment Score (PHAS) estimate for the first quarter was 81, just 9 points away from our goal of 90. HUD has suspended PHAS scoring for 2020.
• The total maintenance cost per unit was $706 for the first quarter, well below the benchmark of $1,542. Maintenance costs have slowed during the pandemic due to the suspension of non-emergency work orders.
• Rents charged in April were down by 4% due to changes in income reported by tenants. Rental revenue losses for April are just over $11,000.
• The CDA did not charge late fees in April, as authorized by the CARES Act and the CDA Board, effective on 3/27/2020. The percentage of late rent payments increased in March from 7% to 21% and dropped in April to 16%.

• Delinquency increased in April. For the months of February and March, the CDA averaged 2% delinquency. The April delinquency rate was 19%. Many residents have reported the CDA that they thought they did not have to pay rent during the covid pandemic. CDA staff are working to correct this misconception by confirming with residents that they must continue to pay rent during the pandemic but that they should also report all income changes to CDA as quickly as possible. Residents are referred to CDA Service Coordinators for assistance with utility bills and other household expenses. CDA property managers are available, as always, to set up repayment plans with residents if necessary.
• CDA property managers mailed HUD’s Tenant Flyer on the Eviction Moratorium to all residents as well as several other covid related updates.

Security

• The new security contractor began work on March 24 with an adjusted scope of services due to covid. The adjusted scope of services limited resident interaction and prioritized reporting of the physical condition of CDA buildings and major systems due to the limited hours maintenance staff were on site. No meetings were held with residents due to the limit of meetings by the local health department.
• The CDA replaced hand written daily security reports with a new security management application. Security officers have the ability to document certain tasks or incidents with pictures, notes, or audio files using a mobile device. Electronic reporting provides verification to CDA management that tasks have been completed, an area has been secured, or there is a reported issue that needs further action.
• CDA staff are mailing an introduction letter to residents including a magnet with new security phone numbers. Resident meetings will be held as soon as it is safe to do so.

ConnectHome

• CDA Service Coordinators have continued to provide one-on-one assistance to residents throughout the pandemic to sign up for affordable internet services.
• CDA staff conducted a demo of a data enabled Samsung tablet and hot spot available from T- Mobile. The devices worked at all properties tested with the exception of the buildings on Straubel Court.
• The CDA is partnering with the East Madison Community Center to submit a grant application to the Public Service Commission of WI for internet service provision.
• The City of Madison IT Director has redeployed funds originally available to the CDA for in person digital literacy services to providing devices for a lending library for residents and replacing devices in CDA computer labs.
• The CDA Housing Operations Manager submitted an application for an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer for the ConnectHome program.

Section 8

• The CDA received 30 new Tenant Protection Vouchers ($257,699) for tenants of Oakwood Village. This property previously held a Multifamily contract with HUD and has opted out of this contract.
• The April Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) was $1,187,924, down $5,193 from the March HAP. 1,724 vouchers were leased in April and the per unit cost (PUC) was $689. We anticipate the PUC to continue to increase for 2020 due to the implementation of new payment standards and the covid pandemic.

DISCUSSION

Covid. Deborah Rakowski reviews the written report.  She says it has a COVID responses.  Since the last time they met they have continued their decreased operations, they are responding to residents, their offices are closed to the public and they remain closed today as well.  They are still checkin in with residents who are considered vulnerable.  They call and follow up with people who might have a higher impact from isolation, especially during Stay At Home orders.  They are continuing to do apartment turns and showings.  They are troubleshooting a few ways to do that.  They have continued to have move-ins during the pandemic and maintenance staff are doing emergency only work orders but they are also disinfecting our properties 7 days a week.  Right now they are looking at alternate ways to do disinfection at their properties to increase the staff time its taking.  The maintenance crew has been working 7 days a week since March 18th.  They are looking at alternate ways to give staff some respite going forward.

The chair, Claude Gilmore asks how we are doing with distancting.  Rakowski says overall people have adjusted at the properties.  The biggest impacts they have seen is an uptick in mental health concerns.  They are coordinating with Journey and their mental health providers to address concerns they are seeing.

Gilmore asks if they are offering services.  Rakowski says they are not a mental health service provider but they have been connecting people to Journey when necessary.

Gilmore asks if they are providing services from Public Health or other services to help people or are you directing people where to go.  Rakowski says they are directing people where to go.  They haven’t restricted their buildings to visitors, but they are encourging people . . . Tag was helpful in getting masks to our Triangle residents and has come up with another donation for Romnes, so that will help our residents be able to leave their apartment building safely and be in the public while we are in a face covering.  Otherwise we encourage residents if they need to leave their apartments for any reason to follow public health guidance and to be able to do it safely.

Gilmore asks if there is no problem with people crowding parking lots with the recent change in the regulations.  Rakowski says they haven’t seen an uptick in mass gathering or crowds in any of their properties.

Masks. Alder Tag Evers says the District 13 mask brigade did make all the masks for everybody on the Triangle, all the Bayview residents and CDA residents on the Triangle now have a mask and they are working on doing the same for Romnes.  He let the director there know that they have 105 additional masks to drop off.  He didn’t know if she needed all of those or not so he waiting to hear, but if they can use them all he is glad to drop those off and if they can get a number for how many they should keep pushing for that would be great.  He says that District 13 started a neighborhood alliance where all the neighborhood associations are working together to reach out to anyone in need, impacted by COVID and they are doing an essentials drive for folks on the Triangle, not food, but soap, pantry type items folks may need and they are going to do the same for Romnes.  This will be in early June, they will collect the items and drop them off and they will see if they can’t do the same for Romnes.

Gilmore thanks Tag, was this done with one donation or was it done organically where people came together.  Evers says he used his aldermanic account to send a postcard to everyone in the district asking to create a District 13 Cares, they have representatives of all the different neighborhood associations coordinating it.  Anyone who needs help can call a number or email a specific email address asking for help and they have a list of 40 volunteers that are distributed throughout the district to be able to connect to folks who need help.  The intention was that everybody was feeling pretty wigged out by the pandemic and we tried to focus that anxiety on how to help each other.  It’s a good way to stay grounded and stay focused and stay in the moment.  Since none of us know what is going to happen in the future, but we know that helping each other out, loving each other, lending a hand is good for everybody, so that is what we are doing.  It is a group effort, its marvelous how people have responded.

Food. Alder Sheri Carter says that there is an over abundance of food that Romnes residents used to walk over and pick up in their food pantry and now they are not walking over there, that might be something Tag can work on as far as helping St. Marks (which is in your district Tag) to get some of their food distributed instead of it just sitting there.

Carter says there are people who might not be able to wear a mask, anyone with respiratory issues and so she wanted to know if that has been told to some of the residents.  When we say we have a mask for everyone, someone who might be marginal might feel they have to wear one even tho they probably shouldn’t and with the temperature rising and the humidity going up (if you could see my hair you would know what I’m talking about) that this is something we should let our tenants know, that we don’t want to put their health in danger.

Rakowski says that at the Triangle Tag worked with the Triangle Neighborhood Association, their resident Council at the Triangle, made up of CDA residents.  They are distributing masks to those who request them.  They are not distributing and telling people that they are mandatory, we are not a health authority.  But they want to make the resources available to residents that need them.  They are not enforcing face covering or telling them it is mandatory, we are just telling them to follow CDC guidance and doing the best thing for their health.

Sariah Daine thanks District 13 and Tag and CDA in gerenal for the helpful efforts.  Her friends in public housing are feeling safe because of the regulations and even tho thye don’t like that its happening they are glad for the things.  She glad they are doing this and got the extra money to help administer all of this.  She thanks the staff and alders for their work.

Mary Strickland complains that the tech people have to help them get the audio off and on quicker.  They tell her she was muted on her own.  She says she has been tapping it and tapping it and somethings.  Tech person trys to explain, she talks over him.  (Wow, rude.)  She says what Tag is doing is great, can they replicate that in other districts where they have housing.  Rakowski says that the residents in Tag’s district are a higher percentage of elderly and disabled folks so it is really meeting the higher risk population.  We might be able to replicate for other housing, but a side note that at their scattered sites and Truax are mostly families.  They are not saying they don’t need masks but its been helpful to prioritize higher risk residents.

Testing. Gilmore says there is concern about the African American community and testing.  They were offering free testing at the Alliant Center, is that still offered and have people from the South Side been able to take advantage of that.  Rakowski says testing is continuing, she doesn’t know if peopel on the South Side have been taking advantage of it.  To her knowledge it has been well utilized.

Carter says that a lot of people in South Madison have taken advantage of it, they need to go into the next phase of testing which is to another location.  Carter says the reality is, not to be a Debbie Downer, is the fact that COVID-19 is going to be here, its not going to go away at the end of the year so we really need to look long range and not short range on this.  COVID-19 is going to be similar to the flu, how do we protect ourselves against it, so she things there needs to be more discussion on how we live with COVID 19.

Gilmore says that is a good point, it is something we will all have to adjust to.

Transportation. Evers asks if they are providing transportation to residents that want to get tested. Rakowski says they haven’t been, their funding now allows them to do that, they could organize transportation for that.  It’s something they talked through in their discussions about how to use the funds, but a lot of their residents use current transportation options available and there hasn’t been a huge demand from the residents, so they would want to make sure that if they were providing it would actually be meeting a need.  They haven’t been providing it but they have talked about it.

Matt Wachter, the Director of Planning, Coommunity and Economic Development says Public Health is arranging all of that, so if someone needs a free ride to the site there is a hot line they call and Public Health helps arrange for the free ride, so that won’t be on the CDA’s plate.

Internet Access. Strickland asks if there is internet access.  Has it been discussed that we should get internet access to the residents, especially at a time like this.   Rakowski says she has spent a lot of time working on this issue and its an update further down in her update.  That’s the ConnectHome project.  Specific to COVID they submitted a grant application with the East Madison Community Center to the Public Service Commission for funding to provide internet service to all of the Truax residents, that application deadline was today.  They also got approval from Americorp Vista doady to hire a volunteer who will begin working on internet connection starting in July or August.  They did a demo on data enabled tablets and hotspots for residents through one of the ConnectHome stakeholders and they tested them at multiple properties and they they put together an order to hand them out to residents.  The Madison School District has been helpful in getting hotspots out to kids to do their homework, they have been really crucial for that.  They are looking at the gap for people who don’t have children and don’t have access to the internet through our computer labs.  They are trying to provide devices or hot spots to those.  East Madison Community Center just got a donation of 50 laptop computers so they are creating a lending library to lend those devices to residents at the Truax property.  They put a lot of time into the Truax property especially because that is where the most families live, making sure the children at that property are able to connect to the internet for their homework.  They put their most effort there, but ordering devices is for Romnes and the Triangle.

Rakowski says there is feasibility funding for a strategic plan to provide internet.  They have money for a baseline survey to find out how many residents are connected to the internet and how.  That is due to begin in June.  They will have better data collection in their annual re-certification interviews to track their outcomes on how many people are getting connected through their work.

Stickland asks what percent of residents have internet access.  Rakowski says they don’t have data on their residents.  Data they get from HUD is that on average 30% of the households are connected.  30% are under connected or don’t have internet in their home, are using their cell phone or sharing internet and 30% are unconnected.

Gilmore says there is a tendency to share if there are more than one person in the household.  He says haveing some access to get on and do some things will make a big difference.  Getting people to underwrite to get 15 or 20 gigabytes, enough for a family to use, vs. assuming they have the access, which a lot of them do not.

Strikland says that nationwide larger cities than Madison are providing devices and high speed access to all of their residents, so we should be with a focus on technology and infrastructure sector here, we should be able to get some donations and make this happen in Madison given the nature of our industry here.

Rutkowski says that is the Connect Home initiative, we were awarded as a ConnectHome agency last September, we are are working with IT to provide internet service, focusing on CDA residents and hoping it will impact other low income residents in the city.

Public Housing: Its at 97% occupancy rate.  They have been looking at the rent collection.  In April they were down 4% which is less than she anticipated, she will keep tracking  the number and the resident’s incomes.  They did see more delinquencies, people seem to be paying timely, but there is a larger percentage of people who aren’t paying.  They will be working on repayment plans and sending out information that they still have to pay their rent or ask for a rent change based on their income change.  They are working on that communication to tenants, they sent a mailing last week, they used HUDs flyer.  They are getting a lot of requests for income changes and they are processing them as timely as they can.

Section 8 Program: Tenant income has decreased by 10%, meaning that the rent payments had a bigger impact.  They also received additional allocation of mainstream vouchers due to COVID – and additional 30% allocation in our mainstream program and they received 30 Tenant Protection Vouchers for the Oakwood Village project.

Security:  The contractor started on March 24th.  They did a revised scope of servcies because they were starting in the middle of COVID.  They weren’t able to do the resident meetings as hoped, they are trying to do that virtually (uh, based on the internet discussion, how would that work?) coming up soon.  They are doing a mailing to introduce the new security company (two months later?)  We still did onboarding and meet with them on a weekly basis.  They also started using a new software, a phone application and it streamlines the reporting.  They are getting more real time data.  They haven’t seen an increase in calls for service.  Our security have been present at the property.

Budget: Strickland asks if we are revising our budgets because of this – due to rental income decreases, do we have a COVID budget that we have done for the properties.

Rutkowski says they received additional revenue and HUD allocated those funds to be able to use during COVID so we’re keeping an eye on it and haven’t developed a separate budget but we will amend it as we get additional funding and then continue to do projects on what we anticipate the year end to be.

Gilmore asks if she will bring that update to the Finance Committee.  Yes.

Strickland says every business is revising their budgets and even if we are getting additional moneys from HUD, we need to add that on the revenue line and decrease the rental income.  Particularly for the larger properties where it will have a bigger impact we should do some revisions.

Rutkowski says that they have also seen a decrease in maintenance expenses per unit.  Because we are not doing non-emergency work orders, so she anticipates those expenses will go up later in the year.  The expenses we are seeing in maintenance are apartment turns and emergencies.

Other Questions:  None.

The rest of this is just random things talked about at the end of the meeting.

Scheduling Meetings:  They haven’t gotten approval for their Finance Committee to meet.  For this meeting they were required to have Tech Support, particularly when they get public comment – which they don’t get a lot of.  We really need tech  facilitation for that to follow open meetings laws.  The Finance sub-committee they are looking at getting trained and being part of a pilot to have staff run it and schedule as needed.  After they are trained, they will schedule something.  They are hoping to have staff trained to have their special meeting they have planned.

Re-opening:  City offices remain mostly closed to the public.

Hiring Freeze:  They are subject to the City hiring freeze and cannot hire at this time.  They filled out forms to be allowed to hire.