By JEANETTE WOLFBERG
HUDSON–An additional commissioner and planned additional land highlighted the Hudson Housing Authority (HHA) Board of Commissioners meeting January 21.
The HHA runs the 135-unit income-restricted Bliss Tower and Columbia Apartments in Hudson. Its governing Board of Commissioners can have up to seven members, but last year it functioned with six.
Recently Sara Black was appointed to the board, bringing it back up to seven members. Ms. Black was coordinator for the Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency (HCDPA), which works with the HHA. January 21 was her first meeting HHA meeting as a commissioner.
The other six members of the HHA Board are Chair Revonda Smith, Vice-chair Claire Cousin, Mary Decker, Debra McPherson, Rebecca Wolff and Nick Zachos. Ms. Decker and Ms. McPherson live in Bliss.
The HHA’s redevelopment project is currently focusing on the two land parcels that the HHA plans to purchase from the City of Hudson through the HCDPA at a discount price, HHA Executive Director Jeffrey Dodson reported. Buying and developing these plots has always been part of the project. Now the HHA and its redevelopment partner, Mountco Construction and Development Corporation, are working out a development design that can meet both HHA’s and Mountco’s needs.
For buying the land, the HHA does not need the permission from the HUD (the US Department of Housing and Urban Development) Mr. Dodson explained later. However, the housing built there “will be a HUD-funded project-based voucher program,” so the HHA will have to “follow specific requirements and regulations related to real property acquisition and relocation activities for HUD funded programs and projects.”
Purchasing and managing properties outside of the property they were formed to run, as the HHA plans to do, is “trending” among public housing authorities nationwide, Mr. Dodson reported. They manage the new property in addition to their original property. This was one of the points made at a conference of housing authorities Mr. Dodson and Ms. Smith participated in in early January in Miami.
Another point relevant to HHA made at the Miami conference involves the vouchers that the HHA and other housing authorities give for apartments outside their buildings. They lodge households within their buildings, but in addition give other households vouchers to help with the rent outside their buildings. However, at previous HHA meetings, the HHA has reported problems that households with these vouchers still have in finding apartments within the prescribed area, in this case the city of Hudson. Too few landlords are willing to take voucher tenants, and too few apartments would be affordable to the tenant even with the voucher. At the Miami conference, word went out that other housing authorities are having that problem too. Some vouchers stay unused, with no place to use them.
One housing authority has programs to prepare landlords to take on voucher tenants and prepare prospective tenants to become suitable renters. People in both groups have praised these programs.
Mr. Dodson also reported that some housing authorities have the privilege of using their resources more “flexibly.” They can encourage tenants to become homeowners and tap unused vouchers to support mortgage payments, or to support training people for jobs that will enable them to make mortgage payments. Whatever way they decide to use their resources, Mr. Dodson encouraged his “constituents to advocate for” this flexibility to become an option available to them.
