DHC, Board of Commissioners

I will be providing live coverage on BlueSky for the Detroit Housing Commission Board of Commissioners Meeting. Meeting was scheduled for 10:00 but will be starting at 10:15.

Meeting notice with Zoom link at https://www.dhcmi.org. Also agenda items.

Notes, live reporting, and transcripts from previous meetings can be found at https://detroit.documenters.org/reporting/?agency=259

If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, email documenters@outliermedia.org with “Correction Request” subject line.

Meeting has begun. Commissioners Hosey, Cowan, and Williams are present, so there is a quorum.

Approving minutes from previous meeting. Then moving to public comments. There will also be a later time for public comments on items unrelated to action items.

Public comments can be made by phone, zoom, or in person as long as there is space in the room.

No public comments on agenda action items.

First action item is approval for additional funding for $250,000 for environmental testing for soil. Quote is for $202,00 but asking for additional in case there is back-and-forth with EGLE.

Question: Is DHC eligible for grants from EGLE? Answer, yes, but need to do this testing to get grant funds. Now just doing reports, but when get into remediation will solicit grants.

Believe that there will be a complete report by September to use for the application process with HUD.

Resolution 3285 passed. Moving on to resolution resolution 3285. Need to hire a planning grant coordinator and interviewed 5. Wish to move forward with Collab. Goal is to integrate people, housing, neighborhood for area near Eastern Market. Plan is for 18 months. Submit to HUD Sept 2026.

Supporting documentation included in the board packet on pages 20-25.

Question: $275,000 is DHC’s contribution of what will be $1.2 million for the total project. Awarded a Grant for $500,000. Where is the other $225,000? Answer: DHC was co-grantees with city, so other amount is for the city’s portion.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25868108/march-board-packet.pdf

(That is the board packet with agenda and suppporting documents included.)

Focus of the grant is connectivity planning. How do residents of the housing connect to other areas– Dequindre Cut, the Greenway? Do we need to re-work street grid to connect residents?

Resolution 3286 passed.

Resolution 3287 is to allow DHC to enter into co-recipient agreement with the city. City has to reimburse DHC because HUD will allow only one recipient on a grant. Resolution passed.

Resolution 3288 to replace exterior entry doors on Sojourner Truth Homes.

Need to replace 392 exterior doors. They are currently of varying sizes, so this will be a challenge to replace. $1,349,986.31. The varying sizes, thicknesses, etc., make the doors hard to lock and seal. Residents have safety concerns.

Needs tuckpointing, framing, efficiency. This will be new doors for all of the units. The amount will cover the suppliers and the labor. (This is on pages 29-31 of board packet.)

HD Supplies will be the supplier of the materials and will contract the labor. This is one contract.

Wonder if there will be any changes in energy costs for the homes as a result of improved door jambs and leveling.

Residents are not yet aware of the project moving forward, but they saw measurements taking place, so they know that something is coming. This has been a need for a long time.

Relieved to have a low-cost provider who can provide for capital needs. For a long time, had only a few bids coming in, and they were always very high. For 20 years, have wanted to get better pricing so that more projects could be completed.

Getting discounts on things that we are buying a lot of. Getting rebates. This helps out a lot to keep costs low.

Resolution 3288 approved.

Resolution 3289 is to give contractor 15 extra days to close out contract. The first 10 units are completed, and the other 22 should be completely done by the end of April. This is a total of 32 units.

Will do another walk through today and hoping to turn over another 4-8 today. These are 3-6 bedroom family units. One-bedroom units moving quickly, with 150 move-ins last year.

Question: Although this is just an additional time request and no additional money request, we need assurance that it will not take a year to complete 32 units. It does not take this long in the private sector.

One reason that it has taken so long is that took on a new team (Michael) last quarter of last year, so he had to look over everything afresh. This is clean-up from previous years and administrations, and moving forward these projects should move faster.

In the past, there was nobody for contractors to compete with, so they could take as long as they wanted. Some of the old contracts which are still outstanding might still take longer, but moving forward DHC will have better contracts who can complete projects faster.

Thanks from commissioners to Michael for putting pressure on contractors to get things done and monitor things. Need to have an expectation that we treat these projects like this is our own money, our own mothers living in the units.

There is a waitlist for these units. Need to have a fix that is all the way across the organization.

Resolutions 3289 and 3290 passed.

Info on resolution 3291: Things going well with preparing 5 Year Plan. There has been a lot of involvement from residents. Requests that residents brought up were things that the DHC was already on top of, such as doors for SoJo Homes.

The process is much streamlined and much better than previous years. There is a lot of breaking down of silos. This has made planning for upcoming years much better because, for example, everyone is aware of new units coming online, residents have already been vetted.

Resolution 3291 passed.

Resolution 3292: There was a residual issue related to 6 months’ severance. Passed.

Update on process of homeownership program. Have 114 people who have wanted to purchase homes. Of those, 60-some are employed, 60-some have money in escrow. Working with real estate section to develop a plan. Have had a lot of philanthropic interest in this program.

Hoping to present a more detailed plan by the end of the fiscal year.

Question: Working with Land Bank? A: Yes, have had 3 briefings with them.

Escrow program allows people to add earned income into escrow, and then when they are done in 5 years usually have at least $10 K in down payment which allows them to now pay PMI. In partner with MSHDA and with Huntington for down payment assistance and for lending with no PMI.

Commissioner comment: The better we do, the more people are willing to come in to help us with it.

Discussion of how to open up communication with residents so that they reach out as soon as it is clear that they may have trouble paying and may need a payment plan.

Departmental items: Event at Parkside to celebrate that two phases are fully funded and are underway. We are at 70 new residents in, and of these 30 self-identified as homeless. (Not sure since when?)

Not each unit is at 90% occupancy, but moving toward higher occupancy. Forest Park is at 100% residency. Sheridan was at 50% residency when commissioner came on and is now at 70%.

Thanks to the board for letting DHC get out of old contracts and move into new contracts that are working better. Also thankful that the different components are working well– things are moving down the assembly line efficiently, so to speak, to get units ready and move residents in.

Legal strategy contracts were approved by board last month. Expect to have on contract finished this week and another next week.

This means that the development side will begin to get busy. Ready to start with RFPs for some sites, including Brewster. Will work closely with community engagement council and get RFPs.

Developments are making a big difference across the city. Efficient operations help this. Goal is to be ‘high-performing’ next year.

As of Tuesday, State Administrative Board approved the DHC (missed the name of this policy!). This will allow old documents to be disposed of. Some will be scanned and some can just be shredded. Goal is get rid of things from decades ago that don’t need to be kept. Will keep important things.

How many employees at DHC? 120. Open positions? 10. So fully-staffed would be 130. This is from a high of 145 or 150 a few years ago.

The better the experience the residents have, the more likely they are to communicate, to take pride in their residence. They are more likely to prioritize making rent payments even when things are challenging. So putting investment into resident services pays off.

Time for general public comments.

Comments is limited to 3 minutes for individuals and 5 minutes for representatives of groups.

Zachary Rowe of Friends of Parkside. Highlighting a few community highlights. Have weekly bingo games for seniors as well as other activities for seniors. Food delivery for seniors. Work with kids with their homework, playing basketball, free snacks and dinner.

Rhonda Adams with Businessmen and Women Social Club of Detroit. Believes DHC going in the right direction in terms of leveraging funding. However, how can we increase corporate sales tax for more income? Also, thinks DHC needs to consider land for raising livestock with new ordinance in city.

Response: DHC’s mandate is housing of humans, but there must be opportunities for housing livestock and animals.

Next commenter is Orleans location resident. Thanks for contributions to the community. However, when commenter went to social officer at Orleans office regarding FF homeownership program was told that she did not qualify.

She is on Section 8 and wants to advance to homeownership, as she has advanced in other areas in her life, such as getting associate’s degree. Commissioner took her contact information to reach out.

No more public comments. Moving on to commissioner comments. Thanks to Commissioner Bailer for her service and best wishes to her as she moves on.

Meeting adjourned at 12:01.

This concludes my coverage of the Detroit Housing Commission Board of Commissioners meeting. For more information, including transcripts of the meeting, go to http://detroit.documenters.org/reporting/

If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, email documenters@outliermedia.org with “Correction Request” subject line.
For more information, including transcripts of the meeting, go to http://detroit.documenters.org/reporting/