Welcome to CLPHA's Press Room
CLPHA experts welcome interview requests from print, radio, television, and online reporters and are happy to provide their insights on issues of public housing and related legislation and policy.
For media inquiries, please contact:
David Greer
Director of Communications
(202) 550-1381 or dgreer@clpha.org.
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Experts to Present First National Snapshot of Health Partnerships in Public Housing
Free Webinar Aug. 29, 12 PM ET
WASHINGTON (August 28, 2018) - Half of the nation’s public housing authorities (PHAs) are engaged in a resident health initiative, most with a health organization partner according to Health Starts at Home: A National Snapshot of Public Housing Authorities' Health Partnerships, the latest report released by the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) and the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation (PAHRC). The report provides the first national snapshot of PHA efforts to address residents’ health care needs and emphasizes opportunities for collaboration between the health and housing sectors.
Report authors Steve Lucas, MPH, CLPHA Health Research and Policy Manger for the Housing Is Initiative, Keely Stater, PHD, PAHRC Director of Research and Industry Intelligence, and Kelly McElwain, PAHRC Research Analyst III, will present their analysis during a free webinar on August 29, 2018 at 12:00 PM ET.
“Housing and health systems need to work together,” said Lucas, who designed and implemented the original survey that led to the report. “Public housing authorities are significant providers of housing to those in need, offering the health sector scale and expertise. We found that PHAs across the country are engaged in a wide range of partnerships with different health organizations that address various target populations and health priorities. Though there are barriers to housing-health collaboration, such as funding and staffing capacity, these can be overcome with cross-system partnerships that seek to address these needs.”
Lucas published the initial survey findings in an issue of CityScape, a research publication of the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development. The article, “Connecting Fragmented Systems: Public Housing Authority Partnerships with the Health Sector,” is posted to the HUD User website.
What: Free Webinar: Building PHA Health Initiatives and Cross-Sector Partnerships
When: Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 12:00 PM ET
WEBINAR RECORDING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5-jm5eF_YU&t=24s
Webinar Presenters
Steve Lucas, MPH
Health Research and Policy Manager, Housing Is Initiative,
Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
Keely Stater, PhD
Director of Research and Industry Intelligence,
Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation,
HAI Group's Research Division
Kelly McElwain
Research Analyst III,
Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation,
HAI Group's Research Division
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About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities is a national non-profit organization that works to preserve and improve public and affordable housing through advocacy, research, policy analysis and public education. CLPHA’s 70 members represent virtually every major metropolitan area in the country. Together they manage 40 percent of the nation’s public housing program; administer 26 percent of the Housing Choice Voucher program; and operate a wide array of other housing programs. Learn more at clpha.org and on Twitter @CLPHA.
About Housing Is
CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative helps establish, broaden, and deepen efforts to align affordable housing, education, and health systems to produce positive, long-term results. We are building a future where systems work together to improve life outcomes for low-income people. Learn more at HousingIs.org and on Twitter @Housing_Is.
CLPHA Opposes Administration Proposal to Increase Rent Burden on Lowest-Income Residents
WASHINGTON (May 14, 2018) - The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) strongly opposes the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) recently announced proposal to increase rent burdens on low-income residents residing in public housing and assisted housing.
The core of HUD’s rent reform proposal is to shift the burden of chronic federal underfunding of assisted housing to low-income residents who can least afford it. While there are advantages to a proposal that simplifies rent calculations and reduces administrative burdens for public housing authorities (PHAs), this proposal requires that PHAs raise rents in order to benefit from common sense rent simplification. Even with the benefit of housing assistance, many public housing residents are already spending more than 30% of their income on rent. A 2017 HUD study reported that the average Housing Choice Voucher recipient had a rent burden of 37% in 2015. Nationally, we represent PHAs serving residents in the most expensive housing markets in the country, where voucher holders are especially likely to have to incur high rent burdens to gain access to higher opportunity neighborhoods of their choice.
Given existing rent burdens, this proposal raises serious concerns about the negative impact the proposed rent calculations would have on residents. Through changes to 35% of unadjusted income for families and 30% of unadjusted income for the elderly and disabled, many assisted households would see significant rent increases. For example, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) estimates that public housing residents would see an average 36% rent increase while Housing Choice Voucher households would experience an average 23% rent increase. With an average annual household income of $21,000 for public housing residents and $16,000 for voucher holders served by HACLA, these increases represent substantial burdens that may interfere with a household’s ability to afford other necessities.
Beyond concerns regarding the fairness of further cost-burdening residents, there is some evidence to suggest that increased rents do not financially benefit PHAs and may have the opposite effect. When the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) implemented a HUD-mandated flat rent increase in 2014, impacted residents experienced an average rent increase of 46%. NYCHA saw their rent collection rate decrease among those impacted by the increase. NYCHA’s experience reflects the reality that increased rent payments only exacerbates affordability issues and puts more residents at risk of delinquency and eviction, resulting in more challenges for PHAs and less predictable revenue.
In addition to our concerns about the impacts of the proposed rent calculations, we note that the timing of these proposed changes are problematic for two reasons. First, some components of the proposal contradict important changes to housing assistance made through the recent federally enacted Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act (HOTMA) in 2016 by unanimous vote of the House and Senate. HUD has yet to publish implementation regulations for some of the key provisions in the bill. For example, HOTMA increased the deduction of medical expenses for elderly and disabled families and tied the deduction to inflation, while HUD’s proposal eliminates these deductions entirely. A significant number of elderly and disabled households currently use medical deductions, many of whom have substantial medical costs. We question the elimination of this deduction particularly when it is already undergoing a very different set of changes through congressionally-mandated HOTMA.
We also question the timing of these proposed changes given the fact that in 2012, HUD commissioned a four-site demonstration from MDRC to study several rent reform elements included in the proposal, including triennial recertification, elimination of income deductions, and ignorable asset limits. One of the research questions the demonstration is explicitly testing is whether these reforms reduce work disincentives and increase family self-sufficiency among families receiving vouchers. With results expected in 2019, HUD should use insights from the study to inform design of a rent reform model that most effectively promotes self-sufficiency.
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About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
CLPHA, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit organization working to preserve and improve public and affordable housing through advocacy, research, policy analysis and public education. It represents most of the nation’s largest public housing authorities.
Web tool targets idea-sharing and improves cross-sector
collaboration to help low-income families
April 22, 2021
About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
April 9, 2021
About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
(202) 550-1381
For Immediate Release
March 31, 2021 |
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(Washington, D.C.) March 31, 2021 – Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, released the following statement upon President Biden’s announcement of the American Jobs Plan:
“The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities applauds President Biden’s transformative American Jobs Plan to reimagine and rebuild the American economy by centering housing as key to accomplishing the administration’s top priorities of economic impact, racial equity, and climate change. The $213 billion to produce, preserve, and retrofit more than one million housing units, with $40 billion targeted at the long-neglected public housing capital needs, is the size and scale that can move the needle on improving public housing infrastructure. CLPHA has called for a 10-year road map to recapitalize the public housing portfolio.
“The centrality of public and affordable housing means its impact reaches beyond shelter. It is also critical to other key elements of the American jobs plan including expanding broadband, improving childcare, and increasing health care opportunities. Public housing authorities are the most efficient delivery mechanism for these critical services because of their understanding of local needs, especially the needs of underserved communities of color. Public housing authorities stand ready to implement the bill when it becomes law.
CLPHA will work closely with Congress to ensure that the housing provisions are fully funded and remain central to the bill.”
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About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
Today, CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman was quoted in Affordable Housing Finance discussing how the shutdown threatens the stability of low-income households. Though HUD has prepared payments for housing vouchers and the public housing operating subsidy through February, Zaterman notes that the “existential threat” for voucher holders looms given the uncertainty of when the shutdown will end. If housing authorities cannot utilize HUD funding after February, there is a risk that that they will not be able to pay landlords and that landlords will subsequently begin to evict voucher-holding tenants.
Zaterman added that as HUD funding remains suspended due to the shutdown, local housing authorities are growing increasingly concerned about how they will maintain properties, make repairs, and pay employees.
CLPHA will continue our advocacy in support of PHAs and will provide members with additional news about the shutdown as we learn it.
In this December 27, 2018 article by Bruce Japsen for Forbes.com, CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman discusses the importance of cross-sector collaborations between housing and health care to improve life outcomes for low-income families and seniors.
“We’re housers with expertise in the management and operation of affordable housing for low-income families and seniors, but we are not experts in the complexities of health care service delivery,” Zaterman said. “That’s why nearly all of the public housing authorities we surveyed work with a partner to provide health services. Most would do more if they had the funding and resources to commit to their health partnerships.”
Anthony Scott, CEO of Durham Housing Authority (left) and A. Fulton Meachem, President & CEO of Charlotte Housing Authority (right) in Durham, NC.
CLPHA is pleased to see that our members are visiting each other’s communities to share knowledge, ideas, and best practices for preserving and strengthening their public housing portfolios and resident services.
In August, the Charlotte Housing Authority (CHA) hosted the Durham Housing Authority (DHA) and Durham city officials on a bus tour of Charlotte public housing properties. The Durham delegation also met with CHA staff, board members, and residents to discuss how Charlotte is transforming its housing portfolio and resident services through entrepreneurial efforts in real estate development, bond programs, property management, and family self-sufficiency programs. You can watch a video slideshow of the Charlotte & Durham meeting here.
In October, residents, staff, and board members from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) traveled to Cambridge, MA to meet with Cambridge Housing Authority staff and tour public housing communities. MPHA learned from Cambridge about their ongoing, comprehensive public housing transformation financed through the RAD program, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and other funding tools. In a post-trip recap, MPHA said their residents expressed the importance of seeing and hearing for themselves that these programs did not result in displacement. In fact, said MPHA, “CHA residents were often able to simply move units and continue living in their building even as the work proceeded around them.” You can watch a video about MPHA’s trip to Cambridge here.
Representatives from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority on a bus tour of Cambridge Housing Authority properties.
From the New Haven Independent:
A new roof and new bathrooms, computer upgrades, reconfigured office and community space and a whole range of modernizing renovations, to the tune of $3 million.
All that shiny new stuff’s on the way to the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH)’s community and family center over in West Rock on 295 Wilmot Rd. — thanks to an old fashioned federal earmark.
HANH President Karen DuBois-Walton made the announcement Tuesday afternoon at the regular meeting of the public housing authority’s Board of Commissioners. The meeting took place at the housing authority’s headquarters at 360 Orange St.
It used to be called an “earmark,” she said, but now we refer to it as “congressionally directed spending.”
The grant of $3 million was secured through the efforts of U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal and signed into law last month by President Joe Biden as part of the new budget covering the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation.
“It’s in the middle of a beautiful area,” DuBois-Walton added, referring to the aging one-story brick structure, a bit of an eye sore at the end of Wilmot Road, amid Rockview, Brookside, and Twin Brook, the spiffy and revitalized developments that HANH has nurtured into much desired locales out in the West Rock area of town.
Although it continues to be used for a wide range of HANH’s activities, as well as being a home base to important area nonprofits, the 20-year old building is in dire need of improvement, she said.
Read the New Haven Independent's article "HANH Scores $3M For Community Center Rehab."
From News 12 Brooklyn:
Tenants of a New York City Housing Authority complex in Eastchester are a part of the decision-making when it comes to redesign and redevelopment.
Residents of the Eastchester Gardens were able to enjoy their newly designed tenant's association office, made possible through the PACT Program.
The PACT Program, also know as the Permanant Affordability Commitment Together, is an initiative between NYCHA and developers to make repairs, redesign facilities, and maintain quality service for tenants.
RDC Development is a professional partnership between MDG Design & Construction and Wavecrest Management that was selected as the Eastchester Gardens PACT Partner.
Residents say what's special about this program is they are involved in the choices made for their homes, including designs and the team they want to work with.
The PACT Program says it aim to keep these homes affordable but improve the quality of life for NYCHA residents.
From HUD's press release:
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the appointment of Andrew Lofton to serve as Regional Administrator for the Northwest serving Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. As Regional Administrator, Mr. Lofton will serve as HUD's liaison to mayors, city managers, elected representatives, state and local officials, congressional delegations, stakeholders, and customers. In addition, he will be responsible for overseeing the delivery of HUD programs and services to communities and evaluating their efficiency and effectiveness.
With his arrival, Region 10 is ideally positioned to deliver on the agency’s goals and Acting Secretary Todman's vision. Mr. Lofton brings a tremendous wealth of experience, knowledge, and enthusiasm as a housing expert and public servant, and is honored to have the opportunity to work with HUD and the Biden Harris Administration.
"We are excited to welcome Andrew Lofton as the Regional Administrator for HUD's Northwest Region," said Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman. "Mr. Lofton's experience and dedication to public service make him an asset to our team. He is a leader in housing, and I will rely on him to ensure the efficient delivery of HUD programs and services to communities across the region."
"It is an honor to serve the Biden Harris Administration and the people in the great Northwest, where I am blessed to call home," said HUD Northwest Regional Administrator Andrew Lofton. "Working together, we can make our communities stronger, more vibrant, and more equitable for generations to come."
A lifelong resident of Washington, Mr. Lofton’s career in public service spans nearly 50 years in municipal, state, and local government where he has been led by his passion for helping people. He previously served as the Executive Director for the Seattle Housing Authority where he worked for 17 years, and before that held positions at the City of Seattle ranging from Community Development Block Grant Administrator, Deputy Director of Community Development, Budget Director, and Chief of Operations, and was Deputy Director for Washington State Department of Trade and Economic Development.
Mr. Lofton has also held many leadership positions throughout his career including membership on the Board of the Council for Large Public Housing Authorities, National Association Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), and was a founding member and first Board Chair of the Moving to Work Collaborative.
CLPHA congratulates Mr. Lofton his new role!
From the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority's press release:
The VI Housing Finance Authority’s (VIHFA) Board of Directors announce the appointment of Eugene Jones, Jr. as its new Executive Director, effective Monday, April 8, 2024. With a strong track record of transformative leadership in public housing agencies across the United States and Canada, Mr. Jones brings a fresh perspective and a bold vision to address the housing challenges in the Virgin Islands.
“I am thrilled to announce that after a rigorous and thorough search process, the Board of Directors of the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority has selected Mr. Eugene Jones as the new Executive Director. Mr. Jones brings with him a wealth of experience and expertise, having previously served in numerous roles, including most recently as the Executive Director of the Atlanta Housing Authority,” shared VIHFA Board Chair Jenifer O’Neal.
“His leadership and vision will undoubtedly steer our organization towards greater heights, furthering our mission of providing affordable housing solutions to the residents of the Virgin Islands. As Chair of the Board, I join the other members in extending a warm welcome to Mr. Jones as he embarks on this new journey with us,” she added.
Mr. Jones has spent his entire career dedicated to improving housing conditions and fostering vibrant communities. Renowned as "Mr. Fix-It" within the industry, he has been instrumental in revitalizing troubled housing agencies in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, New Orleans, and Detroit.
Reflecting on his appointment by the VIHFA Board of Directors, Mr. Jones remarked, "I am honored to join the Virgin Islands community as the Executive Director of VIHFA. Throughout my career, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of safe and accessible housing. It's not just about providing shelter; it's about building communities where people can truly call home, where they can thrive, and create lasting connections."
Mr. Jones is known for challenging conventional thinking in the housing sector and emphasizes the importance of creating inclusive communities. As Executive Director, Mr. Jones will lead VIHFA in its mission to provide quality housing and promote economic development throughout the Virgin Islands.
CLPHA congratulates Mr. Jones on his new role!
We are pleased to announce that the Brookline Housing Authority has become a member of CLPHA!
The Brookline Housing Authority provides rental assistance to over 1,500 households in Brookline, MA. Michael Alperin serves as the agency's Executive Director. Learn more at brooklinehousing.org.
Please join us in welcoming BHA to CLPHA – we look forward to working together to improve life outcomes for families served by PHAs!