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
During the COVID-19 quarantine, David can be reached at (202) 550-1381 or dgreer@clpha.org.
*Please let us know if you are working on deadline.
To view all of CLPHA's press releases, click here.
To view all of CLPHA's press statements, click here.
You can subscribe here to our biweekly newsletter, events invite list, and topic specific newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter at @CLPHA. Or, send us an email with your interests and we would be happy to add you to our press lists.
Thanks again for your interest in CLPHA!
Grants will help PHA residents with immediate and locally defined needs exacerbated by COVID-19
Washington, D.C. (February 9, 2021) -- The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) is pleased to announce the ten recipients of its COVID Resident Support Grants. The recipients are CLPHA member public housing authorities (PHAs) from across the country that will utilize their grants to meet immediate and locally defined needs exacerbated by COVID-19 for projects such as providing residents with essential household supplies, helping households successfully lease affordable units with their housing vouchers, and supplying technology and devices that will help resident children attend virtual school or connect resident seniors with healthcare resources. The recipients were chosen via a competitive selection process, and the robust response to CLPHA’s call for applications demonstrates the need for additional funds to support COVID-19 relief services and supplies for low-income Americans.
“As housing providers for some of the nation’s most vulnerable children, families, and seniors, our members are uniquely positioned to serve the low-income residents in their communities that are hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effects,” said CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman. “We are pleased to provide these ten grants that will support PHAs in their efforts to not only keep residents stably housed, but also to provide crucial supplies and resources that will help residents cope with the new normal created by the pandemic."
The grantees are:
- INLIVIAN (Charlotte, NC)
- Elm City Communities (New Haven, CT)
- Housing Authority of the City of Goldsboro (Goldsboro, NC)
- Jersey City Housing Authority (Jersey City, NJ)
- Lucas Metropolitan Housing (Toledo, OH)
- Oklahoma City Housing Authority (Oklahoma City, OK)
- Home Forward (Portland, OR)
- Housing Authority of the City of San Buenaventura (Ventura, CA)
- Tacoma Housing Authority (Tacoma, WA)
- Wilmington Housing Authority (Wilmington, NC)
Learn more about CLPHA’s grantees and how they will use these funds to help meet the public health, education, employment, and basic urgent needs of their residents profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic here.
These ten sub-grants are made possible through CLPHA’s grant from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s (CDP) COVID-19 Response Fund.
###
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 more than a quarter 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 CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative
The Housing Is Initiative, led by the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, helps build a future where sectors work together to improve life outcomes. Housing stability is a critical first step to improve life outcomes for low-income children, families, and seniors; CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative is based on the premise that sectors can better meet needs when they work together. Housing Is establishes, broadens, and deepens efforts to align affordable housing, education, and health systems to produce positive, long-term results. Learn more at housingis.org and on Twitter @housing_is.
About The Center for Disaster Philanthropy
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s mission is to leverage the power of philanthropy to mobilize a full range of resources that strengthen the ability of communities to withstand disasters and recover equitably when they occur. CDP manages domestic and international Disaster Funds on behalf of corporations, foundations and individuals through targeted, holistic and localized grantmaking. For more information, visit: disasterphilanthropy.org, call (202) 464-2018 or tweet us @funds4disaster.
|
About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
November 20, 2020
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 more than a quarter 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 CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative
The Housing Is Initiative, led by the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, helps build a future where sectors work together to improve life outcomes. Housing stability is a critical first step to improve life outcomes for low-income children, families, and seniors; CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative is based on the premise that sectors can better meet needs when they work together. Housing Is establishes, broadens, and deepens efforts to align affordable housing, education, and health systems to produce positive, long-term results. Learn more at housingis.org and on Twitter @housing_is.
About The Center for Disaster Philanthropy
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s mission is to leverage the power of philanthropy to mobilize a full range of resources that strengthen the ability of communities to withstand disasters and recover equitably when they occur. CDP manages domestic and international Disaster Funds on behalf of corporations, foundations and individuals through targeted, holistic and localized grantmaking. For more information, visit: disasterphilanthropy.org, call (202) 464-2018 or tweet us @funds4disaster.
|
(Washington, D.C.) October 1, 2021 -- Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) Executive Director Sunia Zaterman released the following statement urging Congress not to cut proposed funding for public housing and rental assistance in the Build Back Better reconciliation bill:
“The transformational Build Back Better Act, proposed by President Biden and currently moving through Congress, will significantly expand the nation’s social safety net by providing safe, quality, and affordable housing to millions of low-income and marginalized families. The $90 billion in expanded rental assistance, $80 billion to preserve public housing, and $37 billion investment in the national Housing Trust Fund that passed the House Financial Services Committee in mid-September represents a significant step forward in federal funding for public and affordable housing. These funding levels are appropriate and justified as they finally make up for generations of chronic neglect and underfunding. For this reason, as negotiations about the size of the reconciliation bill move forward, CLPHA urges Congress to retain the funding levels for expanding rental assistance, preserving public housing, and investing in the nation’s Housing Trust Fund.
“Public and affordable housing has suffered under persistent disinvestment for decades. This has left public housing authorities unable to complete capital improvements, which has helped contribute to the loss of 400,000 affordable homes since 1990. Currently only 1 out of every 4 families who are eligible to receive a Housing Choice Voucher are able to access the program because of a lack of funding. This inadequacy of federal resources not only perpetuates the cycle of poverty, but also costs the American economy about $2 trillion every year in lower wages and productivity because of a shortage of affordable housing in major metropolitan areas.
“CLPHA thanks Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Schumer, House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters, and Senate Housing, Banking, and Urban Chair Sherrod Brown for championing housing throughout their careers and during the negotiations over the Build Back Better reconciliation process. Now Congress must commit to fully funding public and affordable housing at the levels in the House Financial Services Committee bill.”
|
||
|
(202) 550-1381
|
||
|
|
||
|
About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
||
|
(Washington, D.C.) September 14, 2021 -- Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) Executive Director Sunia Zaterman released the following statement supporting President Biden’s nomination of Arthur Jemison to be Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): “The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) congratulates Arthur Jemison on his nomination to be Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Jemison brings deep experience to the assistant secretary position in community development and public housing, including experience with the Boston Housing Authority, a CLPHA member.
We look forward to working with Mr. Jemison to ensure that the vision of President Biden and Secretary Fudge for improving public housing through recapitalizing the public housing portfolio, expanding the Housing Choice Voucher program, addressing systemic racism, and empowering cross-sector partnerships to improve the outcomes for low-income families becomes a reality. CLPHA will strongly support Mr. Jemison throughout the confirmation process.”
Media Contact: David Greer, CLPHA; dgreer@clpha.org, (202) 550-1381 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
||
|
CLPHA Working with Biden Administration to Speed ERA Fund Distribution (Washington, D.C.) August 27, 2021 -- Statement from CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman on the Supreme Court's blocking of the CDC's eviction moratorium:
“As mission driven organizations public housing authorities believe that keeping residents housed is the most effective policy for the families, communities, and public health safety. Housing authorities continue to take a multitude of steps to keep their residents housed, including connecting residents with legal and relief resources, streamlining the income recertification process, operating rent relief programs, creating partnerships with community service organizations, and so much more. “The most effective lifeline available to tenants and landlords are the significant funds in the Emergency Rental Assistance Program that Congress passed in two tranches late last year and in the first quarter of 2021. CLPHA is working closely with the Biden administration by providing recommendations that will expedite emergency rental assistance as swiftly as possible.” |
|
||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
||
|
About the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities
About CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative |
||
Pew Charitable Trust's state policy news outlet Stateline quoted CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman and CLPHA member executive directors in an article about the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on public housing authorities.
Zaterman told Stateline that PHAs need $5 billion in emergency supplemental funding due to several challenges PHAs are facing during this crisis, including a "significant reduction" in rental income, a dramatically reduced workforce, massive cleaning-related expenses, and communications challenges with residents while PHAs' physical offices are closed. PHAs also need a further $3.5 billion in emergency supplemental funds for the for the Housing Choice Voucher program.
“I’m worried,” Emilio Salas, acting executive director of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, told Stateline. “Tremendously.”
Douglas Guthrie, president and CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, told Stateline that his PHA is working hard to address his city's homelesssness crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We can't wait for waivers from HUD to do what needs to be done today,” Guthrie said. “Shelter is the most important thing right now.”
Andrew Lofton, executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority, told Stateline that PHAs are also preparing for the inevitable surge of residents who test positive for COVID-19: "It’s just a matter of time."
Read Stateline's article "Public Housing Authorities Hit Hard by the Pandemic."
As of January 1, 2020, California has a state-wide law prohibiting landlords from rejecting potential tenants solely on their use of a housing voucher. The law, known as Source of Income (SOI) protection, replaces SOI ordinances that were previously in place in several California cities, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Clara County to cover voucher holders across the state.
A recent HUD-commissioned study on landlord acceptance of voucher holders in five cities found that those cities with an existing SOI law protecting voucher holders had higher rates of landlord acceptance compared to those cities without SOI protection. While cities with SOI laws devote varying amounts of resources to enforcement, HUD’s study suggests awareness of local SOI protections meaningfully deter discrimination by landlords. The Poverty & Race Research Action Council maintains an updated list of all SOI laws in place across the country.
In an effort to call attention to the affordable housing crisis during the 2020 election cycle and to spur presidential debate moderators to ask candidates about their affordable housing plans, the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Our Homes, Our Votes: 2020 campaign placed a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times on December 16 & 17. The ad featured OHOV: 2020’s letter urging PBS NewsHour, Politico, and debate moderators to ask presidential candidates how they would address the nation’s affordable housing crisis during the next debate, which will be held on December 19 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. CLPHA joined more than 1,000 organizations as co-signers to OHOV: 2020’s letter.
Following the devastating November fire at the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s (MPHA) Cedar High apartments, Minneapolis’s Star Tribune reported on the chronic federal underfunding of public housing that contributes to the massive, nationwide capital needs backlog at public housing communities and requires PHAs to make tough choices about building maintenance and repairs.
“Our priority is to make sure that life and safety are always taken care of,” said MPHA Interim Executive Director/CEO Tracey Scott in an October interview with the paper. “Quite simply that’s the hard choice you have to make because you would like to replace a kitchen cabinet but that has to come second to life and safety. We have to make choices.” MPHA estimates that its properties need an estimated $152 million in maintenance and renovations.
New York City Housing Authority Chair & CEO and CLPHA Board Member Greg Russ, MPHA’s former Executive Director/CEO, underscored the difficult choices housing authorities have to make when it comes to prioritizing maintenance and renovation projects: “We don’t have enough funding to keep basic systems in place nationally and have to pick and choose when we do get the capital money.” Russ added that inadequate federal funding is why MPHA and other agencies employ the RAD program to diversify and their funding sources so that they can afford the important and expensive rehabilitation of their properties.
CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman said that more “organized political will and bipartisan support” is needed in Congress in order to increase funding and fully address PHAs’ capital needs. “We are at the turning point in part because the affordable housing crisis is so heightened in our communities,” Zaterman said. “This is such an essential resource, the understanding that we have to invest is more pervasive and people are beginning to understand that ... but we haven’t had the reflection in our funding yet.”
Scott further stressed the effects that insufficient federal funding has on her agency’s ability to house and serve their low-income residents. “We’re a public agency and the mission is that we provide quality, well maintained homes for families to thrive and these are members of our community that need support and that helping hand,” she said, “We are providing a roof today, but if we don’t maintain it there would not be a roof tomorrow.”
CLPHA Members Elm City Communities, Miami-Dade Public Housing & Community Development Also Featured
Affordable Housing News magazine featured Executive Director Sunia Zaterman in its Fall 2019 issue, where Zaterman discussed CLPHA’s priorities, goals, and strategies for preserving and improving public and affordable housing. “We are very focused on appropriations and polices that support public housing authorities and the people they serve,” said Zaterman, adding that “[f]rom the beginning, we’ve been very focused on supporting the most innovative housing authorities in the country.” She cited programs like the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) and Moving to Work (MTW) as flexible, locally-oriented policies that innovative housing authorities are using to improve their housing stock and resident outcomes. Zaterman also emphasized the public housing portfolio’s capital needs backlog of more than $50 billion and the chronic underfunding of public housing programs, issues that are at the center of CLPHA’s advocacy efforts.
The article also highlights CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative, which seeks to broaden and deepen efforts to align housing, education, and health organizations to produce positive long-term outcomes for low-income individuals and families. Zaterman discussed some of the Housing Is Initiative’s work, including the Housing Is Summit, an annual convening dedicated to collaboration among the housing, education, and health sectors, and the creation of a data sharing agreement template for housing authorities and school systems so that they can identify shared issues and interests and develop evidence-based interventions. “We understand that housing is absolutely essential and foundational, but often, for families and special needs populations, is not sufficient in and of itself,” Zaterman said. “Our goal with the Housing Is Initiative is to improve and enhance our partnerships in healthcare, education, and workforce development to improve life outcomes for families, seniors, and persons with disabilities who reside in assisted housing.”
Read Affordable Housing News' article (on pages 20 and 21).
CLPHA members Miami-Dade Public Housing & Community Development (Miami-Dade PCHD) and Elm City Communities (ECC) were also featured in Affordable Housing News’ Fall 2019 issue. Read about Miami-Dade PCHD’s RAD-assisted Liberty Square redevelopment on pages 34-36 and about ECC’s employment of MTW flexibilities to create innovative resident programming and redevelop its public housing portfolio on pages 64-65.
From Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority CEO Charles Hillman's op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch:
The Columbus Dispatch, in partnership with The Columbus Foundation, deserves praise for presenting the Columbus Conversation: "Can People Afford to Live Here?" on Dec. 14.
The community forum identified many issues about the affordable housing crisis in Greater Columbus and highlighted many of the innovative approaches’ community leaders are working toward to address the challenge.
The affordable housing crisis is not unique to our region – it’s a problem throughout the entire nation.
For decades, new housing production has lagged behind household growth in our country, resulting in a severe shortage of affordable homes. In 2021, the U.S. faced an estimated shortage of between 5.5-6.8 million units, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
To close this "underbuilding gap," the center projects the U.S. would need to construct 60% more units than were created in 2020 over the next decade.
Unfortunately, no magic wand solution is imminent that will solve the crisis overnight in Central Ohio and beyond.
The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), administers nearly 13,000 federal vouchers in Franklin County, and provides rental assistance to a total of 80,000 households (250,000 individuals) throughout Ohio and Washington D.C. In 2021, we issued over 5,160 vouchers in Franklin County.
Approximately 1,700 families out of those 5,160 vouchers are actively looking for a place to call home in Greater Columbus, even though they have a Housing Choice Voucher.
An important activity discussed during the Columbus Conversation that deserves greater attention is CMHA’s heightened efforts to entice more landlords and property owners to consider renting units that qualify as affordable housing to Housing Choice Voucher recipients.
Through CMHA’s Landlord Incentive Program, we are now incentivizing landlords by paying security deposits and vacancy payments just for bringing new units into the program.
We spent over $1.4 million on this program in 2021, utilizing our allocated budget. More than 420 new landlords were added to our Housing Choice Voucher program, generating housing for over 1,100 new residents.
That is why CMHA is devoting another $1 million in 2022 to continue to build on the success of this new initiative.
From the Commercial Observer:
Up to $3.1 billion in capital financing for improvements will be coming to New York City Housing Authority complexes across the city from private sector joint ventures, the agency announced.
The largest of the recent deals, financed through NYCHA’s Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program, will bring $600 million to renovate the more than 1,600-unit Boulevard Houses, Fiorentino Plaza and Belmont-Sutter complexes in East New York, Brooklyn through Boulevard Together Developer, the joint venture between The Hudson Companies, Property Resources Corporation and Duvernay + Brooks.
The 29 buildings will see infrastructure and capital improvements that include community laundry room, renovated landscaping, better waste management, new units with disability access, window replacements, kitchen appliances and upgrades to the exterior of buildings.
“This is about the residents first and foremost,” Aaron Koffman, managing principal at Hudson, said in a statement. “This transformational project will also provide local workforce and educational opportunities while maintaining resident protections and permanent affordability for generations to come.”
Read the Commercial Observer's article "NYCHA Residents to See $3.1B in Housing Upgrades Through Private Partnerships."
From Yes! Magazine:
Tenants’ rights attorney Jay Rose spent four-plus decades waging legal battles on behalf of poor folks. So taking a job as a legal consultant for the nation’s largest for-profit affordable housing landlord might seem an odd choice. But executives at Boston-based WinnCompanies—which manages approximately $14 billion worth of largely affordable and military housing in 550 developments across 22 states—recently learned an unpleasant fact and knew the organization needed help from someone like Rose.
In 2018, WinnCompanies and other large Boston-area property managers were invited to join a newly formed Eviction Prevention Task Force, run by the Office of Housing Stability within Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development. The group used company-provided information from 2015 through 2017 and data from the local housing court system to determine which landlords were doing the most evicting.
WinnCompanies learned it was the largest landlord in the city of Boston, and “we were also responsible for a fairly high rate of evictions in the city, and that’s not something we expected,” says Trevor Samios, senior vice president of Connected Communities, WinnCompanies’ resident services department. “It wasn’t a list we wanted to be on.”
...
WinnCompanies isn’t the only housing organization in the Boston area looking for ways to realize the economic benefits of keeping tenants instead of kicking them out. Matt Pritchard, executive director of HomeStart, a Boston-area housing advocacy nonprofit, has been arguing for years that booting renters costs more than keeping them—over 500% more, in fact, according to research conducted during a pilot eviction prevention program that Pritchard’s team conducted in 2010 in collaboration with the Boston Housing Authority. BHA was the largest housing provider in the city; it was also the most prolific evictor.
“We worked with the finance team and the resident services team at BHA for about a year, and they showed us it was costing them over $10,000 to evict a family, but it was only costing HomeStart about $2,000 to prevent the eviction from happening,” Pritchard says. “The [Boston] Housing Authority acknowledged that HomeStart’s intervention was saving them an obscene amount of money every year.”
Read Yes! Magazine's article "In Boston, an Approach to Housing That Avoids Eviction," featuring the Boston Housing Authority.
From the Municipal Housing Authority of the City of Yonkers' press release:
The Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers is working to help 11 families who were displaced Christmas night after a fire destroyed their apartment building.
The four-story building at 81 Elliot Avenue was engulfed in flames just after 11 p.m. on December 25. Luckily, the tenants were able to escape although 13 firefighters received minor injuries battling the blaze.
Wilson Kimball, MHACY's President and CEO, said that the housing authority has already contacted many of the families to offer assistance in finding permanent homes. She added that she has been working with Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano's office of constituent services as well as Yonkers Council Members Corazon Pineda Isaac and Lakisha Collins Bellamy who have been coordinating assistance for the families. Kimball said she has also been in touch with the office of Congressman Jamaal Bowman.
"Our heart goes out to anyone who loses everything in a fire, let alone on Christmas,'' she said. "It is uplifting to see our city officials and the community rally around them, offering food, diapers and other necessities. We at MHACY want to try to get these families back into permanent housing and urge those who we have not already reached to contact us.''
From Urbanize Los Angeles:
The new wave of Project Homekey funding could be used to transform a nondescript apartment building in Panorama City into public housing.
Yesterday, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) distributed a notice indicated its intent to purchase the two-story, 31-unit apartment building located next to the Pacoima Wash at 14949 Roscoe Boulevard. The two-story, roughly 21,000-square-foot building was completed in the 1970s, according to city records.
HACLA, according to a report given earlier this month to the Authority's Board of Commissioners, is poised to pay $10 million to acquire the building, translating to a per-unit price tag of just under $345,000 - a steep discount relative to the average $559,000 per-unit price tag of a Measure HHH-funded development in 2020.. The sale is scheduled to close by the end of January 2022, with an optional extension through May 2022.
Read Urbanize Los Angeles' article "HACLA looks to buy Panorama City apartment building through Project Homekey."