2021-09-07 HCHA Approved Minutes

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HCHA meeting September 7, 2021 Kanealii-Kleinfelder: So you added the residency and you are now requiring a lease agreement or a registration, correct, as you stated, can that be tightened even more to really define what a resident is? Kunz: Des, I'll let you answer that. Moore: We decided not to be so restrictive only because if there are homeless families that are moving here and have been here for six months, we want to include them and restricting the residency preference to only someone who lived here for 12 months or more especially for the vulnerable population wouldn't be a good idea. Kanealii-Kleinfelder: Thank you, as what I was wonder, what was the reasoning. And then I think before we had talked about programs to increase stock or to help people, housing stock, or increase people's want to participate in the program as far as homeowners, who want to rent out their houses. Has there been any movement on that, have you seen an increase/decrease in stock as far as our housing? Kunz: So, I wish I could report something better to you. There has not been a significant increase in the number of available units, it is one of the mission, priorities of the Housing Office to work with developers to do this, so this part kind of steps outside of the Section 8 Program, and it's what the Housing Office does through our 201 H process, through Chapter 11 and just working directly with the developers to encourage more affordable housing production. We see some units in the pipeline, but certainly not yet at a number that we know we need, but we constantly work at that every single day. Now, the Section 8 Program, does have incentive programs, landlord incentive programs, that we have instituted to promote or try to get landlords to participate, you know, we've seen a little head way on that but not enough yet, I think we just need to keep promoting the programs, if you're a first-time landlord coming on to the program, there are incentives for you there, things like that. Kanealii-Kleinfelder: That's what we had talked about earlier, I just wanted to see how that was going. Kunz: Des, did you want to add anything further on the landlord incentive program. Moore: We've had about 140 new landlords but we've recently expanded the program, it used to be just for new applicants who are newly leased, but we expanded the program to now include current participants in which the landlord decides to renew the lease so we're hoping that will enable housing stability and have them not move out to do a whole new lease at six month or Page 8 of 34