In the wake of the restructuring of Alexandria’s public housing authority and its board of commissioners, the organization has temporarily halted eviction proceedings against its tenants.
Mark Jinks, the new chair of the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority‘s board of commissioners, made the announcement at the board’s monthly meeting in Old Town last night (Monday). Jinks and five other board members were installed last month by City Council to reverse a “system failure,” as described by Mayor Alyia Gaskins.
The pause on evictions comes as City Council has directed the board to improve living conditions for thousands of tenants living in ARHA units across the city, Jinks said.
“The ARHA resident eviction process was put on pause because of questions of process raised by tenant advocates as well as city staff,” Jinks told ALXnow. “I reviewed the issue with ARHA staff, and we decided pause, for now, the evictions process. Residents are still expected to pay rent, and while some or all of the eviction cases may be reinstated, a pause will give ARHA and its new board time to review policies and determine what is fair and reasonable.”
“The vast majority of ARHA households pay their rent on time year after year,” he added.
Loren Depina, a former ARHA resident and employee, had advocated for an eviction pause in the weeks leading up to last night’s meeting.
“We asked them to pause it because ledgers are still incorrect and folks were being evicted,” Depina said. “We asked them to pause evictions almost a month ago, but never heard back from the board members. I’m glad they addressed it.”
The new board was installed after the resignation of the previous nine-member ARHA board of commissioners and the firing of CEO Erik Johnson, who has since filed a lawsuit against the housing authority. Prior to his removal, Johnson acknowledged that ARHA has suffered organizational issues that resulted in delayed rental payments from ARHA to landlords, paperwork backlogs, caseworker abandonment and more.
Interim CEO Rickie Maddox said ARHA is in the midst of implementing a 100% third-party inspection program of all ARHA-owned and related units from private landlords with federal rental voucher-holding households. ARHA is currently at 95% occupancy, and nearly 38,000 people are on its waiting list for housing.
“When we do 100% inspection of all of our units, it will give us an idea of exactly what’s happening in our community,” Maddox said.
Maddox said she created a property management division, where staffers are assigned to different properties and function as property managers.
“If there’s something wrong with the particular property, we have a point of contact, and we’re not dealing with five or six other different staff members,” Maddox said.
This month alone, 191 ARHA unit inspections have been completed. Of those inspections, 57 failed, Maddox said. ARHA staff will address uncovered issues and work with landlords of rental voucher holding residents to fix those deficiencies, she added.
The ARHA board of commissioners will hold its next meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8.
