CRHA seeking ways to collect over $232,000 in unpaid rent

The public comment period of any government body offers the chance for advocates to speak on behalf of their constituents. At the November 25 meeting of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, an organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center asked the agency to halt pending evictions of tenants who are behind on rent due to the holidays.

“There are 37 people being brought to court for unlawful detainers and most of them are for back rent,” said Emily Dreyfus at the November 18 meeting of the CRHA’s Board of Commissioners. “And I have heard some stories of communication problems from residents where they have tried to call their property manager or they don’t know their property manager because there’s been turnover and are having difficulty navigating the process.”

Dreyfus said many of the tenants may have the ability to enter into payment plans and she wanted everything to be done to prevent evictions.

TerAna Banks, the CRHA’s compliance manager, said the agency is doing what it can to mitigate evictions and the agency’s asset collection manager has been trying to find assistance on behalf of residents.

“However, if you look at the numbers, the number of outstanding rents in the dollar amount, it is tremendous right now,” Banks said. “Currently, I know in the last week alone, we’ve had a lot of people get help, so these numbers that were given for the report will be lower.”

According to the November 2024 housing report, the CRHA was owed a total of $232,530 in back rent as of November 15.

Banks said tenants are informed they can get on a payment plan, and the courts are given that information as well. Efforts are also made to continue cases as long as possible.

“We have to try to collect the money,” Banks said. “We have, you know, we have bills to pay, but we also are not just pushing money in dollar amount. Myself and the entire staff are assisting people daily to get assistance as well. So we are working on both sides.”

Banks said the CRHA waits three days to move forward after a judgement is made that allows for an eviction. This is called a writ of possession. The timing then depends on the workload of the Sheriff’s Department. She said work continues to find assistance to cover the arrears.

Delphine Carnes, the outside legal counsel for CRHA, said evictions happen after a long process.

“It’s a situation where it’s an eviction for failure to pay rent, they have first received a letter giving them 30 days notice,” Carnes said. “ So this is not just a few days and you have to move out. There is notice and communications with CRHA staff long before the court date.”

Executive Director John Sales said most of the evictions come in cases where a tenant has not paid for five months or more.

“Unfortunately, filing evictions is the only time a lot of the families respond, and that’s normally when most of the money gets paid,” Sales said. “Like, we had a family walk in [with] $9,000 two months ago after an eviction was filed.”

Sales also reported a small portion of the evictions are related to shootings and other acts of violence but he could not provide any information.

Sales also reported that there is a shortfall of $300,000 in the current fiscal year for funding expected to cover the federal housing choice voucher program overseen by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Part of the reason is due to the increasing cost of rent which means the same amount of funding does not stretch as far. When he took over as executive director in 2020, the average pay-out to a landlord was $700 a month. Now it’s more like $1,100 a month.

“Our per unit cost has just skyrocketed. Everyone is seeing that same issue this year,” Sales said. “HUD had its largest amount of agencies run into shortfall because of that exact issue.”

Sales said this is one reason why the CRHA seeks to continue to purchase additional units across the city. That allows more control to the agency to rent to low-income households. He said the purchase of 212 Fifth Street and 217 Fifth Street should soon be closing. For more information, take a look at the story I wrote earlier this year.

Sales also said the CRHA will likely dispose of 801 Harris Road, a property acquired with the purchase of the Dogwood Portfolio. For more information, read an article I wrote earlier this year for C-Ville Weekly.

One member of the CRHA Board had a question about the immediate future with a presidential transition in Washington D.C.

“I realize there’s going to be losses and I just don’t know how much you’re thinking about it,” said Laura Goldblatt. “As we think about things like a strategic plan, about how best we can protect our residents. It’s unclear what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be very good.”

Sales said the CRHA has been working to improve the relationship with HUD and has been working to become more self-sufficient. He said the agency is preparing for a reduction in funds but the details are far from known.

“We’ve moved to other programs,” Sales said. “ We’ve added some additional non-subsidized housing units and so we’ve diversified and so we’re not just dependent on federal funding.”

Sales said there has been conversation with the city government about how to cover the costs of services HUD won’t pay for, such as translation services for residents who are not native speakers of English.

Commissioner Wes Bellamy said the Legislative Black Caucus has been discussing ways to protect housing in the upcoming General Assembly.

“I guess we have to wait and see how they unveil their agenda as session opens up in about a month and a half from now,” Bellamy said.

The meeting concluded with a longer discussion of the CRHA’s eviction policy.

You can take a look at the full meeting at this link.

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