City officials continue to rehabilitate the Longmont Housing Authority, an agency that provides low-income housing for the city’s disadvantaged residents but has been plagued in the past with “systemic” problems.
The authority has been roiled by resignations of key personnel and an operational structure that has been teetering toward collapse, Longmont Housing Authority Board of Commissioners Chairman Cameron Grant told city council Tuesday night.
“The way it was set up … we knew it wasn’t sustainable,” Grant told council.
Jillian Baldwin, who took over as executive director of LHA in September 2018, came in with her “eyes wide open and helped us uncover the systemic problems with the authority,” Grant said.
The housing authority's faults led to the city entering into an intergovernmental agreement with the LHA in May. As part of the pact, City Manager Harold Dominguez became executive director. Dominguez updated council Tuesday on efforts to stabilize the agency, which include relying on city staff members to perform key functions in such areas as finance.
Council members praised Dominguez’s work so far, with Mayor Brian Bagley calling the city manager’s efforts “superhuman.”
Baldwin left as executive director in May, which officially ushered in city oversight of the LHA. In addition to the departure of Baldwin, LHA’s chief financial officer left in March and then COVID-19 hit, Grant said.
“That took an organization in need of significant change and put us on thin ice,” he said.
Dominguez told city council his interim management of the agency has included appointing a community manager to directly oversee its operations, consolidating office operations and a complete assessment of structures and facilities.
Those reviews have already led to improvements, he said, including replacing room air conditioners that were designed for hotel rooms and not for long-term use in apartments, Dominguez said.
He added he wants to bring on personnel to directly help residents, including community managers and more maintenance techs, Dominguez said.
“We are really looking at the structure of the organization,” Dominguez said. “Before it seemed a lot of resources were placed at the top of the organization and that really hampered putting boots on the ground to help serve people.”
Dominguez said he wants to produce an operational model for LHA in six months.
A report from BSH Strategies — hired to assess the needs of the LHA — said staff are grateful the city helped oversee the agency and there was a “wholehearted commitment of LHA staff to the mission” of helping provide housing to low-income residents.
The BSH report points out, however, there is widespread confusion about job responsibilities, reporting relationships, decision paths and where to get help at LHA.
“The confusion shows up from the very simple example of not knowing who or how to ask for personal time off to the more impactful examples of a building manager not knowing who supervises the colleague who works in the same building with the same residents,” the report states.
The report also found that because of a limited number of office personnel at LHA, the agency does not have adequate internal controls over significant accounting functions.
“These are significant findings that need to be addressed,” the report states.
Grant said there have been some notable achievements for the LHA in the past few months, including its Fall River at Prairie Village development being a recipient of the 2020 People’s Choice Award at Housing Colorado’s annual Eagle Awards ceremony in July.
