Highlands Residential Services wants to transition public housing into more multi-family housing as part of its annual plan.
Executive Director Chris Cassetty said the annual agency plan is submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) every year. Cassetty said the plan lays out the goal of transitioning public housing into multi-family housing. Cassetty said the conversion will benefit Highlands Residential for future funding.
“Congress has at times not fully funded the public housing subsidy, but they haven’t really ever messed with how they fund multi-family, because multi-family can also, there are for-profit companies that own multi-family properties, and so it’s just a much more stable funding system for us,” Cassetty said.
Cassetty said Highlands Residential is making the transition through the Rental Assistance Demonstration program. Cassetty said Highlands Residential started the process several years ago and is still tracking to make all of the housing properties multi-family housing.
“We have actually converted about half of our units, and we are converting a little bit piecemeal,” Cassetty said. “We’ve converted everything that was in Cookeville, or just about everything that was in Cookeville. And so now we are going through the process. We just about got our property in Celina converted, and then we’ll do Gainesboro next. So we are just really kind of going, not necessarily specifically by town, but by properties that are close together or that make sense to do together.”
Cassetty said he expects it will take a couple of years to complete the full transition.
The board also approved a five-year capital fund action plan. Cassety said that plan shows HUD what capital fund projects Highlands Residential has planned for the next five years. Cassetty said capital comes from HUD.
“We did major remodeling on all of our properties probably 15-20 years ago, and right now we’ve done a lot of roofing,” Cassetty said. “We’ve done a roofing job this year, a roofing job next year, buying some maintenance equipment, a couple of trucks, and that kind of thing. We as well can spend some capital fund money through the RAD conversion process.”
Cassetty said roofing is a big focus as most of the properties were last reroofed 20 years ago. Cassetty said that forming these plans not only helps Highlands set future goals but also helps review how well previous goals are being met.
