Housing authority continues to deal with transition

FORT MADISON – The transitional phase that’s been bogging down the Fort Madison Housing Authority continues to hamper operations.
At Wednesday’s monthly meeting of the authority’s board of directors, Director Mike Dear said the authority now in the process of hiring and training new staff.
The authority is replacing two staff employees who resigned in the last six weeks. This follows on the heels of a revamping of the board.  Four of the five current board members have been on less than a year. Board President Chris Greenwald has been on the board for less than six months, replacing Rebecca Bowker who resigned abruptly following a vote on a disciplinary action earlier this summer.
The board has had four directors in the past four years and ran into a snag with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development over expenditures that were outside the HUD contract with FMHA.
Abby Wright, a former Fort Madison Community School District employee, has been hired to replace one of the staff members and Dear said another person has been offered a position but won’t be able to start until next month.
“I know this is a macro issue. We have to figure out some things now to really understand what we’re doing here long-term. We have to figure out today to know what tomorrow is,” Dear said.
He said HUD has been a good resource for him as he looks to rebuild the institutional knowledge lost with the staff turnover, but Dear said there are other sources of support, as well such as other authorities.
The new hire will come to the authority with knowledge of HUD protocols and will be able to step in and go to work. Dear said the authority was fortunate to find Wright and the other new hire.
“You have to be creative to get what you need like that and we were able to pull a rabbit out of a hat to find someone with governmental experience,” he said.
“A lot of it right now is we’re just trying to figure out things. But having another person come in that speaks HUD will be crucial for us and we’re excited about that.”
Board member Jenny Devine questioned Dear at the meeting about what training mechanisms will be available and if they have been available, why haven’t they been put in place earlier. Dear told her that actual training with HUD officials isn’t available but they do work through issues with them and then provide summaries of the issue to look back on.
Some of those programs, including tools that figure Section 8 percentages, Dear himself is still training on.
“The software they use, I’ve been working with them directly, in terms of training. They are actually helping us create processes. Anytime you reach out to them with an issue, they provide you with an email that includes the pathway for handling the issue if it comes up again,” he said.
“HUD doesn’t provide actual training. There are other resources, but my conversations around training in HUD, they provide support as it relates to the financials and the budget side, but it’s not actual training.”
He said he’s trying to get support in place for the current staff, including maintenance staff, because census for the authority is trending down. But they have applications on file and, as they work through the ongoing transition, those applications can be processed and apartment units can be flipped and ready for new tenants.