Chattanooga Housing Authority board member Jim Levine on Friday questioned how housing officials wrote off a total of $235,870 in unpaid rent and fees in 2015.
That’s 36 percent above the $172,654 in write-offs for 2014.
Levine raised the issue before he and other authority board members approved $61,376.39 in write-offs for public housing tenant accounts and $2,890.36 in write-offs for Greenwood Terrace tax credit accounts for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2015.
CHA Executive Director Betsy McCright addressed concerns about write-offs in her year-end report to the board Friday.
From 2009 to 2013, the housing authority charged off a total of $1.05 million in rents and other fees, an average of about $200,000 per year, or $50,000 per quarter.
“It’s kind of a real delicate balance,” McCright said after the board meeting. “You want to maintain occupancy, so if you have good residents who say, ‘Hey, I will pay,’ you tend to allow them to continue in their tenancies, assuming that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do, and then they don’t.”
Housing authority officials said write-offs consistently trended downward in 2013 and 2014. They said the increase in 2015 may be attributable to a variety of factors, including an increase in rents and an increase in evictions of people paying higher $500 rents, compared to those paying a minimum rent of $50.
But longtime public housing resident Joe Clark said more tenants also could have trouble paying rent because housing officials change fees paid by residents without consulting them.
In 2013 the authority raised late fees from a fixed cost of $5 to a percentage of each household’s rent. It allowed the cost of washing clothes to increase from $2.40 per load to nearly $3 per load. And the dryers’ heat is so low residents have to run their clothes twice to get them dry, Clark said.
“The housing authority gets all of that money,” he said. “And they’re making these decisions without talking to the residents, and HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) said residents should be present when any decision is being made.”
Authority Director of Public Housing Mike Sabin said that, in the big scheme of things, CHA’s write-off for the past quarter is less than 5 percent of potential tenant-paid rent. However, the agency doesn’t take quarterly losses lightly, he said.
“We work hard to collect every dollar owed to us, because every dollar collected allows us to offer assistance to those in need in Chattanooga,” he wrote in an emailed statement.
Housing managers must strike a balance between keeping residences occupied, giving people time to pay rent, yet evicting them before they accumulate months in unpaid rent.
It becomes a tougher job around the holidays, McCright said.
The authority’s legal department filed 345 detainer (eviction) actions in 2015, according to McCright’s report.
Some 50 evictions were based on activity, 258 based on nonpayment of rent, and 37 based on lease violations.
“Honestly, during the holidays we don’t like to hit a mother with three kids with eviction notices,” McCright said. “So are we responsible for possibly dancing a little too long? Probably. But we balance that occupancy issue with the write-offs and that’s where we ended this year.”
Contact staff writer Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.