David Moore, near left, patches a ceiling in Brenda Robinson’s apartment at Cromwell Hills Apartments.The Chattanooga Housing Authority has hired more than a dozen part-time workers to fix up public housing in anticipation of federal inspections.
The goal is to score well on the Public Housing Assessment System and get off the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s list of troubled public housing agencies.
Inspections start this month and are to continue through the end of the year.
But CHA board member James Sattler challenged CHA staff on its practice of preparing buildings for HUD and called for more effort to maintain the apartments year round.
“Why are we just making this sudden move to get a higher score?” Sattler asked at a recent board meeting. “Why aren’t we maintaining our properties that way initially?”