For the first time in two years, the Chattanooga Housing Authority's Housing Choice Voucher Program has a full-time person manning the phones and answering questions.
Improved funding this year allowed the authority to restore the position, part of a 20 percent staff reduction because of budget cuts two years ago.
"Now when I call I can get a live body," housing authority board Chairman Eddie Holmes said. "People don't get caught in the telephone merry-go-round."
In 2013 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reduced the authority's administrative funding to 69 percent of the amount allocated for its Housing Choice Voucher Program. The authority had furloughs and cut four of its 20 full-time voucher staff. Among positions cut was the telephone operator.
No person was left unemployed, but positions went unfilled and staff members were used in other areas.
Voucher program director Tammie Carpenter said the agency had no choice but to make the cuts, but the office still was responsible for housing more than 3,300 residents. To better manage the program, the agency asked residents and landlords to email concerns or bring them in person.
"We just didn't have the manpower to do what we needed to do, and clients got frustrated," Holmes said.
Residents complained loudly about the lack of communication.
Housing Choice Voucher tenant Rosemary Porter said the voucher staff is polite and helpful, but it's a "terrible" process to reach them. Many tenants have neither computers nor cars, so they must catch a bus or pay for a ride to the office, she said.
"You get a voice mail and then they switch you to this and to that," she said. "Can't nobody pick up the phone to say 'hello.'"
Social workers for elderly, home-bound residents in the voucher program came to housing authority board meetings to express concerns about their clients not getting questions answered.
So this year, the authority moved Tawana Hinton, the Housing Choice Voucher specialist who once answered phones, back into that position.
"It's much needed," said James Moreland, who said he's heard several complaints from fellow landlords and others.
This year, the housing authority stopped taking paper applications for vouchers and required people to apply online, which the agency said would reduce costs and save time. Carpenter also said the voucher inspector positions cut in 2013 may be permanently eliminated.
Authority personnel are talking with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development about doing inspections once every two years instead of annually. If that happens, the agency may never hire more inspectors, Carpenter said.
Contact staff writer Yolanda Putman at 423-757-6431 or yputman@timesfreepress.com.