Housing authority’s members to serve on FAMI board
The Fayette County Housing Authority’s five board members will serve as the board for its nonprofit arm, Fayette Asset Management Inc. Board members Robert Onesko, Harry Joseph, Harry Fike, Ernest DeBlasio and Mary Wertz voted Thursday to serve a two-year term on the second, separate board.
The FAMI board will have its first meeting in August, following the housing authority’s regular meeting.
Plans are for that board to purchase the Heritage Apartments in Uniontown, which has 36 apartments for low-income, elderly housing.
Attorney Michael Syme said there is a dual reason for having the Heritage fall under FAMI instead of the housing authority.
First, having FAMI own properties insulates the authority from liability, said Syme.
“When the housing authority owns the Heritage, the housing authority and all of its assets are at risk,” Syme said, noting that even with the most extensive research the history of the building is never completely known.
Secondly, he said, money that is brought into FAMI stay with the nonprofit to be reinvested, and are not under control of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
However, because the nonprofit is an instrumentality, or an arm of the housing authority, it will still fall under HUD regulations.
Work that needs done at the Heritage, for example maintenance or financial work, could be done Housing authority executive director Thomas Harkless said that there is currently a management team in place at the Heritage that will take care of maintenance and other issues. However, when the contract expires, there is an opportunity to evaluate how efficient and cost-effective that is.
Syme and authority solicitor Jack Purcell both said that authorities across the country are going the route of establishing nonprofit entities.
Purcell noted that the nonprofit board is equally transparent as the authority board, and must have public meetings. They are also subject to the Right-to-Know law, and must abide by HUD regulations, he said.
“So, this is actually a double control,” said Fike, chairman of the authority board.
The purchase of the Heritage has not yet been finalized, but it will be bought from Uniontown Property Development for $130,000 using capital funds.
One of the conditions of purchase is that the building remains a dwelling for low-income, elderly residents. Tenants must be at least 62 years old to live there.
In other business, the authority board voted 4-1 to adopt an oxygen use policy that will prohibit tenants who use external oxygen supplementation from smoking in their apartment, common areas, laundry rooms, community rooms and other publicly accessible spaces. That applies to all housing authority properties.
Wertz, who lives at White Swan Apartments in Uniontown and serves as the board’s resident commissioner, cast the lone dissenting vote. She questioned how such a policy could be enforced.
“There are no oxygen police,” Harkless said, “But if we catch people doing it, they will be evicted.”
The policy also prohibits burning candles or incense by such residents, and Wertz noted that some people who are dependent on oxygen have gas stoves.
“Gas ranges and candles are the same thing to me,” she said.
Fike suggested putting an additional sign in the apartments to remind oxygen-dependent people who have gas ranges that they shouldn’t smoke in the kitchen.
She also said that the authority’s policy against having pets or having people not on the lease stay in an apartment are continually violated, but nothing is done.
Dave Huston, director of operations, said he would talk to on-site managers about ramping up enforcement, but noted that if no one tells a manager, they aren’t always aware that something is going on.
“The managers have to be made aware it’s their responsibility (to enforce policies),” DeBlasio said. “To me, the biggest deterrent is you could terminate their lease.”
Huston said that residents will have to fill out an oxygen assistant certification that will go into a resident’s file. That information will eventually be compiled and given to the local fire department so firefighters are aware if a tenant is dependent on oxygen.
Additionally, the policy calls for a “no smoking” sign to be hung on the entrance door of an oxygen-dependant tenant’s apartment.
The rule will apply to both the tenant and any guests he or she may have.