When ON-SITE INSIGHT first helped the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), with its capital improvement funding request to HUD in 1990, the CHA was the nation’s third largest housing authority – 130 developments and almost 40,000 apartments. In 1997, when we returned to help with its Comprehensive Grant submission to HUD, the CHA was beginning its transformation – moving to private management of its inventory. That transformation was much further along, in 2006, when HUD asked us to help model the long-term physical needs of a large portion of the CHA stock, in connection with a major bond refinancing to support that effort.
On the first two rounds of work, directly for the CHA, OSI undertook exhaustive physical needs assessments of all, or nearly all, federally assisted developments and some state-aided properties. We met very tight time schedules for inspections and analyses, review of findings with senior CHA staff, and preparation of modernization plans. In the first round effort, OSI developed redesign alternatives for eight family developments that did not meet contemporary design or living standards, or that needed overhaul to meet new market conditions and improve project viability. In 1990, OSI prepared a capital needs assessment field protocol and trained CHA staff in its use, to provide the Authority with the capacity to update its modernization program. Ultimately the CHA entered completed modernization plans into an automated database for future planning purposes.
In 2006, the CHA was well along with a ten-year, $1.56 billion dollar commitment to rehab or rebuild 25,000 units of housing. While the replacement of family high-rises with mixed-income communities is underway, OSI’s recent work concentrated on seniors, scattered site, and low-rise family properties. OSI and its assignment partner, Abt Associates, were asked to model long-term needs of the bond-financed portfolio, based on representative property samples. OSI was responsible for long-range physical needs assessments; Abt handled the statistical analysis and modeling. We beat HUD’s performance deadline and helped HUD and CHA get to a favorable resolution on the refinancing matter.
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