Finding No. 2025-001: Missing Deadlines for Recertifications and Inspections (Significant Deficiency) Corrective Action Plan: Our goal is to address the underlying cause of the delayed recertifications and inspections identified in Finding 2025-001. Regarding the recertifications, my analysis of the...
Finding No. 2025-001: Missing Deadlines for Recertifications and Inspections (Significant Deficiency) Corrective Action Plan: Our goal is to address the underlying cause of the delayed recertifications and inspections identified in Finding 2025-001. Regarding the recertifications, my analysis of the delays indicates that our Housing Voucher team remains understaffed. We have a five-person Housing Voucher Team with well over 900 vouchers to administer across a variety of different programs, including HCV, PBV, Mainstream, VASH, Foster Youth, Port-In1, etc. Additionally, we have 80 public housing units and are administering an additional 80 project-based tenant-protection vouchers in partnership with Montgomery Housing Partnership (MHP) for a senior-housing rehab project (Bethany House) begun this year (2026). In short, we need to expand our housing voucher team, especially since only one member of the team, Eve Garcia Jiminez, specializes in port-ins. Additionally, while Ms. Garcia Jiminez and Ms. Rebecca Niaba, the Housing-Voucher Team Manager, both have considerable experience with HUD programs, the remaining three team members – who handle resident casework, recertifications, waitlist management, inspections, etc. – are relatively junior, all with less than five years of experience. Since RHE’s leadership turnover in late August 2025, we have attempted to supplement the Housing Voucher Team with interns from our YouthBuild program. While this has helped somewhat lessen the burden, the RHE Management Team has determined that we need at least one additional mid-career Housing-Voucher Team member (minimum 5+ years of experience managing HUD voucher programs). We are considering a variety of options, including recruiting a Deputy for the Housing Voucher Team or promoting one of our Team Members to Deputy Director and backfilling a mid-career position. We have also begun discussions with WorkSource Montgomery and AmeriCorps Maryland to potentially supplement the initial costs of onboarding new Voucher Team members. For the inspections finding, we have been having discussions since the RHE leadership turnover about the performance of our current vendor, Gilson Housing Partners. They have been increasingly unreliable since we selected them as our inspections vendor in February 2025. Just in the last few weeks, we havedetermined that we need to terminate the vendor, particularly after we received a video of an inspection where the Gilson representative spent approximately 80 seconds in the unit, never left the entryway, and only asked the resident a few questions before leaving. We have already received one proposal from Archer-Greenwood Companies and expect 2-3 more proposals in the next few weeks, at which point we will submit a notice of termination to Gilson. Responsible Person: James Hedrick, Interim Executive Director Anticipated Completion Date: Recertifications & Voucher Team Hiring - AmeriCorps Maryland – Applications due July 1, 2026. Participants’ terms begin August/September 2026 and last for one year – extendable as full-time employee after the AmeriCorps subsidy. - Housing-Voucher Team Deputy Director/Mid-Career Port-In Specialist – The position requires a particular set of skills and experience in a specialized area. Recruitment and advertisement are expected to take some time. Advertising for the position will begin late Summer 2026, hiring expected before year-end 2026. Inspections Vendor Replacement - Have already received proposals from one potential inspection replacement firm: Archer- Greenwood. We have reached out to additional vendors and expect proposals within the next few weeks. We will send a letter of termination and fully transition to the new vendor by the end of FY2026 (September 30, 2026).