NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — No concerns were discovered after reviewing the 2018 Sun Cleaners groundwater samples but more tests will be required in 2019.

 

Housing Authority Executive Director Jennifer Hohn said Monday that all three well samples taken in December at the 111 River St. property are below the Massachusetts Contingency Plan's risk-based standards but she was told more tests will be needed before Housing Opportunities Inc. can transfer the property to the city.  

 

"So that is good news for this round but the next groundwater monitoring event is scheduled for March of 2019," Hohn said 

 

The Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, which also serves as HOI board, plans to transfer all the HOI assets to the city of North Adams and dissolve the 30-year-old program created to help first-time homeowners.

 

The Sun Cleaners property is the last asset HOI needs to transfer to the city. However, the transfer has been pending for almost two years because the city first wanted to test for contamination at the former dry cleaners.

 

Hohn said these March tests should be the last.

 

"That should be the last one ... that should be it," she told the commission on Monday. "Good news though is it appears to be under the limits."

 

In other business, Hohn said the Housing Authority is still on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program waiting list and with the government shutdown, she expects a continued wait.

 

"We are still in the same position ... HUD employees were furloughed employees so we didn't have any access to HUD employees up until now," she said. "I don't foresee them reaching out to us anytime soon with the backlog that they have right now."

 

According to HUD, there is some $26 billion in backlogged and deferred maintenance at public housing properties across the nation. RAD would move the units to the Section 8 platform and allow housing authorities to leverage debt and equity for re-investment without affecting tenant rights and rents, or housing authority control. 

 

Hohn said ultimately if the Housing Authority goes through with RAD, all of the public housing would be converted to project-based Section 8 units.

 

"This would benefit our agency when it comes to the sustainability of our funding," she said. "It would increase our funding and give us more leverage as far as capital improvements go because we can be private developers, we can take out loans we could go out and purchase new property, we could develop."

 

Hohn said it will likely be some time before the Housing Authority is up for conversion.

 

"It is a long waiting list at this point because a lot of housing authorities have figured out that this is probably the best route to go given the public housing atmosphere," she said. "Funding is not going to be increased going forward so it is a good time to lock in."