Houston Daily

Houston Housing Authority Board of Commissioners met Aug. 19.

Here are the minutes provided by the board:

I. CALL TO ORDER

A Meeting of the Board of Commissioners (“Board”) of the Houston Housing Authority (“HHA”) was held on Tuesday, August 19, 2025, at the Houston Housing Authority Central Office, 2640 Fountain View Drive, Houston, Texas 77057. The meeting was called to order at 2:00 p.m.

LIVE STREAM STATISTICS

August 19, 2025: ● Live Stream Views 51 ● Average view duration 12:48 ● Peak concurrent viewers 21

II. ROLL CALL

Present:

• Joseph “Jody” Proler, Chairman

• Alton Smith, Vice Chairman

• Stephanie A.G. Ballard, Commissioner

• Eric G. Carter, Commissioner

• Kristy Kirkendoll, Commissioner

• Kenneth C. Li, Commissioner

• Jamie Bryant, Secretary

Absent: Cynthia Aceves-Lewis, Commissioner

III. INTRODUCTION OF THE INTERPRETERS

Chairman Proler offered the use of interpreters to be available to Spanish and Vietnamese speakers who may need assistance with public comments only.

IV. PUBLIC COMMENTS

Chairman Proler: Before we start, can we get a count on the number of people who are viewing online?

Speaker: My name is Jasmine Scott, and I am being terminated from the Houston Housing Authority Home Buyers program because I reported a mistake in handling my payments. Because the HHA failed to pay the fees owed, on time to mortgage payment, I was told that put my house in foreclosure. When I made them aware of the issue they did retroactively pay but they didn't include the fees that were incurred because of their mistake. When I sent the e-mail, made phone calls to ask them to, I want to escalate this above you to see what's going on, they basically sent me an email saying hey, you requested these documents, in the same email they gave me a notice of termination and I feel like that was…because I did tell them I was escalating it so I feel like that was retaliation against me. So, what's the system of accountability for correcting Houston Housing Authority mistakes when families were harmed? And why am I being punished instead of being protected for reporting their error? Now, let me make something clear. I have been on housing for about 7 years. While on housing, I received my master's degree from Sam Houston State University. While on housing, I have obtained employment with Harris County. I am a club messenger mentor for the juvenile. So it's not like I'm using these services and abusing them. I'm using them and I'm trying to take every opportunity that's given for me and my kids, but it needs to be clear on how to report something and not be retaliated against when something is done in error like they've hold us accountable for the HAP contract but they’re not held accountable for when they mess up on the HAP contract. So that's all I have to say. I just want to make it known what is going on. Thank you,

Secretary Bryant: Thank you, Ms. Scott. Before you leave, Mr. Coles, would you mind having one of your staff members...Ms. Joanne Gladney is in the back. Joanne will look into your issue for you, and thank you for bringing that to our attention.

Ms. Scott: Thank you.

I.T.: The Online count is currently nine people.

Speaker: Brenda Chen speaking on behalf of Lisa Sun.

Good afternoon. My name is Brenda Chen. Lisa Sun, the CEO of The Epoch Times Public Media. We operate NTD Television and the Epoch Times Weekly newspaper. For over 25 years, we have proudly served the local Asian community and partnership with Korean, Vietnamese, and other communities. The Houston Housing Authority plays a vital role in our community, providing essential services to citizens in need. I'm here to propose a partnership with you to enhance the impact, particularly to the non-English speaking people and the immigrant community. So by collaborating, we can better serve and update these populations locally. While many indigenous and immigrant community languages can be a barrier, our media can help bridge that gap, just like we have worked with the Southwest Management District for over 10 years. We can also work with you to share information on meetings and policies in multiple languages beyond English to increase and enhance awareness and education across the broader community. Through our newspaper, website, television, and social media platforms, we also help the community stay informed about the housing authority’s projects and opportunities. Today I bring a proposal for you to review, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. We hope to be a partner with you to increase awareness, education, and community engagement. Thank you so much.

Secretary Bryant: Thank you, Ms. Chen. If you turn around and look in the back, Robin, please raise your hand. That is Ms. Robin Jackson. She is our new marketing and communications coordinator for the Housing Authority. So before you leave, if you want to make a connection with her, you can give her your proposal. She will be the best person for you to speak with about your ideas for the Housing Authority and partnerships with your community.

Ms. Chen: Thank you.

V. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Chairman Proler: Thank you. Before we approve the minutes, on a personal note, I'd like to thank all of you who helped Commissioner Carter, who was ill last month. He is here with us today.

Commissioner Carter: Thank you all very much. I'm still here.

a. Board Meeting Minutes: July 24, 2025

On motion by Commissioner Ballard and seconded by Commissioner Li, the Board approved the July 24, 2025, Meeting Minutes.

VI. CEO OPERATIONAL UPDATES

Chairman Proler: I'll turn it over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Bryant, for his operational update.

Secretary Bryant: Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for coming today. I want to start off by saying a quick thank you to some staff members. I'm not going to go into the details of what has occurred over the last few weeks, but we've had a handful of staff members that have gone above and beyond in some not so-easy situations so I just wanted to say a special thank you to Deborah, Britney and Alicia for the work that you did on the property and some of the tough situations you've dealt with, with residents recently and how you've approached those and then also to Drew for some of his work recently. Thank you to our team and staff for your attention to our residents and your care, and just didn't want that to go unnoticed today.

Commissioner Smith: Are they here?

Secretary Bryant: I'm not sure, they probably aren't in the audience now because they're usually out in the field.

I wanted to make a couple of announcements. On our Procurement portal, we do have an open application now for 4% on applications. So, for tax credit developers who may be looking to make an application or submit to TDHCA for the 4% tax credit program and bond applications, we are accepting applications for the Houston Housing Authority to consider and whether that is in partnership with you, or just to be the bond issuer, you can find that on our Procurement website at housingforhouston.com. So we encourage you to look at that, and if interested, reach out with questions or put your application in.

Also, Ms. Donna would probably get on to me if I didn't bring it up, but our annual fundraising golf tournament is coming up on September 24th down at Wildcat. Two pieces of that, first and foremost, all proceeds from the tournament will go to fund scholarships for residents and clients of the Housing Authority who are currently enrolled in college, trade school, or something similar to that nature. So two things. First and foremost, if you're a resident or a client of the Houston Housing Authority and you are enrolled in school, this is not just about any youth be an adult, you could be fresh out of high school, but if you're enrolled in college or trade school or whatever, you'd like to apply for one of these scholarships, please reach out. Donna Dixon is our liaison for this effort, and if you're interested in participating in the golf tournament or sponsoring the golf tournament, reach out to Donna as well. We still have open spots there. We look forward to seeing everybody out on the 24th at Wildcat, and thank you for your support of our residents who are furthering their education.

Lastly, and this is for the public as well as the board, I wanted to update you on a few things that are going on. One of the residents who came to the last board meeting was a resident of Historic Oaks of Allen Parkway Village, and as many people are aware, this is a historic project of the Housing Authority; in fact, the first phases of this were built in the 1940s. It has been renovated multiple times, but it is under what is now coming up on a three-year renovation that originally was projected on maybe 12 to 18 months. Unfortunately, there are a lot of reasons that has been the case, but we held a town hall Thursday night next to that community and spoke with residents to update them on the progress and what is going on. I wanted to update the board on one of the situations that came from a gentleman last month, who came to the board meeting, and so there were a handful of residents who were still living in extended stay apartments. The gentleman who was here last board month has actually been moved back on the property, and we are down to four, and might be three as of this week, families who are still in the extended stay hotels, with the plan that all of them will be back on the property in the new units within the next 30 days. So that progress is being made. You know, unfortunately, we can't un-ring the bell of why we're so far behind, but I did assure the community on Thursday night that our team is putting all its resources into it, and they have the support they need to push forward. But there are a lot of issues there, and we are addressing them one by one, and I say again, on behalf of your government agency, I'm sorry and remiss for the mistakes that were made along the way that have come to this point, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are moving folks back in as we speak. We have, you know, dozens of units coming online every other week or so, and we will be able to start moving people back into that property. So there is progress being made there. What I will reiterate is that there is still work to be done. We're still going to make some mistakes. It's still going to be a little bumpy along the way, but it's going to get better, and I promise the community on Thursday night, we will be getting back down there in the next 60 to 90 days for another town hall to update them. A lot of our staff were there, and thank you for your time there to spend with the residents answering their questions and getting their concerns addressed, and we'll make sure that the board gets an update every month on the progress. That's all that is on my list, Mr. Chairman.

VII. NEW BUSINESS

a. Resolution No. 3917: Consideration and/or take action to authorize expenditures not to exceed $400,000.00 with SHI Government Solutions Inc.

PRESENTED BY: Roy Spivey, Director of IT

Mr. Spivey: Good afternoon, Commissioners. It has happened from time to time, where we have individual expenditures with a vendor that exceed $100,000 before we have to bring them to the board. This happens with our vendor, SHI Government Solution Inc. SHI is a minority vendor that offers a number of services and products that can be purchased under the DIR, which is the Texas Department of Information Resources. SHI also holds our Microsoft Enterprise Licensing Agreement, which allows us to purchase line licenses for Microsoft software. There are many items that were purchased through SHI that I negotiated with the actual vendor. Thankfully, we purchased an email archiving and cybersecurity system from Mimecast and negotiated with Mimecast to get the best pricing, and they require a reseller. So we took it through SHI as our reseller, but that doesn't affect the price that we negotiated with the actual vendor.

For the budget 2025, we have already made some purchases. We purchased Mimecast, the email archiving and cybersecurity system. We also purchased VMware licenses (network server virtualization for phone system) and Cisco VOIP phone licenses, annual renewal. So today we have spent $106,439.10. In our budget, is also additional VMware licenses for the virtualization of our servers, Microsoft Software license renewals, our Citrix license renewals, which is our remote software solution.

We're looking at purchasing either a one-time purchase of Microsoft Office or a subscription and seeing what the return on the investment is for that. We have to have a network storage array. The additional charges come to about $286,000. We are asking to raise our spending limit to $400,000. Do you have any questions or comments?

Chairman Proler: I have a few. Ballpark. What was your 2025 total expenditure budget for all of this calendar year? Mike, do you know that or Roy?

Mr. Spivey: I provided a spreadsheet. We have many items...

Chairman Proler: I guess where I'm going with this, is $400,000 enough? Do you feel like, between now and the end of the year, you may need additional funds?

Mr. Spivey: I believe, at this time for SHI, $400,000 is the right amount. We use other vendors for other things.

Chairman Proler: So you'll come back with a request if you need to?

Mr. Spivey: Yes, if we should exceed $400,000, we will come back with the request. Chairman Proler: But, the Office 24, you have not determined yet that you're going to purchase that?

Mr. Spivey: We just don't know if we're going to purchase that one-time retail licensing or transition over to the Microsoft 365 subscription.

Secretary Bryant: The difference is that one-time licensing is generally good for about three years before the updates come out, whereas the subscription model allows you to always get the up-to-date license. We're doing the cost-benefit analysis. This subscription model can be a little cheaper, but over three years, it can be a little more expensive. And so we're looking through this.

Chairman Proler asked for a motion to approve Resolution No. 3917.

On motion by Commissioner Li and seconded by Commissioner Ballard

Chairman Proler asked if there is any discussion regarding this resolution. Hearing none, Chairman Proler called for a vote.

The Board approved Resolution No. 3917.

b. Resolution No. 3918: Consideration and/or take action to authorize the President & CEO or designee to execute contracts with Flywheel LLC, Detail2Dots LLC, and Emerald West LLC, implementation of the Older Adults Home Modification Program (OAHMP), a HUD grant program. The cost per project will not exceed $5,000 without approval from the President & CEO.

Chairman Proler: For the record, Resolution No. 3918 has been pulled.

Secretary Bryant: Mr. Chairman, just for the public's knowledge, 3918 is being tabled with the intention that it is to be brought back to the September board meeting. There were a few things that came up since the posting last Wednesday that we need to button up before we ask the board for a final decision on it. So again, it's being tabled with the intention of coming back in September.

c. Resolution No. 3919: Consideration and/or take action to authorize the removal of Mike Rogers from the APV Redevelopment Corporation Board of Directors and the appointment of Alton Smith as a Director of the APV Redevelopment Corporation.

PRESENTED BY: LaKeshia Jackson, Deputy General Counsel

Ms. Jackson: Good afternoon. Resolution 3919 is Pursuant to Article III, Section 3 of the APV Redevelopment Corporation Bylaws, “each member of the Board of Directors shall be appointed by written resolution of the Board of Commissioners of the Housing Authority of the City of Houston ("HACH")… and any member of the Board of Directors may be removed from office at any time, with or without cause, by written resolution of the Board of Commissioners of HACH”. So this resolution is to remove Mr. Mike Rogers from the board of APV Redevelopment and is required here by the APV...

Ms. Hovell-Cox: HHA

Ms. Jackson: The APV Redevelopment Board of Directors, the corporation requires the Houston Housing Authority to approve the removal of any board member from the APV board. Therefore, we are requesting that the HHA Board of Commissioners hereby authorize the removal of Mike Rogers as a member of the APV Redevelopment Corporation Board of Directors and appoint Alton Smith to serve as the Director of the APV Redevelopment Corporation. Once there is a vacancy on the APV board, the HHA board can appoint a new director. Therefore, we're asking the HHA board to approve this resolution.

Secretary Bryant: If I could add one thing, commissioners, and this may have been explained during the prep work that you received, this has nothing to do with Mr. Rogers or his service. Mike, we thank you for your service on this board for many years. This has been a process of updating procedures and Legal structures to look at, how many non-commissioners serve on these boards versus staff, and the decision going forward would be that these boards, like APV and Victory, would have at least four members, of which three of them would be commissioners and the fourth one would be whoever sits in the CEO chair, which today would be myself. So again, this has nothing to do with Mike or his service to these boards. It's just a reconfiguration of how we're going to structure these going forward.

Chairman Proler asked for a motion to adopt Resolution No. 3919.

On motion by Commissioner Li and seconded by Commissioner Ballard.

Chairman Proler asked if there is any discussion regarding this resolution. Hearing none, Chairman Proler called for a vote.

The Board approved Resolution No. 3919.

VIII. EXECUTIVE SESSION

Chairman Proler suspended the Public Session on Tuesday, August 19, 2025, at 2:24 p.m. to convene an Executive Session to discuss personnel, legal, and real estate issues in accordance with Sections 551.074, 551.071, and 551.072, respectively, of the Texas Government Code.

IX. RECONVENE PUBLIC SESSION

Chairman Proler reconvened the Public Session at 3:16 p.m. to take action on Executive Session agenda items.

ROLL CALL: Commissioner Carter and Secretary Bryant did not return to the meeting.

Chariman Proler: Secretary Bryant is upstairs.

NEW BUSINESS continued

d. Resolution No. 3920: Consideration and/or take action to authorize the President & CEO or designee to execute payment, on behalf of Houston Housing Authority (HHA), pursuant to the Settlement Agreement between HHA and Karen Miniex.

PRESENTED BY: Jennine Hovell-Cox, Senior Vice President & General Counsel

Consideration and/or take action to authorize the President & CEO or designee to execute payment, on behalf of Houston Housing Authority (HHA), pursuant to the Settlement Agreement between HHA and Karen Miniex.

Chairman Proler asked for a motion to adopt Resolution No. 3920.

On motion by Commissioner Ballard and seconded by Commissioner Smith, the Board approved Resolution No. 3920.

X. ADJOURNMENT

Chairman Proler stated that this concludes the items on today’s agenda and asked for a motion to adjourn. On motion by Commissioner Ballard and seconded by Commissioner Kirkendoll.

Chairman Proler declared the meeting adjourned at 3:18 p.m.

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