With an upbringing in hardscrabble Hell’s Kitchen in New York, high level education at UNR and professional experience in Denver, Hilary Lopez is bringing her passion for affordable housing however big the mountain may be to northern Nevada, as the current executive director of the Reno Housing Authority, serving all of Washoe County.
The RHA will soon celebrate 80 years of existence in October, with numbers Lopez is proud of, even though she knows all too well the task is difficult, with hoped for projects stopped in their tracks like converting the Bonanza Inn into affordable housing, costlier construction costs, long waiting lists which are often closed due to high demand, finding landlords to work with and complicated layered financing involving competition with other similar entities.
“We serve over 9,000 Nevadans on an annual basis between our public housing, our housing choice voucher, and other housing programs,” she told Our Town Reno during a recent interview at her offices on East 9th street. “We grew from having a small amount of public housing to being able to provide 750 units of public housing to our community, as well as other expanded housing options, while administering over 2,500 housing choice vouchers and specialty vouchers for residents of our community.”
Two-thirds of its residents are seniors or persons with disabilities, with several programs geared towards them, and others for families, those fleeing domestic violence situations, former foster youth and military veterans.
The RHA recently refreshed its bilingual website. “We just actually revamped our website,” Lopez said. “So I would encourage everyone to go and explore it.”
In terms of most of its funding, the RHA has a federal US Department of Housing and Urban Development contract for low-income public housing and for the housing choice voucher program, formerly known as Section 8, but is independent from the federal government and doesn’t use any local tax dollars.
“Some of the misconceptions are that the Reno Housing Authority is actually attached to the city of Reno,” Lopez said. “We are our own agency.”
That came to the fore when there was disappointment that the City of Reno backed out of a previous agreement earlier this year to help the RHA fund the conversion of the former Bonanza Inn into affordable housing.
Waiting lists are another reality local residents hoping for subsidized housing have to deal with.
“So we actually have two waiting lists. We have a public housing wait list, and then we have a separate waiting list for our housing choice voucher program,” Lopez explained. “And, some families are on both of those lists right now. Both of those lists are closed. However, we are always reviewing those lists. We're always trying to process applications off of those lists as quickly as we can…. [But] one of the things that we don't want to do is just continue to extend that list so that there's really not a reasonable expectation that someone who's on it would be able to receive an offer of housing or a housing choice voucher within the next one to two years.”
“We always like to reiterate that our clients are very good tenants. The housing choice voucher program provides a guaranteed source of rent for our landlords that participate, that we also have these additional landlord incentives that do come into play if there is an issue with either tenant damages, or other scenarios. It’s just helping one way that someone can help our community, an easy way that someone could help our community and provide safe, affordable housing for our residents. I would encourage anyone that wants to learn more about that program to contact us and our landlord liaison would be happy to provide more information,” Lopez elaborated about a new landlord liason program.
Other challenges include finding new landlords ready to accept housing choice vouchers.
“One of the great things about the housing choice vouchers is that residents can use them to find housing that's close to their employment, that's close to the schools that their children go to, or other nearby amenities,” Lopez said. “We have folks that come off the wait list and receive the voucher, and it's always disappointing if they're unable within the timeframe that they've received that voucher to utilize that voucher.”
The RHA recently added a landlord liaison program to provide more assistance for landlords who might have questions or concerns and might want to be involved in the program. Lopez said new incentives were recently added. “So I encourage anyone who wants to help out their community, have some guaranteed rent, and really work with us, to contact us and, and find out more about that program,” Lopez said.
There has been progress on other fronts too, such as breaking ground on the Dick Scott Manor project on East Eighth Street, which according to Lopez “will be 12 units of permanent supportive housing, specifically targeted to extremely low and very low income or unhoused veterans in our community.”
Another current project in Sparks will provide another 15 units of affordable housing, while American Rescue Plan funding is helping to maintain current housing stock. “We’ve been fortunate and received over $45 million from the state through their Home Means Nevada initiative, which uses federal ARPA funds to help us preserve, upgrade and redevelop some of our public housing to make sure that it is available not only for our current residents, but for generations to come,” Lopez said.
There is also a strong local bond with nonprofits.
“We work with them to really help boost and bolster some of our resident service programs. Some of the unique ways that we're working with some of those partners is through our Start Smart program, for example, where we provide education on financial literacy, budgeting, employment, resume writing, et cetera, to our teens who are ages 14 to 18,” Lopez said.
“And we do this in partnership with some of the nonprofits or other for-profit agencies and banks in our area that come in and provide seminars to our students. And then as a bonus for participating in these activities, our students will receive an escrow and then they could use those escrow funds when they graduate to help with continuing education, first time expenses related to first time employment or other eligible expenses.”
Lopez encourages those frustrated by the lack of affordable housing to join the Nevada Housing Coalition, which has regular events across the state to find new solutions. She also recommends residents to talk to elected officials “to just kind of reiterate how important it is that we have affordable housing, sustainable and attainable housing for all members of our community.”
Lopez is well aware recent population growth is making matters even more pressing.
“We’re doing our best to try and bring new units to the market as quickly as possible. We know that there's a need and so we're always trying to see how we could expedite things, how we could improve on our processes,” she concluded.