Local housing authority seeks ‘renaissance’ after financial oversight issues, buys new HQ
A local housing agency says its recent office building purchase is part of its “renaissance.”
Pierce County Housing Authority last month closed on the purchase of the building, built in 2002, at 11515 Canyon Road E., south of Summit, county records show.
The sale price was $2.65 million, and the seller was an LLC affiliated with two local investors/developers.
The site is south of state Route 512 near 112th Street East and Canyon Road East, next to Safeway.
Riley Guerrero is planning, policy and community engagement manager for PCHA. She told The News Tribune via email in response to questions that the building will serve as the agency’s main campus office site.
PCHA’S “current facilities are three converted houses out on Polk Street by (state Route) 512 as well as a warehouse and converted business building on 108th Street and Ainsworth Avenue South,” she wrote. “Unfortunately ... these facilities no longer meet our needs as our organization grows.”
Guerrero said PCHA “is in the process of a renaissance, and we are expanding our footprint to efficiently serve more people in Pierce County.”
“Our present accommodations don’t have enough office space for all our staff and are nearing the end of their useful structural life,” Guerrero added.
The new space offers 8,750 square feet to accommodate staff.
She explained that the move “will make it easier for our participants to find staff and will provide a functional lobby for folks to wait in regardless of who they intend to see — a necessity that our current campuses lack.”
She added that the new site “will centralize all our staff in one building for the first time in our organizational memory. With everyone together, we will increase our staff’s efficiency and inter-departmental collaboration ... .“
Jim Stretz is executive director of PCHA. He told The News Tribune via email, “We will have 40 offices with some time sharing for our 50 employees. We had 37 employees 4 years ago.”
Guerrero said their employee total includes 10 maintenance personnel and roughly 10 on-site property management staff who work at the agency’s apartment complexes.
“Our main campus office staff is where we’ve seen staffing increases,” she said via email. Among the additions, she noted, “we’ve added the Fair Housing and Compliance Specialist role, my own role, increased our admin support by two roles, brought on a new HQS (Housing Quality Standards) inspector position (bringing that to two full-time inspectors), and created an administrative assistant role to coordinate our inspections.”
She added PCHA also has boosted its Supported Housing department “to better serve our participants, and have created a three-person Department of Project Management that’s overseeing our disposition activities.”
As for current working conditions, she wrote, “We currently have folks working out of converted storage spaces and hallways. Our new office facility will have enough space to meet our current operational needs and give all our staff adequate offices, and also give us room to continue growing for years to come without having to reassess our space needs again.”
What made the new site a standout, according to Stretz, came down to multiple factors that he listed via email:
“Ample parking, it’s on a bus line, does not need much in tenant improvements, came with some furniture, fiber optic connection nearby, and meets our needs economically,” he wrote, adding that the PCHA’s board approved the purchase and financing.
Guerrero added that “Our service area is all parts of the county outside of the city of Tacoma, so we wanted to keep our offices similarly situated outside the Tacoma city limits.”
She said the search for a new site included areas in Lakewood and Parkland, “but didn’t find any facilities that would meet our needs without substantial tenant-improvements, and nothing that was available for purchase instead of a lease, the latter representing a far less sound investment of our funds.”
Guerrero noted that PCHA also is in the process of “increasing our apartment portfolio by 15% — acquiring over 100 apartment units of affordable housing that will be preserved with funds we have generated from federal and local sources to keep low-income families housed.”
The apartment acquisition project is part of PCHA’s transition away from houses to apartments as a more cost-effective investment.
She added that PCHA also is expanding its HUD Family Self-Sufficiency Program, which enables HUD-assisted families to increase their earned income and reduce dependency on aid and subsidies. PCHA also has brought on new Fair Housing and Policy personnel.
The agency is deciding what to do with its previous office properties after the move, “but we are hoping to find a way for it to be either used for housing or for community purposes,” Guerrero wrote.
PCHA’s move is set for Nov. 25, but Guerrero said PCHA will continue to “have a presence” between the old and new spaces through the end of the year.
Latest audit
All of the change for the agency comes on the heels of the latest internal audit from the state spanning 2023.
The audit, issued in September, resulted in no findings but did note that “certain other matters ... we have reported to the management of the Housing Authority in a separate letter.”
Adam Wilson, media representative for the Auditor’s Office, told The News Tribune, “The letter the report mentions is what we call a ‘management letter,’ which is how we document issues we identify that are not as serious as a finding, but still deserve management’s attention.”
That letter listed “weaknesses” in the agency’s financial reporting tied to financial-statement preparation and use of outside consultants in that work.
“We recommend the Housing Authority continue to strengthen internal controls by improving its oversight and secondary review of the financial statement preparation and reporting process, including the financial data schedule and statement of cash flows,” the letter concluded.
Stretz told The News Tribune in response, “Constant vigilance to safeguard financial assets requires process improvement as an enterprise grows.”
He added that “PCHA, like all organizations, is constantly improving efficiency while safeguarding assets.”
The September 2024 report followed an earlier critical audit spanning 2021-2022 that stated PCHA remained behind in improving financial oversight, three years after its former finance director misappropriated over $6.9 million in public funds.
In 2021, Cova Campbell was sentenced to more than four years in prison after pleading guilty to the theft.
News Tribune archives contributed to this report.
