This informational meeting featured a detailed presentation from the Denver Housing Authority (DHA) on the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, its critical role in providing housing stability, and the significant challenges posed by affordability and federal funding uncertainties. Committee members engaged in a lengthy Q&A session to better understand program operations and current pressures.
Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the community planning and housing committee with Denver City Council. Your community planning and housing committee starts now. All right. Um think about that. Okay. Great. Thank you, Tim. Um, so this is the community planning and housing committee of Denver City Council. Um we will have, I think, one presentation today and no action items, which we're excited about and have been planning for a while. Um I am the committee chair and council member at large, Sarah Parity, and I will start with introductions of other council members starting online, I think. Good afternoon, everyone, and here on the bond, Northwest Denver District 1. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, council president. Councilman Cross. Thank you. Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3. Hi, folks. All right, and hopefully other people circle in a little bit. Um, but um, I will let DHA introduce all of yourselves and uh take it away. We're excited. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us uh today here on the community planning and housing committee. Um this is a pleasure for us. Um, you know, having this opportunity to talk a little bit uh about the housing choice voucher programs that we're managing. My name is Joaquin Sintelumbea, I am the Chief Executive Officer, uh, Deputy Housing Authority. Hello, and thank you as well. My name is Loretta Owens. I'm the Housing Choice Bachelor Program Director. Good afternoon, Joshua Crowley, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel. Hi. Good afternoon, Stephanie Sheeman, the director of communications and public affairs at the Denver Housing Authority. Great. Thanks for bringing um such a strong team today. Awesome. So we we want to uh keep the presentation uh brief uh because we believe that it is very important to have a conversation with you about these specific topic. So today we aim to provide perspective about the programs and the crucial challenge, of course, that we are facing uh today, as you know. Um and very important for us is to provide perspective not only to to the committee but also to those members of the community that uh may not be familiar uh with uh our programs and want to know uh more or to get a to get a better understanding of of how uh they work and operate, including of course the number of resources that we are uh managing. So for for us that is very important, uh acknowledging the individuals that may be having access to these broadcasts. So again, we will keep this presentation very brief to allow for uh a good conversation uh in the end uh with you and to answer any questions that uh you may have. Josh. Thank you. All right, I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of background on housing choice voucher program uh and DHA specifically. So I'm gonna start with we are referring to the housing choice voucher program, which you might have heard referred to previously as the Section Eight program. So several years ago had changed the nomenclature. So Section 8, HCV, same program, HCV is the current uh current name of the program. Housing choice voucher, public housing are two different things. DHA manages both. So we have our housing choice voucher program, which is what we're here to uh talk to you about today. We also have our public housing program, which are the properties that DHA actually owns and manages within the city, two different programs funded through different sources through HUD.