bvc_june2017

74 75 dynamic, sustainable communities so families can evolve economically, and to improve lives and strengthen communities through quality, safe, and affordable housing, and by providing a myriad of services to empower public housing residents” Robert Graham, who Business View Magazine first spoke with two years ago, is VIHA’s Man- aging Director. During our first conversation, Graham talked about the agency’s past, present, and future initiatives: “In the 1950s, the Territory sought to reduce rural slums and, in that process, to build public housing to provide affordable housing for residents and reduce the reliance on slum dwellings. So it began a series of acquisitions and development of properties and requested HUD (The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment) to designate them as public housing, so that they would be eligible for operating subsidies as well as capital improvement subsidies.” By the early 1970s, Graham said that the num- ber of VIHA units had reached a total of 4,127 apartments in approximately 35 developments across the two islands. “That was the largest number of units that the Housing Authority owned and managed,”he continued.“Subsequently, in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, a series of hurricanes destroyed a great deal of property in the Territory, including some public housing developments.And so, the Housing Authority had to demolish a number of them.And that took the number down to approx- imately 3,300 units–about 25 percent of the inventory. So, currently,we manage 3,287units in 27developments.” Today, VIHA’s core service to its housing resi- dents is to administer the three main programs by which HUD funds affordable housing in the U.S. and its Territories: Public Housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and Section 8 Assistance. As such, VIHA is the largest provider of rental hous- ing in the Virgin Islands with housing assistance to over 4,000 households by effectively using $42 million of federal monies.With an average of 2.5 persons per households, VIHA assists ap- proximately 10,000 persons or almost 10 per- cent of the population. Public housing comes in all sizes and types from efficiencies, to scattered single family houses, to high rise apartments, to one-bedroom units for the elderly. There are approximately 1.2 million households living in public housing units in the U.S., managed by some 3,300 Hous- THE VIRGIN ISLANDS HOUSING AUTHORITY