HousingWorks staff contacted Lydia Agro at Boston Housing Authority (BHA) to ask about the letters BHA has been mailing to people on its waitlist, asking them:

1. if they still want to be on the waitlist

2. to pick particular developments where they would like to live.

The original deadline was June 18th but BHA decided to extend the deadline till July 18th to give applicants more time to respond. So if you have clients who may have applied to BHA at any time in the past, let them know they should have gotten a letter in the last month and that they MUST reply to it if they want to stay on the waitlist.

Because there are always communication problems when it comes to the complicated housing world, we strongly suggest you print this email out have each client take it with them or mail it with their update response. It is a written statement of Boston Housing Authority's willingness to take responses up to July 18th, and that will ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Text from Lydia Agro, Boston Housing Authority PR Director:

Hi again:

Ok, here's your clarity (I hope) on this situation. The City Council expressed a concern that some applicants may have trouble responding and making their waitlist choices by June 18. So, what we said was that we will continue to accept any choice/response forms from applicants after that date up to July 18. This is not to encourage everyone to wait until that time to bring in their choices as we have 24,000 applications we will need to process and new waiting lists to create as part of this process. We still want applicants to do their best to get their applications in today, if possible, and if not today, as soon as they can. At some point (after the July 18 date), we will be mailing termination letters to those applicants that we never heard from. Applicants who did not respond, but receive their termination letter, will have the opportunity to appeal that decision and be placed back on the waiting list.

So, if you are sending this to advocates, the message is, "Please do your best to assist folks in getting their choice/response form in to us as soon as they can. If they miss today's date, it's ok, but they should then try to get the form in promptly. Folks who come along after July 18 who never responded will receive a letter from us saying they never responded and they will be terminated. The letter also will tell them of their appeal rights.

Those folks should contact the BHA immediately upon receiving such a letterif they wish to remain on the list."

As you know, this is a major undertaking and involves communicating with many people and processing many applications, all of which needs to be done before we can reopen the waiting lists. We appreciate your assistance in helping make the process as smooth as possible.

Thanks! -Lydia

-Adapted from HousingWorks listserv message 6/16 & 6/18.

06/2004