The Highlands Residential Services office and tenant portal were closed Wednesday as the agency upgraded its system to support the transition of properties to Section Eight housing.
Highlands Residential Services has been in a multi-year transition of all its public housing units to Section 8 housing under the Rental Assistance Demonstration program. Highlands Residential Services Executive Director Chris Cassetty said the new system was needed as HRS is currently transitioning its 34 public housing units in Celina.
“Part of that conversion necessitates making some changes in our software, and so we were doing that yesterday, and just the best way to do that and make sure that you don’t have any complications is to have everybody out of the system and not do any business.”
Cassetty said the new system essentially creates a separate entity to show which properties have been converted. He also said the benefit of this change is not to confuse the data of converted properties with properties that have not.
Cassetty said Celina’s conversion is expected to be completed in the next day or so, and the office and tenant portal should open up on Monday.
“We have tried very hard, we put it on our social media, we sent them notices, but Monday being the first business day of the month, that would be our busiest day normally anyway,” Cassetty said. “So, assuming we don’t have any issues and we have not this far, when the portal is up Monday, the tenants should be fine.”
Cassetty said once the Celina transition is complete, HRS will shift its focus to public housing units in Gainesboro. After Gainesboro, three additional properties will remain, with all transitions expected to be finished within the next two years.
“All of our properties, we have started the process,” Cassetty said. “We are in some stage of making the conversion, but we have kind of been focusing our attention on the properties that are not here in Cookeville. We have already converted everything in Cookeville, but Celina was our furthest away. We are gonna get it done, and then we are gonna go to Gainesboro. We are kind of working our way in.”
Cassettty said more stable funding is the benefit of transitioning its public housing units to Section 8 housing under the RAD program. Cassettty wants to reassure tenants that this will not impact them and that rent is based on a tenant’s income.