CHA's Busy Winter

C-port contains a significant portion of CHA's housing portfolio, including Family Housing at the recently modernized River Howard Homes and Woodrow Wilson Court and Senior apartment buildings like the LB Johnson Apartments and Manning Apartments (adjacent to the Central Square Library). CHA's plans for future development and modernization, as well as property management, have a significant impact in the neighborhood, for CHA property residents, employees, and neighbors.

With that in mind, here are a number of notes about the active Cambridge Housing Authority, including a meeting notice to discuss more:

• CHA's groundbreaking Work Force program, a "comprehensive life skills and vocational training program for low-income youth" was featured in Sunday's Globe:
  
  

  [T]he agency’s unusual role as academic adviser as well as landlord appears to be catching on across the state, with Patrick administration officials encouraging public housing managers to go beyond providing tenants with clean, affordable homes and begin promoting their children’s academic progress... The move is in recognition of a growing body of research indicating that schools alone cannot bolster the achievement of the state’s poorest students.

• Councillor Craig Kelley passed along a note that the Council's Housing Committee will meet Tuesday, 12/8, "regarding the Cambridge Housing Authority (CHA), including multi-million dollar renovation of CHA sites, vacancy on CHA Board, potential changing of status of CHA units from being state-funded to being federally funded and any other issues regarding the CHA that may properly come before the committee."


• Wilson Court and Manning Apartments, both state projects, are among the 12 proposed properties for conversion to Federal Public Housing.