Lexington Housing Authority describes voucher operations, asks for city partnerships as units lag demand

Avis Robinson, executive director of the Lexington Housing Authority, told Lexington City Council on April 28 that the agency manages 789 federal housing vouchers and is currently administering about 633 of them while the remainder sit unused because tenants cannot find housing.

Robinson said the agency converted to the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) model after public housing units were sold in 2014 and now operates as a pass-through administrator for vouchers rather than a traditional public housing landlord. "We were a public housing authority that had 268 units. In 02/2014, every last one of those units were sold," she said, explaining the change in the authority's business model.

The authority is operating with a small staff and high demand: Robinson said LHA has a seven-person core team and processes roughly 3,000 phone calls a month. She told council the office averages about 740 families leased and has issued more than $1 million in subsidy within a recent 90-day window, with a monthly average subsidy of about $440,000. "If…