The Cambridge Day has mentioned the Cambridge Housing Authority’s 2020 now-completed initiative to return and discontinue security deposits from its residents, saying, “The Housing Authority announced the extraordinary step of returning security deposits to its tenants and ending the collection of payments from new tenants as unnecessary.”
In an email to employees, Executive Director Michael Johnston said, “Early in the year, our Asset Manager, Andrew Kerivan, working with Operations staff and did an analysis that clearly showed our security deposit policy was really not affective. A memo was presented to our Board of Commissioners and after a short discussion, they voted to approved the recommendation. Judy Hanley in Fiscal then took on the herculean task of accounting for every single security deposit with accrued interest that was held by the CHA and cut a check for each and every resident. Together, Fiscal and Operations designed a system whereby residents could pick up their checks and sign for them to acknowledge receipt but then COVID hit and that plan went out the door.”
Johnston continued, “Instead, knowing that our residents could actually use this cash during the pandemic, managers went door to door and delivered those checks while also getting a signed acknowledgement. This is a perfect example of the team effort and dedication displayed here at the CHA daily and is why the CHA is the best housing authority in the country!”
Click here to read the Cambridge Day’s “Best of Cambridge in 2020” list.