The Oak Park Regional Housing Center’s financial trouble, resulting in staff’s pay sometimes being delayed and the village pausing its funding for the organization, will require village trustees to navigate next steps at their June 18 meeting.
The OPRHC is a nonprofit organization that offers resources to individuals seeking to locate housing and to housing providers, according to its website. Its mission, according to the website, is “to achieve vibrant communities and promote intentional and stable residential integration throughout Oak Park and the region.”
But now, the village says the organization has been falling short of financial obligations and performance expectations, which it sets for each of its partner agencies. The financial issues at OPRHC aren’t new, either.
Athena Williams, executive director of the OPRHC, said that’s the result of cash flow issues, lack of village funding and inherited financial trouble.
Village officials said the OPRHC ended the fiscal year 2023 with a deficit of about $356,617. Williams said that number is an operating loss, not all deficit. She said the village’s shortfall in funding the housing center is almost $230,000 and the OPRHC’s remaining deficit is about $127,000. The OPRHC is still working to complete its 2023 audit.
If the village board decides at its June 18 board meeting to stop or limit funding for the OPRHC, Williams said she’ll have to close the Live in Oak Park program, which helps foster residential racial integration in the village.
But what led to this point?
Timeline of events
On Aug. 4, 2023, village staff discovered the housing center had an “inactive status” with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for its West Cook Homeownership program, according to village officials.
This prompted village staff to meet with OPRHC staff to discuss compliance. Funds, including from the village’s general funds and Community Development Block Grant programs, were paused.
On Aug. 23, a financial monitoring of the OPRHC took place. Village staff discovered that OPRHC staff had not been paid for multiple pay periods, beginning in March 2023. The staff were not paid for three consecutive pay periods, a total of seven weeks, until August 2023, according to officials. OPRHC staff, at this time, were also awaiting payment for July and August. Those wages were later confirmed as received.
Williams told Wednesday Journal money from funders was coming in late due to funders’ internal issues. She said some staff told her they were willing to wait for their checks. But then two staff members told HUD about the delayed payments, she said. That’s when HUD inactivated the OPRHC’s status to check its financial procedures, determining them to be OK, Williams said. HUD did not revoke the OPRHC’s certification altogether, she said.
Four OPRHC staff members left around this time, she said.
Village staff also discovered the OPRHC’s Housing Action Illinois funding grant agreement was terminated.
HUD reinstated the OPRHC on Oct. 10, 2023, for a probationary period to end April 10, 2024. That probationary period has since been extended to Oct. 10, 2024.
In November 2023, Kolnicki, Peterson & Wirth conducted a performance review of the OPRHC. It was inconclusive, according to village officials, due to a lack of financial documentation from the OPRHC. The housing center was given seven extensions to provide the documentation, village officials state.
In January 2024, the OPRHC contested the review and requested a 45-day extension to submit documents. The village denied this request, asking the OPRHC to focus on “strengthening the organization’s operations and financial oversight.”
Williams told Wednesday Journal that KPW’s review included the week of Thanksgiving in 2023. The OPRHC was closed for a few days, and when they came back, half of the staff had COVID-19, she said, contributing to the inconclusive review. When KPW asked for payroll documents for every staff member, Williams said she wasn’t done with the budget revisions after some staff had left.
Dan Yopchick, the village’s chief communications officer, told Wednesday Journal the village did not give KPW a certain timeframe in which to complete their review. But, he wrote, “there were established goals to have the review completed before the end of 2023 and for the village board to review the report and consider next steps regarding funding in the fiscal year.”
In February 2024, Village Manager Kevin Jackson asked the OPRHC for a corrective action plan. Williams submitted one.
This plan outlined areas of improvement for the OPRHC, including restructuring financial procedures, ensuring staff are paid wages on time, working on the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus housing study recommendations and reassessing racial integration plans. Village staff said they have met twice with Williams and housing center board members to address concerns since then.
In April 2024, the MMC presented a housing study plan to the village board. The plan outlines challenges facing the OPRHC and suggested additional monitoring of all programs.
The OPRHC has also applied for village funding from the affordable housing fund during a 2023 request for proposals. These applications have been paused. Two previous requests from the OPRHC were also rejected.
OPRHC response
Williams said the cash flow issue started years ago. During COVID-19, the OPRHC received reimbursable government grants that helped keep the programs afloat. But, as the pandemic started to die down, private funders the OPRHC was relying on changed their funding direction, Williams said, to aid those experiencing homelessness.
Live in Oak Park does not focus on individuals experiencing homelessness. The program costs, on average, about $750,000 per year to run, Williams said. Without Oak Park’s allocated funds, which aren’t enough alone to cover the cost, it would have to be shut down. And other private funders believe Oak Park should be the one to fund it, Williams said.
“With the distraction of no funding for a year, with the distraction of the funding processes, we need developmental time,” Williams said. “And the only way we can do that is with a different type of partnership with the village.”
Williams said when she became the agency’s executive director in September 2019, she inherited a financial structure at the OPRHC that wasn’t working. She said she’s been trying to fix it and play catch up since she started.
“Ever since I’ve been the ED [executive director], every year there has been an issue with the village to pause funding, and it slows down our progress,” Williams said.
HUD deactivating OPRHC’s status did not necessarily need to affect village funding, Williams said. But their contract states that if the OPRHC is not in compliance with HUD, the village can pause funding, and it did.
When that funding ceased, she said she had to pay staff salaries from other funds. The agency also took out lines of credit to perform basic operations, funds that have to be paid back.
Another public misconception Williams said is that there was a “ghost payroll” at the OPRHC. This refers to allegations of payments for staff members who don’t exist and that others pocket. Williams said the village had missed two payroll identification numbers, leading to that misconception.
Yopchick said the village was initially unable to identify two individuals on the payroll records, but later did.
The OPRHC’s next performance review from HUD will happen in July. This is an annual process, Williams said. To prepare, Williams said she’s working to make sure the files, staff training and data management systems are all up to date.
The village board was supposed to discuss next steps with the OPRHC’s funding at its June 4 board meeting. Trustees voted to postpone that discussion, as the June 4 meeting lasted almost five hours prior to reaching that agenda topic.
Williams said she wants to sit down with village staff, talk about each item and work through it together. Although Williams alleged they have not been willing to do so, Yopchick wrote that “the village has not denied the housing center an opportunity to meet and discuss concerns regarding their finances or agreement scope and has always made staff available to discuss any concerns.”
In response to village concerns, Williams also wrote “through the past 10 months this process came across very systemically oppressive to me as an individual, to the OPRHC board of directors and staff, and to the clients who seek to gain entry into the Village of Oak Park causing much harm, which I believe was not the intent of the village staff and or its board of trustees.”
Willliams told Wednesday Journal she still feels singled out as a Black female leader. She said she believes if she was someone else, the village’s approach would have been different.
“The village followed established protocol and procedure in ensuring policy compliance and that the contractual terms set forth in the housing center agreement were met,” Yopchick wrote in response. “The process is the same for all organizations.”
What could the village do?
According to village staff, there are four possibilities for how the village board could respond to the financial trouble facing the OPRHC. At the June 18 meeting, trustees could decide to adopt one of these options.
- Pause funding of the OPRHC until the organization is fully reinstated by HUD.
- Fund the OPRHC at a lesser amount than the traditional $300,000 annually and put the organization on probation.
- Fund the OPRHC at the traditional $300,000 with no accountability measures.
- Fund the OPRHC’s request for the CDBG program year 2022, fiscal year 2023 agreement and $400,000 for fiscal year 2024.
With time and funding, the OPRHC intends to increase staff capacity, improve the integration program, increase rental and homeownership opportunities, increase housing inventory and increase support for “resident advocacy,” according to a presentation.
Without funding, the Live in Oak Park program will have to be shut down immediately. With some funding, but not all the OPRHC is asking for, the program would still likely have to be shut down within 2024.
It is vital people don’t take racial integration work for granted, Williams said. Some think Oak Park has already achieved what it needs to, but that’s not true, she said.
“The integration work has helped to increase the overall value of the community,” she said. “This work is intentional. We have to continue to do this work, to make this difference.”
If Oak Park pulls its funding entirely, Williams said that could risk the OPRHC’s reputation with other funders, too. The power dynamic between the village and the OPRHC has to change, she said.
Yopchick also told Wednesday Journal, “the Village of Oak Park continues to support the legacy of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center and has remained focused on collaborating with housing center’s staff throughout the process in order to firmly establish and foster an open line of communication. This includes being readily available to discuss issues outside of regular business hours.”