What was 2021 like for the Agency and our clients? Our annual report is calling it a bridge year—the year when we began to cross from one reality to another.
Almost two-thirds of you had moved to CMHC’s Rental Assistance Program (FCHI-2) by year end. When our clients change, the Agency changes too. We said goodbye to some retiring staff, gave more responsibility to others and welcomed a lively cohort of rental-assistance officers to help you transition to the new program. (See the last pages of the annual report for our year-end staff list and a great photo of our new management team.)
By year end, clients and friends were helping the Agency test three online tools that will make the Rental Assistance Program easier to use.
On CMHC’s behalf, we rolled out Temporary Rental Assistance, which bridged the subsidy gap for those of you whose operating agreements had expired too early to join the Rental Assistance Program. (Great news: in 2022 CMHC invited all of you to sign on!)
All this, while you and our staff continued through Covid-19, working from home, masking up, meeting on Zoom, all of us hoping it would soon be over. The annual report shows how you coped with filing deadlines and arrears and bad debts in a challenging year (spoiler alert: better than in 2020).
We also made full disclosure of where we missed our published client-service standards. (Our staff’s performance is tracked, leaving us nowhere to hide if we fall short.)
Our 2021 annual report includes some great photos of your co-ops. Check them out, and let us know if our 2021 was anything like yours.