The new chief executive officer of the Wilmington Housing Authority says she’s starting the job next month with a goal of building relationships and involving the community in determining the city’s public housing needs.
Katrina Redmon, who starts as CEO on Aug. 4, said in a meeting with reporters Thursday she’s coming to Wilmington “with a clean slate” and encouraging discussion of new, fresh ideas.
“I am excited to be here,” Redmon said. “I am very humbled to have been chosen as the CEO for the Wilmington Housing Authority. But I also have a big challenge ahead, and it’s an honor to be coming here next month.”
Redmon said she would spend her first 100 days on the job meeting with staff, as well as the authority’s residents, to assess current needs and determine priorities.
“It’s all about conversations,” she said. “I’m very much a people person.
“This entity needs to be very transparent. We need to have open and honest conversations about where we are, who we are, what the needs of this community are, and then see what we need to put in place,” Redmon said. “But first comes listening.”
Redmon beat out 150 other applicants for the position, which became vacant following the dismissal of previous CEO Michael Krause, who was fired last year after being charged with driving while impaired and without a license. Human resources director Vernice Hamilton served as CEO in the interim.
A certified public accountant with experience in both the public and private sectors, Redmon has served as vice president and chief development officer for the Housing Authority of the City of Winston-Salem, having previously served as chief financial officer and deputy director.
She was hired with a starting salary of $167,000. Her employment agreement also allows for performance-based incentives that could result from annual evaluations.
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The daughter of a Methodist minister, Redmon said her family moved every three to four years, primarily in the Piedmont area of the state. In Winston-Salem, she met her husband and worked for the housing authority, where she has spent the past eight years of her career.
Prior to that, in the private sector, Redmon said she has worked as a comptroller for an airport authority and in real estate and construction and development.
“I am a CPA, but I just choose to use my skills in a different way,” Redmon said. “There’s a love for real estate, but there’s also a love for helping people. And that’s what I want to bring to the table here.
“It’s an exciting opportunity. There’s a lot of potential in Wilmington,” she said. “What the housing authority has done here so far is quite impressive, so it makes a really nice, firm foundation to build more capacity within New Hanover County for the housing authority.”
Asked her impression of the authority, as far as what it does well or where she sees room for improvement, Redmon said she’s most pleased to see the level of involvement of the authority’s board.
“I’m really excited for having a professional board,” she said. “They’re here, they’re engaged; they want to see this housing authority do all it can do for the community. And to come in with a board that’s already thinking forward is a tremendous asset.”
Redmon said she looks forward to working on diversifying the authority’s housing communities. In December, the authority reiterated plans to apply for a grant to revitalize Hillcrest and integrate mixed-income neighborhoods. Plans are also in place to construct eight new supportive-housing apartments near Eighth and Dawson streets.
As CEO, Redmon will oversee the authority’s management of its seven housing communities, as wells as residential programs and services. It’s a challenge she said she looks forward to taking on, reiterating the support and endorsement she has received from the board.
“I look at the communities that have already been completed,” she said. “I’m looking at the gut-rehabs that have already taken place in some of the properties. The fact that they’re thinking ahead, [asking] what do we need to do, and really putting what they say and their money on the ground to make it work.
“I’m looking at resident programs that are already there. I think there’s a lot of ways we can work to enhance that type of thing. But there is a caring spirit with this board of commissioners,” she said, “and without that, they could not have done the wonderful things that they have in redevelopment and the service area. And it gives us an opportunity to improve.
“With government subsidies going down the way that they have in the last few years, we need to think: how do we survive, how do we keep our level of service? And we may have to do that in very unconventional ways, or the individuals and families we serve and need to serve will not be served,” she said.
Asked what she wants the community’s leaders to know about her and her approach to the job, Redmon replied: “There’s no agenda. We’re here for a common good. And there is no one way to do something.
“I think all of us, together, need to approach everything with a very, very open mind,” she said, “because for every problem, there is a solution—a short-term and a long-term. And it may take that unconventional thinking in order to find that solution.
“So I would ask that everybody not look at us in maybe the way that housing authorities are typically looked at,” she said, “and let’s just clean the slate, let’s start with a fresh piece of paper, and let’s decide what we want for Wilmington.”
Jonathan Spiers is a reporter for Port City Daily. He can be reached at (910) 772-6313 or [email protected]. On Twitter: @jrspiers
