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Work remains on the mixed-income replacement of the former Dove Court community in North Side; work is underway on a three-phase replacement of inadequate senior housing; and Somanath is working to acquire a federal designation that would help provide the RRHA with flexibility to pursue its goals.

The latter brings him to Kaine. Acronyms fly as they discuss the possibility of federal grant funding for the redevelopment of the city’s East End and RRHA’s qualifications for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “Moving to Work” program.

“For that, you have to be a very high-performing housing authority (based on federal indicators), and we are not,” Somanath says after the call ends. “So we’re trying to see how we can convince them. I’ve come here to show them work in progress and a positive direction.”

Somanath, 69, retired as CEO of the nonprofit Better Housing Coalition in 2013. He told the authority’s governing board last February that he would work for the RRHA for six months. In October, he agreed to stay.

The agency he inherited following the abrupt departure of then-CEO Adrienne Goolsby was over budget and under strain, he said, with dwindling federal resources.