RFQs for Additional Administrators

The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition has recently updated eligibility for Grants to Property Owners. It will be the same eligibility criteria for CHN Housing Partners and the selected administrator(s). Grants are available to homeowners, owner-occupants, and rental property owners of all types. If a homeowner is under 120% AMI, they are eligible for a full grant of up to $12,000. If over 120% AMI, they will still qualify for a grant and loan product at a different amount.

The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition sets the eligibility standards, which have been recently updated. Eligibility criteria will be the same for CHN Housing Partners and the selected administrator(s). These may be collectively re-evaluated in the future.

The administrator will be responsible for this task. The Coalition has processes for this, which will be shared with the selected administrator(s).

Since the construction is done in-house, it is essentially the service’s value. Grants do not include handing money directly to property owners. The administrator would inspect the property, establish the scope of work, and perform the scope via its in-house construction.

Yes.

The amount is not shared with CHN Housing Partners. CHN Housing Partners has a budget separate from the $19.65 million referenced in the RFQ. We are looking for one or more administrators for the $19.65 million.

We don’t have a specific metric. We’d be happy to discuss that with the respondents more. Since these products are tailored for compliance with the Lead Safe Certification Law, they are inherently more attractive to those who have to comply with it, which are rental property owners, not owner-occupants.

The products are by unit, so a rental property owner with multiple units would qualify.

CHN Housing Partners is in a similar position. We would discuss how we would approach that if you are selected as an administrator.

The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition will deploy a robust marketing plan through the Lead Safe Home Fund. There will be resources and support available to the administrator or administrators. They would not be responsible for crafting any messaging or deploying it themselves. The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition will offer a great deal of support through its existing marketing campaign.

Any administrative costs should be contemplated as a part of the overall $19.65m budget over five year. Meaning, those dollars will cover any administrative costs and as many grants as possible. The grant product will remain up to $12k (depending on income) per property owner.

Multiple bids are not required. We expect administrators to use existing rules to procure or employ in-house contractors, ensuring that they are properly trained, licensed, and ensured.

Assuming the $3m was arrived at by dividing $19.65 by 5 year (to get $3.93m) and then backing out some administrative costs… We are looking for one or more administrators to deploy this budget. That means, we are accepting responses that propose deploying a portion or the budget in its entirety. We will review proposals with either possibility in mind: one administrator to deploy the entire budget or select multiple administrators to each deploy portions of the budgets.

A word on the assumptions above, we do anticipate that Administrative costs will be include in the overall $19.65m though please do not construe my assumption calculations above as indicative to what we are expecting for annual administrative costs

Generally, yes

The grant amounts will range from $4,500-$12,000 dependent on scope of work and property owner eligibility (income)

No

Enterprise is the Lead Safe Home Fund contracting entity and given that fact, Enterprise would be unable to provide a letter due to conflict of interest

Lead safe represents interim controls measures. Lead safe plus standard represents interim controls measures plus, when a property is determined through its scope of work to have additional repair needs, some additional component replacement measures. The lead safe and lead safe plus standards are established and will be make available to the selected Administrators to review and provide feedback on as we co-develop the grants to property owner programming specifics together.

The Coalition would defer to you to select the best type of client letters. It could be clients themselves or funding partners.

Lead Safe Home Fund Administrators report expenses against the budget monthly and provide a quarterly and annual narrative of activities, deliverables and outcomes achieved. To be determined, there could be extra reporting due to American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding.

We have not established this yet, but we can address it during this process.

We encourage all those ideas to be submitted in your response. Please note that a city-wide approach is the priority. We encourage every neighborhood and every service area to respond, but if there is a way to deploy it in all neighborhoods, in all service areas, that is the top priority.

The applicant should include their ideas under the component, Project Understanding and Proposed Approach.

The 300-plus people trained represent all types and levels. Workers include everything from a landlord looking to secure their own RRP contractor because they’d like to do their own lead-safe remediation work to someone who’s gone through the full process to become a clearance technician. We are not necessarily looking for responses that would do the full scale. We are open to responses that do pieces and parts of it, such as an organization that wants to focus on lead abatement contractor training or lead abatement business development.

No. The non-assignment clause referenced in the RFQ ensures that you’re still the key administrator making the decisions with and on behalf of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition. We understand there will be instances where you may need contractors to complete your scope of work, but we want to be clear that you would not become a pass-through entity.

Absolutely. They will work closely with the administrator(s) to share their work and discover how each can leverage one another’s strengths.

We think there’s an opportunity in the long-term to generate revenue for mission-driven organizations based on lead safe workers, not in a profit-driven way but in a sustainability way. We’re not there yet, but we would certainly invite you to contemplate that in your response, if you want to look long-term after the estimated four-year budget horizon.

Because of our inclusive, coalition approach, we would still welcome anybody and everybody who would like to serve on the Lead Safe Child Care Subcommittee or any other committee of the Coalition. The Coalition has a policy for navigating such conflicts of interest.

For the Relocation Assistance RFQ, we expect the administrators to work closely with the Lead Safe Housing Action Board. There’s no analogous body at the City of Cleveland for lead safe child care. However, the City does have a significant stake in that through the Department of Public Health.

Regarding existing programs at the City, we don’t think there’s relocation assistance for child care facilities. We would invite respondents to the Lead Safe Child Care RFQ to contemplate building relocation assistance for child care facilities into the pilot.

For the Relocation Assistance RFQ, we expect the administrators to work closely with the Lead Safe Housing Action Board. There’s no analogous body at the City for lead safe child care. However, the City does have a significant stake in that through the Department of Public Health.

Not necessarily, but we’d be very open to that proposal.

We view the Lead Safe Resource Center as the most significant and primary referral source because it has a hotline. We already receive calls about relocation assistance. We would expect to promote that further. That said, one of the pilots includes a housing navigator. We could foresee somebody also becoming a referral point or a receptor point for those in the community. That will be one of those opportunities where we as a coalition must communicate very carefully among administrators. As we bring on administrators for all of these RFQs, we will need to consider how we’re creating a seamless system for the end user, residents, property owners, families, etc. So yes, we do see the Resource Center as a key referral. Could we be open to conversations on what it would look like if we had other folks coming in as housing navigators? Absolutely, and we would invite those conversations as a part of the response and the selection committee interviews.

If selected as the administrator, you have the right to hire employees and initiate subcontracts to complete the approved scope of work. However, you are disallowed from assigning or subcontracting all your administrator responsibilities to another party and becoming a pass-through entity. We’re trying to tap into your expertise as applicants. You’re being purposefully and thoughtfully selected to be in this role. Therefore, we want to ensure that you bring that expertise to whatever program area you administer.

The Coalition’s Lead Safe Home Fund supports robust workforce development. We currently support workforce development through our existing administrator, Environmental Health Watch. EHW is training inspectors, contractors, and other individuals to do the lead safe work. Also, through the Additional Workforce Development RFQ, we will grow that workforce development programming, including working with community-based organizations to build their in-house capabilities. Through this RFQ, we’re also soliciting other ideas on workforce development – everything from what we believe is necessary for lead safe homes and lead safe child care to abatement workers who are looking to do even more expensive work when a child has already been poisoned.

Additionally, the benefit of Relocation Assistance, Lead Safe Child Care, and Additional Workforce Development RFQs is that they have been crafted as pilots. So any administrator or administrators who are applying are essentially launching pilot programs. For instance, the Lead Safe Child Care RFQ is searching for a program with a five-year horizon, starting with an 18- to 24-month pilot. Any pilot program worth its weight, including this one, will have an embedded evaluation. If one of the evaluation findings of the pilot program is a contractor or worker gap, this would then be taken into account in the subsequent scaling of the pilot for the remaining three-plus years of the program.

Respondents should strive to submit their very best application. However, if we receive a strong application and something is missing, we may come back to ask clarifying questions and collect additional information.