Allan Appel Photo
New Haven’s housing authority is hoping a new nickname will help polish its image.
The public-housing agency, formally the Housing Authority of New Haven, is often called by its acronym, “HANH,” pronounced “Hannah.”
To counter that frowzy image, the authority’s commissioners have launched a campaign to re-brand and re-logo with a warmer and more professional image in mind.
The city’s biggest landlord and funneler of millions of job-creating “stimulus” and other federal dollars, hasn’t legally changed its name. It has just and branded itself with the nickname “Elm City Communities,” complete with new logo (pictured).
At their board meeting last week, commissioners voted to spend an additional $10,855 on the campaign with a consultant, Milford-based CommVerge Marketing.
The refurbished “Elm City Communities website is already up and running.
The new spending brings the total contract to $60,000 for the marketing campaign, which began in January.
HANH — er, ECC? — Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton described the marketing campaign as a “broad branding initiative that seeks to professionalize the image of the agency and attract new constituents.”
Those include people at the high end of the low-income spectrum, the working poor, who may not have considered the authority’s housing options, she added in an email message after the meeting.
She said she thinks the additional name will appeal also to the disabled. “We are particularly advertising our wheelchair accessible units,” Dubois-Walton said.
Another reason for the image upgrade is to attract more landlords, especially those with rental apartments with four and five bedrooms, to participate in federal Section 8 voucher program, which the authority administers.
“We are encouraging staff to redefine the communities by using the new name in reference to the [housing] developments,” she said.
Chief Operating Officer Renee Dobos said that by law the agency must show progress in finding units accessible to the disabled and also in placing the whole range of tenants in areas of the city with statistically low concentrations of poverty.
To help make that happen, HANH/ Elm City Communities commissioners also approved on Tuesday $50,000 additional payment to Gaudioso Realtors of East Haven for consulting services. Dobos credited them with finding new areas of the city for Section 8 clients, heretofore unexplored. Gaudioso’s total fees to date are $97,500.
The re-branding includes not only the additional “Elm City Communities” line and other upgrades to the website, but marketing materials.
DuBois-Walton said the campaign was already showing results in another key aspect of the authority’s work. “We are attracting more vendors who may be interested in contracting with HANH to increase the competitiveness of our procurement process,” she said.
Internally, however, grand old HANH will very much still be hanging around. “Our board will continue to convene as the HANH Board of Commissioners,” DuBois-Walton reported.
Money Pit?