Lavonia Housing Authority Wins Award

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

The Lavonia Housing Authority is the recipient of the 2015 Best Practices Award from the Housing Association Insurance Group.

H-A-I presented the award for the Housing Authority’s institution of its “Fire and Ice” Program.

Lavonia Housing Authority Director Ricky Whitworth said after hearing about previous winners and their programs, he decided to submit their program for consideration this year.

“I thought we’ve got a pretty good program here in Lavonia too even though we’re a lot smaller than a lot of those programs in bigger housing authorities,” Whitworth said. “So I thought we might have a shot of at least getting some recognition.”

Whitworth they named their program Fire and Ice.

“We call it that because we actually had two problems. Back during the ice storm we had some burst pipes and had to submit a couple of claims. We’ve also had a few fires that cost us a couple of claims,” he said.

Whitworth said “Fire and Ice” is a preventative maintenance and education program covering the two most common housing problems.

On the “Fire” side of the program, Whitworth said maintenance is trained now to look for and be aware of any issues in a resident’s apartment that might lead to a fire.

“If maintenance sees a fire hazard in an apartment, such as grease in a frying pan on the stove, they are required to find an adult and mitigate the problem right then and there,” he said. “They use that as an opportunity to educate the adult in the apartment.”

Whitworth said they also have installed fire extinguishers over the stoves in each apartment in the event of a fire starting on the stove.

“We have magnetic fire extinguishers mounted over the range tops so that if there’s a fire, it will ignite a little fuse, which will pop open and swing that arm over the range top and spread fire retardant all over the top of the stove to put the fire out,” Whitworth said.

Other education tools Whitworth has put in place include having created a children’s book of household safety measures and what to do in case of an emergency.

They also have a TV in the Housing Authority lobby with safety videos for residents to watch.

Whitworth credited his staff for doing the hard work of putting the award application together.

“Really, I brought the program idea to the taable, but when I told my maintenance and office staff and gave it to them to work on and told them what we wanted to do, they took the ball and ran with it. Every meeting, they brought new ideas to the table,” Whitworth said.

Whitworth said since receiving the award he has had requests for copies of his “Fire & Ice” program from larger housing authorities in major cities across the country.