A Look at THA’s 2025 Accomplishments & Goals for 2026

Strategic Goals & Progress in 2025

At the start of 2025, we set out a series of milestones grouped into four core areas, focused on financial sustainability, affordable housing supply, quality of life, and relationships with our partners and staff.

Enhance our Financial Sustainability​

Throughout the year, THA worked to ensure our financial health by increasing property income, reducing operational expenses, and closely monitoring our finances both at the property and agency-wide.​ We met both of our strategic milestones in this area: Our recurring income exceeded recurring expenses, and unrestricted cash flow from THA-owned and managed properties remained stable.​

In addition, THA:​

• Refined our staffing plans to align with budget priorities.​
• Retired the Salishan 5 loan with THA restricted funds, reducing debt at the property and increasing our unrestricted income.​
• Successfully advocated for changes to City housing codes to help stabilize property income.​
• Adjusted subsidy payments to our properties to better reflect property-level operational expenses.​

Add more Affordable Housing for Low-Income Families​

Our strategic plan set a goal of adding 500 new units of housing, through development and THA-led efforts and partnerships, between 2023 and 2028.​ ​Including newly constructed units and units with new subsidies to increase affordability, we have added 592 units by the end of 2025.

Last year, we completed lease-up of Housing Hilltop North, bringing our latest development in Tacoma’s Hilltop fully online. We also began negotiating to sell land at a discounted price for Bridge Meadows to develop a project that aims to break ground this year, come online in 2027, and add 60 units of housing at 30–50 percent of area median income.​

We also worked to optimize both voucher utilization and unit occupancy to promote housing stability and our properties’ financial health.​ By the end of 2025, we achieved 97 percent occupancy in our portfolio, ahead of our strategic milestone of 96 percent.

Throughout the year, we improved our processes for new move-ins across the board to house new households more quickly:

• THA moved 219 applicants into portfolio units, a 5 percent increase over 2024 and a 75 percent increase over 2023.​
  • 32 of these households came through referrals from our partnership with Tacoma Public Schools to house homeless student households.​
• Our maintenance team turned 204 vacant units to get them ready for new tenants.​
  • We reduced turn times by 3 percent, bringing the average down to 32 days​.

Make Tacoma a Great Place to Live​

Much of our success in housing our clients comes from our ability to help with housing stability services and neighbor-to-neighbor supports that help maintain community vitality.​

Supportive Services

For 2025, we set a goal of preventing at least 65 percent of evictions for lease violations, referring households for supportive services to help them cure the violation. This outreach helped our portfolio households to cure 89 percent of violations throughout the year.​

THA’s Property Management teams worked closely with our Client Support & Empowerment staff, making 1,500 referrals for 1,216 unique households in 2025.​ Of the households who Community Advocates worked with, 96 percent remained housed with THA, including 89 percent of households who received a housing stability service.

Our Community Builders also hosted 308 activities throughout the year, with 2,119 total participants including 211 unique youth attendees. These programs focused on health and wellbeing, mentorship, neighbor-to-neighbor connections, and more. We also worked with the Tenant Representatives Action Coalition (TRAC) to host a 2-day training for 40 residents to learn about resident councils, leadership and mobilization​.

Our staff also worked to educate community partners and landlords about changing housing regulations and local laws, sending education and outreach emails to landlords twice per month and hosting a series of events focused on landlord and tenant rights.​

Rental Assistance

THA set a goal for 2025 of serving at least 96 percent of the number of households served in 2010, increasing voucher success from 55 percent to 60 percent, and housing at least 5 high-barrier voucher households per month. By year’s end, we served 96.5 percent of 2010 households and housed an average of 6 high barrier households per month, but voucher success rose only to 58 percent.​

Our voucher efforts faced a challenge last year as we were notified that funding for the Emergency Housing Voucher program would be ending.​ Along with no increase in voucher funding, this meant we needed to stop issuing vouchers in 2025, and this will continue to be a challenge for the foreseeable future.

We ended the year with ​11,788 households on THA’s waiting lists. To account for voucher shopping challenges, THA began offering Housing Navigation services and will increase our payment standards effective in March 2026.​

High-Quality Housing​

In 2025, we began work to rehabilitate more than 300 units in our portfolio, having secured over $150 million in financing. This work will be completed by the end of 2027, improving the quality of life for tenants and the long-term viability of our properties.​ THA is on track to meet our goal of rehabilitating and/or refinancing at least 100 units of existing housing by the end of 2028.​

Additionally, our staff completed 30,906 single-task work orders to maintain the properties across our portfolio.​

Serve as a Great Employer, Contractor, and Partner​

In 2025, we continued our efforts to improve employee satisfaction and foster a culture of connection within THA​. We held an employee retention rate of 89.4 percent, ahead of our 85 percent target, and began implementing Essential Conversations, a more efficient and relevant performance management tool, in line with our goal of full implementation by the end of 2026.

We also completed a skills matrix for all positions in the agency, part of our goal to have written training plans for each position completed this year.​

Along with our efforts to make it easier for contractors to do business with us, THA hired 87 businesses or organizations that meet HUD’s Section 3 requirements, MWBE, veteran-owned, or micro small local businesses​, beating our goal of 5 or more. Used the Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC) preferred vendor list to help smaller and MWBE businesses get access to THA work and expedite our contracting process.​

We also set a goal of maintaining a 90 percent on-time payment rate and implementing systems that support those efforts, and achieved 91 percent in 2025.​

In addition, THA:​

• Remained committed to paying a housing wage and competitive pay for all positions. ​
• Continued investing in training and professional development. ​
• Optimized our Yardi Phase I software conversion and implemented Phase II projects to enhance system efficiency and operational workflows.​
• Developed new processes, trained approvers on their roles and impact in the payment approval process, and regularly reviewed the data related to vendor payment processing.​
• Implemented reports to monitor contracts. ​
• Further clarified expectations in contract scopes, so all parties understand what is expected of them. ​

Strategic Priorities for 2026

Looking ahead at 2026, we again laid out a series of objectives, metrics, and strategies to support each of our goals and build on our progress last year.

Enhance our Financial Resilience and Sustainability

1. Ensure THA’s financial health as measured by:
   • THA’s recurring income will exceed recurring expenses.
   • Unrestricted cash flow from the THA-owned and managed properties will remain stable or increase year-over-year.
2. Convert the Housing Hilltop construction loan to permanent financing no later than August 28, 2026.
3. Third-party financial audits will be finding free.

Maintain Existing and Add More Affordable Housing throughout Tacoma and Pierce County

1. Add more affordable housing through THA led efforts and partnerships.
   • By 2028, add 500 new units of housing through development or partnership.
2. Optimize THA voucher utilization and unit occupancy to promote property financial health and housing stability.
   • By the end of 2026, achieve 96% occupancy in our portfolio.
3. Improve the quality of life at THA’s existing housing properties.
   • By 2028, rehabilitate at least 300 units of existing housing to improve quality of life for tenants & long-term viability of the property.
4. Invest in keeping our housing at a standard of high quality.
   • Inspect at least 95% of its housing units annually.
   • By the end of 2026, complete a capital needs assessment and improvement plan for each property in THA’s portfolio.

Invest in Housing Stability and Community Vitality

1. Refine, maintain, and implement effective housing program management practices.
   • Increase internal audits to ensure 90% accuracy for all actions.
   • 98% of annual recertifications will be processed at least 30 days prior to the effective date.
2. Offer services and agreements that keep people stably housed.
   • In THA’s portfolio, 100% of households receiving a lease violation will receive a referral for THA supportive services.
     • We will aim to cure lease violations and prevent at least 65% of evictions that could have resulted from not curing the violation.
   • Educate community partners and landlords about THA programs, changing housing regulations and local laws.
3. Distribute rental assistance and other supports to increase the percent of households able to maintain and secure affordable housing.
   • Serve at least 93% of HUD requirements.
   • Provide 100% of Emergency Housing Voucher households with a housing alternative prior to the program funds running out.
4. Foster vibrant and connected communities.
   • Redesign FSS to achieve the following:
     • Increase access to and awareness of Economic Mobility pathways.
     • FSS participants will increase income and have a reduction in HAP expenses.
     • Increase household financial assets.
   • Implement a system for soliciting customer feedback about community needs by the end of 2026.

Serve as a Great Employer, Contractor, and Community Partner

1. Foster a culture of connection to improve employee retention and satisfaction.
   • Maintain retention rate of 85% or higher.
   • By the end of 2026, fully develop and implement Essential Conversations, a more efficient and relevant performance management tool.
   • By the end of 2026, develop and implement written training plans for each position in the agency.
2. Increase accessibility to make it easier for contractors to do business with us.
   • Hire at least five businesses or organizations that meet HUD’s Section 3 requirements, MWBE, veteran-owned, or micro small local businesses
   • By the end of 2027, meet the Section 3 requirements of the Salishan/Hillside construction contract.
   • Process vendor and partner payments on time and implement systems that support those efforts (maintain a 90% on time payment rate).
3. Promote our community partnerships and celebrate our partners.
   • Once per month, highlight an effective partnership within the community.