Covered by Documenter:
Wittman Sullivan (notes)
Akron City Council confirmed a Firestone Park resident to sit on the city’s Housing Appeals Board, after removing her name from an earlier slate of candidates.
Mayor Shammas Malik and the Department of Neighborhood Assistance had nominated Alyssa Figueroa for the city’s Housing Appeals Board, but, at its Feb. 26 meeting, council members voted to remove her name from consideration. On April 15, council members approved Figueroa for a three-year term on the board, which reviews two types of cases: homes recommended for demolition and homes cited for health code violations.
Figueroa, a hospice and palliative care nurse at Summa Health and vice president of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, told Signal Akron that she is passionate about housing issues. She said she worked closely with Duane Groeger, the city’s housing administrator, while earning her master’s degree in public health. She said she thinks of housing as “the social determinant of social determinants” when it comes to health.
She said she knows that serving on this board will require “very difficult decisions,” but her goal is to help improve the quality of housing in Akron by enforcing codes or by approving the demolition of properties that may have holes in roofs, collapsing floors, or pest infestations.
“There’s not a good amount of available funding” for this work, she noted, but “we will do the best with the situation we have.”
“Are we trying to work with people? Yes,” she said.
Figueroa said she did not speak with Council Member Jeff Fusco or Council President Margo Sommerville after they removed her name from consideration at the February meeting, but she did have conversations with other council members.
In addition to Figueroa, at its April 15 meeting, council’s Housing and Neighborhood Assistance Committee recommended these people to the 10-person housing board, which has had several vacancies:
Barb Waress and Hartense Pryear for one-year terms ending Feb. 14, 2025; Valerie Moss for a two-year term ending on Feb. 14, 2026; and Robin Rohrich and Michael Howard for three-year terms ending on Feb. 14, 2027.
In April, Figueroa and her husband welcomed their first child, Veronica. The housing board met April 25, but Figueroa (and Veronica) were not able to attend the 2 ½-hour meeting, she said.
