Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Public housing administration as a measure of government (in)competence

 DC received a scathing report from HUD about the failures in managing the city's public housing stock of 8,000 units, 25%--2,000-are vacant because most are uninhabitable ("D.C. Housing Authority’s leadership is failing, HUD report says," Washington Post).  From the article:

A damning, 72-page report the agency authored portrays a housing authority in disarray and at risk of defaulting on its agreement with the federal government. Auditors catalogued 82 findings of deficiencies that DCHA must make substantial progress on within three months or risk escalating actions by HUD, which delivered its findings to DCHA in recent days.

The sweeping findings detailed in the report, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post, reveal dangerous conditions at properties that form one of the last lines of defense for District residents who cannot afford homes, including violence, lead-paint hazards, out-of-code plumbing, water damage and mold. A DCHA maintenance foreman told HUD evaluators that emergency work orders are not addressed at night due to safety concerns. Prospective tenants turn down units for fear of crime, the report states.

HUD noted that DCHA’s occupancy rate is the lowest of any large public housing authority in the nation, with one in four of its roughly 8,000 physical units vacant. The vacancies result in fewer people housed and millions of dollars every year in forgone income, the report said. It attributed the issue to management failure and said the vacancies have accelerated the agency’s steadily deteriorating financial condition.

The City Council is worked up about it ("D.C. Council votes for $8 billion Medicaid contracts, housing overhaul," Post).  And the leader of the DCHA board says they're working on it ("We already are working on making the D.C. Housing Authority better," Post).

Ironically, under the Williams Administration--1998-2006--the resuscitation of the DC Housing Authority was one of the city's great accomplishments, and the director, Michael Kelly, was even detailed by HUD to help fix failing authorities in Philadelphia and New York City.

What happened in the intervening 16 years?  ("DC Housing Authority Director Resigns, Post).  

Note that a couple years ago under the previous board chair, also appointed by Mayor Bowser, DCHA was tied up in a conflict of interest matter by the then President of the board, who steered contracts to his girlfriend ("D.C. Housing Authority Board Chair Neil Albert Will Resign," Washington City Paper).  The funny thing was the "girlfriend" was eminently qualified.  And successful enough that she didn't need the work.   All he needed to do was disclose and recuse and it would have been legal.  But he didn't.

How are these multiple failures not an indictment of the capacity of the DC Government to manage and act?  ("HUD report on D.C. public housing should outrage and embarrass residents," opinion column by Colbert King, Post).  From the article:

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s scathing report on management and operational shortcomings in the D.C. Housing Authority has documented more than 80 deficiencies ranging from inadequate management to lack of knowledge of a host of basic housing functions to 220 contracts awarded in violation of DCHA procurement policy. The unearthed defects and failures are so serious that without immediate remedial action, HUD has threatened to declare the District in default of its federal contract. D.C. residents have every reason to be outraged and embarrassed by this latest government fiasco.

Among the glaring weaknesses cited was the leadership of the DCHA’s executive director, Brenda Donald. Donald, who earns a salary of $275,000, “has no experience in property development, property management or managing federal housing programs,” the audit notes. During the HUD review, Donald accepted the need for HUD-supplied training for herself and staff on critical functions of housing programs. That speaks volumes.

HUD also found a DCHA workforce lacking in the capacity to perform even the most basic financial, procurement and housing-related functions. The agency, HUD said bluntly, is failing “to provide decent, safe, and sanitary housing opportunities for residents in violation of program requirements.”

At the heart of the problem is abysmal financial and operational oversight — a searing indictment of D.C. leadership, since the DCHA’s 13-member Board of Commissioners is dominated by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s six D.C. Council-approved appointees and her chief of staff and deputy mayor for planning and economic development, John Falcicchio, who is an ex officio member.

John Kotter’s Eight Step Model for Leading Change

It definitely shows lack of accountability and no sense of urgency to act-2,000 units could house at least 4,000 people.  

 One of the points I make these days is boards need to have as part of their monthly reports, lists of open items.  In the case of DCHA, the number of vacant units needs to be an element of such reporting and monitoring.  

(When I was a student "activist" at the University of Michigan, I read the monthly Regent Board Meeting packet, which was the equivalent of a looseleaf folder, as many as 1,000 pages.  One of the items was a listing of all open litigation.  The way the Board reports were organized there, listing plan versus actual, and the various open items for action in many areas is a model.)

I know that technically, DC Housing Authority is a quasi-independent agency.  But it is not truly independent.  The board is appointed by the mayor and city council.  The employees are considered DC Government employees.  The agency reports to the mayor.

It's also a failure of elected officials to not see themselves as "asset managers" and "risk managers."

-- "Town-city management: "We are all asset managers now"," 2015
-- "Municipal Natural Assets Planning Initiative, British Columbia," 2018

What's up?

Performance dashboards.  I've been thinking about them a lot lately.  For example, I think that the Orange County Register dashboard on covid is best practice, and a model for how local media can present and track data.

In the summer we visited a rural area of Montana, and the kindling box for the fireplace in the cabin we were in was full of previous year's issues of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and some farming publications.  Of course, I skimmed them all.  

And the farming section of one (although it might have been a different paper, for Idaho) had good graphics on the water levels in various reservoirs.  But the data, presented as easily understood graphics, needs to be made more widely available, beyond those involved in agriculture.

I was thinking that such a graphic needs to be built into an online water availability dashboard in the State of Utah, which faces serious drought, but it turns out as a whole the state has the lowest cost of water and a middling track record for conservation ("For Mormons, a perfect lawn is a godly act. But the drought is catching up with them," Guardian).

Similarly, an online dashboard for a public housing authority, also made available to citizens, should have data on the number of unavailable units, overall, and by building, with the budgeted/expected percentage, which I think should be less than 5%, and the length of time each unit is out of service.

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9 Comments:

At 2:39 PM, Anonymous charlie said...

This is an excuse, but the vacancy rate very much represents how much DCHA wants to tear down.

On certain properties, they are clearly declaring units vacant in the hope that makes redevelopment easier.

 
At 3:13 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Good point. Although it supports my joke that DC's primary property management policy is demolition by neglect.

 
At 8:37 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/19/dc-public-housing-vacancy-spirals/

 
At 8:56 AM, Anonymous charlie said...

that is true of 90% of our public investments -- let it run down over 30 years and hope someone (the feds) will spring for the capital replacement costs.



We talked about the UK in the other thread; I realize that privatization means different things here and in the UK. But this basic inability to invest in repair is a problem.

Again incentives.

Just take all the rent public housing tenants pay - or ask for additional fee -- and keep that in a fund just for that project.

Again involve the tenants in the investment decision.

Look I agree large chunks of DC public housing need to be torn down, sold and redeveloped.

Id' say the larger critique of the hUD audit is the much talked about waiting list, which turns about to be real and the lifetime waiting lists for Redskins tickets.

I'd hazard a guess that 90% of people own that list don't qualify anymore.

Likewise in crime you just need to remove any family that has males from 16-30 from public housing and put them somewhere else.

 
At 10:28 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Dunbar School lasted about 40 years. But that kind of cycle, as you know, is unsustainable.

Good suggestions about tenant engagement.

I've argued you need to build amenities and opportunities in (eg a community kitchen that could support small business activities), business center, etc., the way that a house supports its owners in leisure and for the people who use them that way, as economic development support (Bill Hewlett and the garage).

 
At 1:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Charlies comment #2 is so true of why everything in this country is so janky and dilapidated.

 
At 10:53 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Interview with the retiring director of the Boston Housing Authority.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/01/metro/departing-boston-housing-authority-chief-citys-housing-crisis-where-we-go-here/

BHA has been on an amazing trajectory for the last couple of decades. This is something I don’t take credit for. It’s been an amazing team internally, but I’ve also had two amazing predecessors, Bill McGonagle and Sandra B. Henriquez. And so the Housing Authority has just really come a long way in terms of being viewed as an innovator and as a more modern housing authority than it used to be. We were the first housing authority to go entirely smoke free and the first in the nation to adopt small area fair market rent: We set our rent levels at the zip code level instead of a general setting across the whole city, which means people can access high market neighborhoods with a voucher more than before. We did [one of] the largest energy performance contracts in the nation to green our buildings many years ago. And we’re recognized nationally for redevelopment work. ...

Greater Boston and the state as a whole are facing a housing crisis. How has the BHA tried to address this with its own housing stock?

We have like a 33,000-household waiting list here at BHA. And every day, people are coming to us desperate for housing. One of the things that we’ve tried to do is continue to preserve our units so that we can offer that access to low-income folks. The other thing we’ve tried to do in our redevelopment work is actually add to the supply of affordable housing. We’re actually planning to add over 1,000 new surplus units to our sites just to help the city’s supply. We have a fixed portfolio, but what we have is our land. We’re trying to use that land to leverage as much affordable housing as we can for this city.

 
At 4:41 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Letters to the editor in the Boston Globe

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/22/opinion/prongs-argument-against-public-housing-prompt-cry-ouch/?et_rid=852154004&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter

in response to:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/10/metro/argument-should-massachusetts-significantly-expand-construction-public-housing/

Re “Should Massachusetts significantly expand construction of public housing?” (The Argument, Globe Local, Feb. 12): Of all the arguments against public housing raised by Howard Husock in his opposing view, the two worst are that public housing limits tenants’ opportunities for homeownership and that government cannot manage real estate properly.

Regarding homeownership, we are talking about a target population whose net worth is often measured in the hundreds of dollars. For those in this situation, the concept of homeownership is a cruel hoax, one that at its worst invites victimization by predatory lenders. Yet for some people, years of paying low rents in public housing can allow the accumulation of assets that will actually and realistically foster legitimate homeownership.

As for governmental management of real estate, the issue is not one of mismanagement but rather years of legislatively underfunding the true costs of properly maintaining public housing. To then turn around and use this historical underfunding as a reason to provide even less funding is a harsh twisting of the knife.

Stanley Spiegel, Brookline

=====
my point about "tenant opportunities for homeownership" is that there are two different elements. One, obviously is building household wealth through price appreciation. But the other is the kinds of things you can do with a house that you can't do with rental property, e.g., Silicon Valley and the garage. With the latter, build those kind of spaces into the properties.

 
At 9:37 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

The director will be leaving this summer.

D.C. Housing Authority director Brenda Donald to step down

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/03/brenda-donald-leaving-dcha-dc/

 

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