Chairman of D.C. Housing Authority Board of Commissioners bought houses in D.C. and North Carolina with a companion whose contracts he approved
By Jeffrey Anderson
D.C. Housing Authority (“DCHA”) Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Neil O. Albert purchased real estate in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina with a personal companion, Yenny P. Moya, also known as Paola Moya, CEO and Founder of Moya Design Partners (“Moya Design”), whose federally funded contracts he approved in 2018 and 2021.
Their property purchases, recorded with the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue’s Recorder of Deeds and the Dare County Register of Deeds, intensify existing questions about whether Albert influenced procurement processes that benefited Moya and her firm
In 2018, Moya submitted her firm’s offer for “Master Planner” services in the redevelopment of the Capper Carrollsburg site in Southeast D.C. near the Navy Yard on letterhead from 1275 K Street, NW, Suite 1000—the address of the DowntownDC Business Improvement District (“DowntownDC BID”), where Albert has been President and Executive Director since 2015.
Albert stepped out of the room before the DCHA Board of Commissioners (“Board”) voted to approve Moya Design for the award, according to attendees of a hearing on December 12, 2018, then approved (in writing) $305,883 for the firm to evaluate the feasibility of developing and marketing three parcels that have languished for 17 years.
On February 4, 2019, Moya and DCHA Contracting Officer Cheryl Moore signed a “Contract For Services” that also shows Moya Design located at Albert’s K Street office suite. (Three months earlier, on December 19, 2018, Moore had sent a NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD to Moya at that same address.)
Six months later, according to the Recorder of Deeds, on August 21, 2019, Albert and Moya purchased a house in Northwest D.C. as “joint tenants with right of survivorship, and not tenants in common.” (Joint tenants retain equal shares in property that gets transferred to surviving owners; tenants in common can have unequal shares that do not get transferred to surviving owners.)
That same day, the two signed a Deed of Trust to secure a mortgage on the house.
Less than nine months after Moya and Albert purchased the house, on May 26, 2020, DCHA extended the Master Planner contract by one year and increased the amount to $350,000, according to a Contract Modification that factored in a new headquarters that DCHA has decided it is no longer building, as a result of the decreased need for office space due the pandemic.
The modification did not require the approval of the Board, but it did require the approval of then-Director Tyrone Garrett, who veteran housing officials say was under pressure from Albert to initiate the competitive bidding process that allowed Moya Design to compete with the firm that had drafted a pre-existing Master Plan. (Moya Design blew away that firm, Torti Gallas + Partners, one of the nation’s top planners and architects of affordable housing, with an average technical score of 407 to Torti Gallas’ 107.66, and an overall final score of 135.66 to 107.66, according to a review of the score sheets.)
To date, Moya Design has delivered only a “Draft Master Plan” that housing officials, industry experts and members of the business community who reviewed it say lacks the financial and economic analysis that informs a decision to go out to market and attain the maximum value of subsidized development—what public housing experts refer to as the “highest and best use.”
That draft plan, which Moya Design submitted in March of this year, reached the same conclusions DCHA had already reached some three months earlier, in a December 2020 document titled “Capper Master Plan Update: Draft/Final Recommendations.”
Five months before Moya Design delivered the draft plan, Moya and Albert signed a second Deed of Trust on December 30, 2020, according to signed and notarized documents on file with the Recorder of Deeds, four days after being released from their first mortgage on the Northwest D.C. house they had purchased as joint tenants in August 2019.
By that time, DCHA procurement officials had issued an unrelated RFP for two categories of “Professional Architectural and Engineering Services” contracts of indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, known as “IDIQ” contracts, worth up to $27 million.
Moya Design submitted a bid proposal for those contracts, which were broken down into two categories.
While DCHA’s procurement process for the architecture and engineering contracts was pending, Albert and Moya then purchased a second piece of real estate—a beach house in the town of Nags Head, in North Carolina—on April 6, 2021, according to a deed that identifies them as unmarried “Grantees” and “joint tenants with right of survivorship,” according to the Dare County Recorder of Deeds. (The return address on that Deed matches that of the Northwest D.C. home the two purchased in 2019.)
Three months later, DCHA selected Moya Design as the top-ranked firm among six awardees in a field of 21 competing for the more lucrative of the architecture and engineering contracts, according to bid score sheets and the award resolution, again besting Torti Gallas and putting the firm in line for up to $3.75 million of the $22.5 million that was allocated for that category. (DCHA later raised the single contractor ceiling to $4.5 million.)
After a separate panel reviewed bids for the lesser of the two categories, Moya Design ranked just sixth among 17 firms that submitted proposals and did not qualify for one of the five awards. (That contract accounted for just $4.5 million of the total combined allocation for the two categories of contracts.)
At a Board hearing on June 9, Commissioner William Slover questioned why the firm with the highest score in the competition for the more valuable architecture and engineering contract would not qualify for an award for the less valuable one. Thor Nelson, Deputy Chief of Planning, Design, and Construction with the Office of Contracts and Procurements, said that the firm did not submit the same proposal for each category, and speculated that maybe its proposal for the second category was not as good as its proposal for the first.
Slover then asked whether any of the competitors disclosed any conflicts of interest. Lorry Bonds, the Vice President of Administrative Services replied, “No, not to my knowledge,” according to a transcript of the hearing.
Albert remained silent, then after brief discussion on some other aspects of the contract awards, moved the matter to a vote; Albert then joined his fellow commissioners in approving the awards, 7-3, and signed the final resolution—along with Garrett.
Numerous sources at DCHA report that Albert and Moya have a personal relationship they described as “the worst kept secret” in the building. Officials there are concerned that, in Moya Design’s bid submission for the Master Planner contract at Capper Carrollsburg, on September 16, 2018, Moya signed a Conflict of Interest Certification affidavit that attested, “No conflict of interest, real or apparent, exists.”
That statement, according to the certification, applies to “His or her partner,” a characterization that DCHA officials, housing representatives, and members of the business community and the D.C. Council (“Council”) say they understand to be an accurate description of the relationship between Albert and Moya.
Among their concerns, these sources say, is that Albert approved both awards without disclosing his relationship with Moya—both during the first procurement while she worked out of his place of business, and during the second after he had purchased two houses with her.
The DCHA certification also states that under federal law, “no officer, employee, contractor or agent…shall participate in the selection, or in the award or administration of a contract supported by Federal funds if a conflict of interest, real or apparent, would arise…”
Veteran lawyers and government officials tell The Dig they regard this as a two-way disclosure requirement that would apply to both Albert and Moya. In the event of such a conflict, the certification goes on to say, the “officer, employee, contractor or agent” shall “fully and immediately disclose” the matter so an official determination by the agency can be made. Failure to do so “may result in immediate termination of any relationship, employment, contract, award or appointment with DCHA…”
In addition to the DCHA conflict of interest certification, HUD’s General Conditions for Non-Construction Contracts state that a conflict exists when an “Award of the contract may result in an unfair advantage,” or “The Contractor’s objectivity in performing the work may be impaired.”
Even before learning of the mutual property interests shared by Albert and Moya, At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman said that one definition of such a conflict would be a personal relationship that benefits one party because of the influence or authority of the other.
“It’s a competitive advantage,” Silverman said recently. “It depends on the procurement process. Did he tilt the competition in favor of her company?”
Silverman serves on the Council’s Committee on Housing and Executive Administration (“Housing Committee”), which in recent months has received notices from the D.C. Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) regarding allegations of ethical and legal violations at DCHA.
On September 27, 2021, Inspector General Daniel Lucas wrote a letter to At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds, who chairs the Council’s Housing Committee, about a confidential allegation that “DCHA leadership may have violated procurement regulations in awarding several contracts that may have constituted waste of DCHA resources.” (Those complaints were first reported by Washington City Paper.)
However, Lucas noted, “DCHA is not subject to our investigative authority unless specifically requested by the Council.”
On October 6, 2021, Lucas again wrote to Bonds regarding a confidential allegation that former DCHA employees engaged in a conspiracy to steal money intended for rental subsidies.
A representative from the OIG told The Dig last week that, at that time, the office had received no request from Bonds or any other member of the Council to investigate those allegations. The representative also said the OIG was aware of the recent story in District Dig that first exposed the procurement issues at DCHA involving Albert and Moya. At that time, the office had not received any request from the Council or any of its members to investigate those matters, either, the representative said.
On Sunday, Bonds told The Dig that she expected HUD to look at the procurement issues involving Albert and Moya in the course of conducting its annual audit of public housing agencies around the country.
Bonds said a review of one of the allegations Lucas brought to her attention is “in progress,” but did not specify which one. She said she would not be requesting the OIG to investigate the procurement processes involving Albert and Moya, characterizing any questions or concerns as a “disclosure issue” for the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability (“BEGA”) to “look at.”
Informed of the real estate purchases by Albert and Moya, she wrote in a text, “DCHA is investigating, as it should regarding any irregularities pertaining to the awarding of contracts, etc. I’ve began inquiries regarding the application of BEGA’s laws. I believe in allowing time for the findings of DCHA to be presented before deciding the next steps in the information you are reporting.”
Late last week, shortly after announcing his candidacy for Mayor, At-Large Councilmember Robert White, who also is a member of the Housing Committee, said in a text message that he and his colleagues were weighing their options. “The Council has to act to give the OIG authority to investigate the DCHA. I support that I look forward to working with the Housing Committee to make sure OIG has the proper authority.”
*Silverman said on Sunday that her staff had asked Bonds’s office last week whether Bonds or the Housing Committee as an oversight body would be requesting that the OIG investigate the matter. She said her staff conveyed to Bonds’s office that if neither Bonds nor the Housing Committee made such a request by the end of the day Monday, Silverman would make the request herself. (By close of business Monday, The Dig was unable to confirm what if any action Bonds, the Housing Committee or Silverman had taken.)
Neither Albert nor Moya responded to multiple requests for comment for this story. On Friday, The Dig observed a package addressed to Albert on the doorstep of the D.C. house that he and Moya own. Yet on his most recent Financial Disclosure System filing with BEGA, which covers the calendar year 2020, Albert disclosed that house as “real property located in the District of Columbia during the previous year” that is aside from his primary personal residence.
According to documents filed with the Recorder of Deeds, Albert owns another house nearby that he acquired on December 11, 2018, as part of a divorce proceeding. He listed that house as his address on real estate documents when he and Moya purchased their first house. (Moya listed a condominium in Silver Spring as her address when she and Albert purchased their first house. She incorporated Moya Design in Maryland and registered the business with the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (“DCRA”) in 2017, state and city records show. As of Sunday, DCRA’s corporate registration database listed Moya as “Executing Officer” of Moya Design at the address of the house in Northwest D.C. that she purchased with Albert in 2019.
At the nearby house owned solely by Albert, a woman answered the door last Friday, and when asked if either Moya or Albert were there, she replied, “No, we’re renting from them.”
* This story has been updated to clarify communications within the Housing Committee.
