Muriel Bowser looks to tighten her grip on the D.C. Housing Authority
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser took decisive steps last week to orchestrate a complete takeover of the federally funded, independent D.C. Housing Authority.
Just two months after a devastating performance audit by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that detailed long standing failures to deliver clean, safe and affordable housing to low income residents, Bowser has proposed to hire her own real estate development consultants to guide an agency-wide turnaround, and to appoint a single bloc Board of Commissioners to replace a current board that includes elected commissioners and voices of dissent.
City leaders, current and former government officials and industry experts are astounded by the speed with which Bowser has leveraged her power into controlling the future of public housing in the District–particularly given her eight-year mayoralty during which she has had majority control of the Board, and the persistent decline at the agency that by her own admission has been years in the making.
That decline is no accident. DCHA has become a bastion of incompetence, neglect, retaliation and political interference in the service of Bowser’s true agenda: To convert public property into publicly subsidized private development of mixed-use projects, relying on vouchers to displace residents from public housing units they have occupied for years–often under abhorrent living conditions.
Despite such reliance, there are tens of thousands residents on a voucher waiting list that has been closed for years.
The HUD report, following a five-day site visit in March, was devastating, an 82-page indictment of a failing agency in free fall. Veteran government officials and observers with deep ties at the agency say that work conditions, culture and morale have only gotten worse since that site visit.
Acting on a HUD recommendation to seek outside help, Bowser eschewed procurement regulations and bypassed DCHA Executive Director Brenda Donald–who she first tapped as interim director in July 2021–in order to hire real estate finance consultants CSG Advisors, a San Francisco-based firm that already advises her office on development strategies.
Just days later, Bowser introduced “emergency” legislation that would shrink a 13-member board over which she already wields majority control into a seven-member board of commissioners she specified by name; and it would remove elected resident commissioners, commissioners chosen by various stakeholders in the housing community, and the current chair of the Board of Commissioners.
Notably absent from Bowser’s proposed Board is her Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio, an ex-officio member whose removal appears to be a political move to tamp down opposition to the bill.
Also discarded is community relations specialist and Bowser loyalist Dionne Bussey-Reeder, the current Board chair.
An early draft of the bill also eliminated notice and comment requirements from DCHA Board meetings, demonstrating the Bowser administration’s proclivity for insular, behind the scenes deal making.
Bowser’s bill needs nine votes to pass in the D.C. Council on Tuesday, and has prompted competing proposals and ongoing adjustments in an attempt to garner Council votes. Gone is the draconian elimination of notice and comment–a hallmark of basic democratic process. Restored is at least some representation for residents.
In their zeal to lock down control of the agency, both Bowser and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson have resorted to blaming a body the Mayor already controls.
Mendelson has said the replacement and consolidation of the Board is necessary to clear out the “dysfunction,” and has referred to persistent questions and opposition that come from a pair of Board members to be removed as “noise.”
In remarks to the press on Monday, Mendelson further scapegoated the Board: “Pretty much everyone agrees that the current board is not functioning well,” he said, echoing what Bowser said in an interview with the Washington Post last week:
“I think everybody is really clear that this board needs to function and be efficient and be responsive to the needs of the housing authority residents,” Bowser told the Post. “And we think that this is a reset that is in order so that the board can focus on its mission, not on its differences.”
Such claims, however, are at odds with reality: Members who challenge the Mayor’s appointed director or the majority of members who habitually vote in a bloc, have been largely unsuccessful in getting in the way of Bowser’s agenda.
Mendelson also asserted that the HUD report “really has put the pressure on everybody, which is a good thing.”
Yet the Board member who has done more than anyone to push back on the Mayor’s agenda, advocate for DCHA to honor its core mission, and to bring to HUD’s attention to the decrepitude that prompted its site visit in the first place, Commissioner Bill Slover, is being booted from the Board along with fellow oversight hawk Ann Hoffman.
Mendelson did not respond to a call for comment on this story.
Bowser and Donald also have found there is plenty of blame to go around for dysfunction at DCHA, claiming that Donald’s predecessor Tyrone Garrett is responsible for its demise.
Criticism in the housing advocacy community and in the media has centered on the fact that, while Donald and Bowser have blamed the agency’s woes on Garrett and his executive team, Donald has been on the job for 17 months, and Bowser has wielded power at DCHA for years as if it is an in-line agency.
In fact, as District Dig reported back in 2020, Falcicchio and Bowser’s previous Board Chair Neil Albert–who resigned in October 2021 after The Dig exposed him for approving contracts for his domestic partner–exerted an unusual amount of control over Garrett, and allowed the Mayor to spin off DCHA properties to her patrons in the development community.
City audits have demonstrated that Bowser’s land deals are tainted by contract awards to low-scoring bidders, and the failure to utilize funds to provide housing for residents who earn between zero and 30 percent of Area Median Income, known as “AMI”–DCHA’s core mission.
The Dig also has exposed sweetheart deals for Bowser’s friends, and a heavy reliance on public funding streams originating from agencies she also controls or exerts significant influence over.
In essence, Bowser appears to be holding everyone accountable except herself, Donald, and her compliant Board members.
Donald, whom HUD recommended for professional training in public housing and property development, appears to be the architect of this messaging. She insists that not only is Garrett responsible for DCHA becoming broken and dysfunctional, that it did not happen overnight, thus it is unrealistic to expect her to turn the agency around overnight, either. (Donald’s persistent finger-pointing in Garrett’s direction implicates his handlers Falcicchio and Albert, and overlooks that Bowser hired him in the first place.)
Another persistent Donald refrain is that the executive team she has put in place to clean up DCHA is “strong and rebuilt.” That, too, is a claim at odds with reality.
Donald’s team includes officials who have played key roles in DCHA’s day-to-day management to this point, simply elevated to higher positions than the ones they previously held. Most notably, former longtime procurement and contracts officer Lorry Bonds is now Donald’s General Counsel, and Bonds’s former second-in-command over procurements, Kimberly Allen, has taken her place as Senior Vice President in the Office of Administrative Services. (HUD’s review, internal DCHA audits and audits by the Office of the D.C. Auditor have cited major problems with procurement. Albert’s resignation came after two procurements overseen by Bonds herself.)
Two of Donald’s top managers–the Vice President of The Office of Financial Management and the Director of Strategic Planning–will remain the same. Rachel M. Joseph, DCHA’s former interim program coordinator in charge of compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act is now DCHA’s Chief Operating Officer.
Donald also has brought over her chief of staff from an earlier stint at D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, Jenna Cevasco, to serve in that same capacity at DCHA.
The only new blood included in Donald’s “rebuilt” team is Nona Eath, a recent hire who has worked for multiple housing authorities in other cities. She serves as Senior Vice President over Property Management Operations.
Donald didd not respond to a call or text seeking her comment for this story.
Turning DCHA around could be like steering an ocean liner in a fishing lake. With 8,000 units of housing reserved for residents who earn 30 percent or less of AMI, it is the city’s largest landlord and one of the largest public housing agencies in the country. According to HUD, it also has the lowest occupancy rate among other large housing authorities, an embarrassment that Donald has also blamed on her predecessors.
The catalyst for HUD’s site visit was multi-faceted. Slover has made an extensive record over the years as a volunteer commissioner, relying on comments and questions during public meetings, and he has not been hesitant to share his concerns with HUD.
Press reports also have exposed a wide range of wrongdoing that has led to whistleblower complaints, firings, claims of retaliation and internal auditor’s allegations of fraudulent contract activity. The Neil Albert saga, which prompted a federal grand jury inquiry that has not produces an indictment, was a wakeup call for DCHA’s federal overlords, who nevertheless issued their report without mention of the procurement of the contracts he approved. (HUD’s report also steers clear of DCHA’s housing strategy and pattern of mixed use development, a policy direction that leans heavily on a dysfunctional voucher program.)
As Mendelson (and presumably Bowser) worked the Council for votes yesterday, D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, who has announced he will retire next year, responded to questions from The Dig with the following statement:
“We need urgent action at DCHA, and we cannot lose sight of how DCHA’s failings are affecting people every day, especially vulnerable residents – low-income residents, seniors, residents with disabilities, and single mothers. The problems at the agency are not theoretical — they manifest in children living in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, long-time D.C. residents leaving the city because they can’t find an affordable place to live, and families waiting for years on a waitlist that seems to have no end.
“However, not all changes are fixes, and acting for the sake of acting will not only fail to deliver the solutions DCHA desperately needs, but could further exacerbate these problems – especially when proposed changes stifle the voices of residents and the agency’s most outspoken critics.
“We need to take the right steps that get at the root of the problems at DCHA. That starts with increasing the agency’s independence by reforming the Board to rid it of conflicts of interests and to ensure its members are devoted to fulfilling the agency’s mission – to provide safe and reliable housing to low- and moderate-income D.C. residents.”
Racine also wrote to the Council’s members this week and urged them to vote “no” on the proposed DCHA emergency legislation that would remove the board members who have been the most vocally critical of the agency, including the three representatives elected by public housing residents.
In the letter, Racine calls for “fundamental change at DCHA” through a transparent process that includes public housing residents and voucher holders.
But sources say that Mendelson, with the help of At-Large Councilmember Robert White, is tinkering with the emergency bill to ensure its passage–while still dumping Slover, another frequent voice of dissent, Commissioner Ann Hoffman, and recently re-elected Commissioner Kenneth Council.
DCHA will now have until March 31 to make progress implementing HUD’s recommendations consistent with a 60-page response it filed last week. Benchmarks for success are vague, however, and time will tell how much tolerance HUD has for self-reform. For the moment, Donald and Bowser seem to be determined to turn a crisis into an opportunity, and to double-down on the private mixed use/voucher approach.
This week’s developments do not dispel this concern, said one former housing official:
“It’s like HUD is allowing DCHA to implement its own receivership through the hiring of private consultants. The problem is, by purging the Board of people who raise tough questions, the Mayor is disenfranchising tenant representatives and housing advocates who have nothing to do with the dysfunction. If you care about the residents of public housing who have suffered under this administration, this is not the way to do it.”
The former official also challenged the selection of CSG Advisors to guide DCHA’s reform effort. “Their expertise is in development finance, not turning around failing housing authorities. That’s not who they are.”
Getting to the bottom line, the former official said, “This is about a portfolio of land, it’s about power, it’s about money.”
Veteran government officials have told The Dig that one path would be to enter into a Council-approved arrangement with a receiver that has specific experience turning around housing agencies, and to give them authority to hire and fire without regard to civil service protections.
Robert Bobb, a former city manager in D.C.; Oakland, California; Richmond, Virginia; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and with Detroit Public Schools, specializes in restructuring and managing complex organizations in the public and private sectors. Bobb has experience in urban education, economic development, community and neighborhood development, and municipal finance. He knows a tear-down when he sees one, and he acknowledged that DCHA might be a candidate for federal receivership if not for the city’s high profile.
Short of a federal intervention, however, city leaders should be ready to blow up the organization if need-be to bring in and retain people with the skill to bring change, he said. The Board also has to be independent, engaged, and involved.
“In any organization in trouble, you look at management policy and procedure, and at those who have created problems. You look at their performance. What makes it work is a deep, unbiased assessment of who is around you. There has to be accountability at all levels. You want to show progress but you can’t have a blank slate. You have to have timelines for oversight.”
Asked to comment on the mayoral preference for using vouchers to make way for mixed-use development to resolve a public housing crisis, Bobb said, “There are big questions to be answered on vouchers. You have to look at the benefits to those you serve. Mixed use is a good thing, but at the end of the day, the purpose of these properties is to principally serve low-income residents.”
