Attorney General Takes Council To Task On D.C. Housing Authority Reform
The D.C. Housing Authority’s crisis has revealed major differences in how city leaders prefer to address what federal housing officials have characterized as a complete failure to provide safe, clean and decent affordable housing for its lowest earning residents.
Mayor Muriel Bowser has leveraged her power amid the crisis by producing legislation that grants her authority to increase her influence over a Board of Commissioners she already controls, while preserving her handpicked executive director who is roughly a year-and-a-half into her term, and proposing to further consolidate her influence by hiring her own development consultants to guide a city-led turnaround.
The D.C. Council has come up with legislation that addresses DCHA through myriad reforms and policy changes that they expect–or perhaps simply hope–Bowser’s appointees and consultants are willing and able to implement.
Now comes Attorney General Karl Racine, with a 15-page report that calls on the Council to insist on new executive leadership at DCHA and independent oversight.
The competing approaches are set to clash on December 20, as the Council prepares to debate legislation proposed by At-Large Member Elissa Silverman and Ward 3 Member Brooke Pinto, along with amendments by At-Large Member Robert White to legislation introduced by Chairman Phil Mendelson at Bowser’s request.
The Council’s proposals fall short, according to Racine’s report, by seeking change at DCHA at the hands of a Bowser-appointed executive director and a Bowser-selected Board of Commissioners through the guidance and internal oversight of a Bowser-selected consultant.
In the meantime, DCHA’s residents and would-be housing voucher recipients continue to wait for assertive and equitable leadership to take root, as many among them suffer the indignities of decrepit and unsafe living conditions or displacement from homes and neighborhoods they have known for decades.
Released on Wednesday, the Silverman-Pinto proposal calls for “substantial representation [on the Board] by public housing residents and voucher holders” and “requires that the board seek input from the public housing Resident Advisory Council before making significant decisions that affect them, such as redevelopment plans.”
Their bill requires DCHA “to report publicly and to the Council on agency finances and other activities to ensure transparency.” It aims to ensure that DCHA “will be required to implement a more robust set of programs to support residents in advancing their well-being, to include economic advancement, education, and healthy aging,” and to “create a board that requires a diversity of expertise in housing finance and development, public housing operations, legal services, and lived experience as a voucher recipient or current resident of public housing.”
This latest offering from the Council is a marginal improvement over legislation that Mendelson submitted earlier this month at the Mayor’s request–amended to include input from White.
The Bowser-Mendelson bill would eliminate a 13-member board that includes a variety of representatives chosen by various stakeholders in the housing, labor and advocacy communities, and in its place create an eight-member Stabilization and Reform Board–appointed by name, by Bowser–to oversee DCHA and implement recommendations from a scathing report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in October.
Notably, the Bowser-Mendelson Stabilization Board eliminates seats currently reserved for labor and advocacy groups, which happen to be held by two of the most persistent voices of dissent to DCHA’s decisions and policies over the years, Commissioner Bill Slover and Ann Hoffman, respectively.
“This streamlined reform board will ensure that we are not only addressing the issues raised by HUD, but that the agency is living up to our belief that a safe and stable life begins with safe and stable housing,” Bowser said in announcing the legislation. “DCHA needs an agile board, comprised of experts who understand these issues deeply, so that we can deliver the housing DCHA residents deserve and that our community deserves.”
“It’s understood that Public Housing Authority is not working very well, the challenge for us is to turn the Authority around and do it in an orderly fashion while we get a new Executive Director next year,” added Mendelson, who, like Bowser, has laid DCHA’s failures at the feet of a “dysfunctional Board.”
The Stabilization and Reform Board would be made up of professionals with public and private sector experience in real estate and affordable housing, including one employee of a well-connected developer with numerous city contracts, the Director of the Office of Budget and Performance Management, and the city’s Chief Financial Officer (or a designee) who would serve as an ex officio, non-voting member.
According to Bowser and Mendelson, the Stabilization Board will be charged with implementing “sound governance procedures to refine contracting and procurement processes and monitor executive training and performance to assure the agency fulfills its mission,” including plans to increase occupancy of DCHA housing units, identify and repair substandard units, develop and implement a sustainable property maintenance plan, and improve the management of the waiting list for housing units.
The Stabilization Board would serve for three years and make recommendations to the Mayor and the Council for the structure of a successor board of directors to lead DCHA. Executive Director Brenda Donald, touted as a turnaround expert when tapped by Bowser in 2021, will remain in place through 2023.
Since the bill’s introduction, Mendelson and White have agreed on amendments to increase the size of the Stabilization Board and alter its composition to ensure representation for a number of stakeholders; restore meeting and notice requirements that Bowser had sought to remove; and add requirements for quarterly progress reports to the Mayor and the Council.
White specifically insisted on Board residency and conflict-of-interest requirements and enhanced oversight of DCHA’s procurement system–the latter of which, according to HUD, caused DCHA to misspend federal funds it will have to repay. Negotiations in the Council have continued to address various stakeholder concerns.
Earlier this week, Racine, in an exchange with District Dig, pointed to the most glaring flaw in the various legislative proposals coming out of the Council:
“Everyone, including HUD, has recognized that the Mayor’s [current] appointed Board members operate as a block and thus set the direction of the Agency. The important fact is that two Board members refused to join the cult and instead have consistently dissented and courageously told the truth about the agency’s flagrant conflicts and incompetence, both of which hurt D.C. residents.
“Rather than fortify the truth telling dissenters the Council appears poised to remove them from the Board. Obviously, this will not reduce the Agency’s history of conflicts, ethical challenges, and substandard performance.
“One has to wonder why so much energy is being spent on removing honest board members?”
On Thursday, Racine’s office dropped his report and took the Council to task for yielding to Bowser’s preference for political and operational control of what was set up as a federally-funded, independent agency.
The report does not come with legislation to counter what is already on the table; rather, it hearkens to an earlier era of public housing failures in the District and proposes “solutions to insulate DCHA from political influence and ensure the goals of the post-receivership legislation are actually met.”
“We urge the DC Council to take legislative action to implement these solutions,” the report states, zeroing on what many see as the central problem with the public housing crisis at DCHA: Lack of independence.
“Since the HUD report was released, [The Office of the Attorney General] has spoken with over a dozen housing policy experts, tenants, advocates, and others with knowledge of DCHA’s operations about what is needed to fix the agency,” the report states. “Nearly every person we have spoken with has emphasized that we cannot fix DCHA without reforming the agency’s leadership and governance structures to bolster the agency’s independence from the Executive Office of the Mayor and eliminate harmful political influence.”
Touting his office’s efforts to crack down on slumlords in the District, enforce accommodations for DCHA residents with disabilities, and increase safety provisions at public housing complexes, Racine dubbed DCHA “the city’s biggest slumlord.”
“DCHA has been hijacked by political influence and the prioritization of political loyalty over knowledge and expertise. This has led to a loss of mission focus, a lack of checks and balances, and an exodus of talent, the consequences of which have fallen on our most vulnerable residents,” he said, characterizing Council proposals as “hastily concocted attempts to silence the voices of those who have been raising the alarm about the agency’s dysfunction for years.”
Specifically, the report recommends removing Bowser’s Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development John Falcicchio from the Board, a change the Mayor made shortly after her initial proposal; ensuring Board appointments are based on qualifications, not political loyalty; raising the qualifications for the executive director; and improving D.C. Council oversight over the agency.
“DCHA has turned its focus away from its mission of providing deeply affordable housing and instead has become a development arm of the mayor’s agenda,” the report says, noting that mixed-use development has rendered the provision of clean, safe affordable housing for D.C.’s poorest residents as “an afterthought.”
“Furthermore, the lack of oversight by the Board of Commissioners and experienced leadership has led problems at the agency to go unchecked and dysfunction to run rampant. DCHA’s failures have real consequences for the low-income residents relying on the agency to provide them safe and stable housing.”
In order to make DCHA truly independent, the report recommends requiring that political appointees be selected not from Bowser’s rolodex but from “a list that is pre-approved by an advisory group,” and “by mandating that appointees have a minimum number of years of experience in a specific issue-area related to DCHA’s portfolio.”
Racine sent a copy of the report to all Council offices in advance of its legislative meeting next Tuesday and invited members to an informal briefing on its findings and recommendations.
(He also urged members to vote against the Bowser-Mendelson bill, which he characterized as “antidemocratic” in a December 6 letter: “This legislation and its amendments, crafted behind closed doors over a weekend without the input of the people most impacted by its outcomes, will eliminate Board positions of three elected public housing residents in the middle of their terms, effectively disenfranchising the residents who voted for them.)
Thursday’s report tracks DCHA governance back to 1994, when a court ruled that its predecessor agency was “incapable of governing itself,” and placed it in federal receivership, which required the city to relinquish control of the agency to a nationally recognized receiver who was was given unilateral control to reform the agency.
In 1999, that receiver, David Gilmore determined that the revamped agency–by then referred to as the D.C. Housing Authority–was fit to exit receivership. Gilmore insisted, however, that DCHA retain its independence, which he had relied upon to force meaningful change.
“Public housing authorities function best when they are independent of political interests,” Gilmore wrote at the time. “Appointments to the governing board should be made on the basis of merit, not political allegiance, and should be beholden to no particular faction of officialdom–only to the interests of the agency and its clients.”
Receivership, Racine’s report notes, led to legislation by the D.C. Council that established DCHA as an “independent authority of the District government,” which functioned as a “corporate body” with a “legal existence separate from the District government.”
As The Dig has reported, that independence went missing long ago, resulting in a divergence from DCHA’s core mission, and a reliance on publicly-subsidized private development that erodes affordability requirements.
In analyzing the cost of political influence, Racine’s report focuses on the failures of the New Communities Initiative to redevelop dilapidated public housing with “one-to-one replacement,” an objective the Bowser administration ditched for building “vibrant mixed-income neighborhoods…where residents have quality affordable housing options, economic opportunities and access to appropriate human services.”
Such a transfer of the city’s real estate portfolio, the report states, has diminished DCHA’s ability to realize a return on its public housing stock, leading to displacement of residents and deteriorating conditions in communities that take years to redevelop.
The report goes on to examine themes familiar to readers of The Dig, including lack of effective oversight, lack of knowledge and experience, and a proclivity to place blame at the feet of the current leadership’s predecessor.
Veteran and former government officials have been sounding these alarms for years.
The problem with targeting the Board, one official said, is DCHA is the city’s largest landlord that functions as a de facto real estate company: “The Board does not run the business, and the business is failing. The person who runs the business is not on the Board. That person works for the Board. How are you solving the operational problem of the business by bringing on expertise onto the Board as opposed to recognizing what is wrong with the business?”
One government expert with public and private sector experience said the Council should be vetting the Mayor’s appointees–not rubber stamping them. It is not unusual to fire an entire board and hire a new one, the expert said, but given the gravity of the HUD report, executive leadership at DCHA should follow the Board out the door:
“You bring in an entirely new and experienced Administrative Leadership Team. That is the norm in clearing the deck in both the private and public sectors.”
When the Mayor appoints the Board and leaves management in place, said the expert, the Council’s responsibility is even greater. “The extent to which that is weak, then who knows what will happen long term.”
In response to an email from The Dig, the Chair of the Council’s Committee on Housing and Executive Administration, At-Large Member Anita Bonds, offered a circuitous rationale for why the Bowser-Mendelson bill focuses just on replacing the Board:
The Board hires and therefore must approve the actions of the Executive Director, Bonds said. “They are the governing body. All the operations of the agency come through the Board via resolutions, and they vote on them.”
Bowser’s choice of a consultant firm to guide an agency turnaround at the executive level is consistent with a recommendation from HUD, Bonds said–though she believes DCHA should make the selection.
The Council is not engaged in the day-to-day operations of DCHA, which has lacked the resources to repair its aging properties, Bonds added, shifting blame to HUD for precisely what Bowser has been doing:
“This has unfortunately caused us to be incremental in responding to the need. HUD is also part of the problem because they have been ending their support of public properties and converting them to public/private partnerships and focusing more so on the Housing Choice Vouchers.
“We need to figure out how to position the public housing properties to have housing for the low-income population and our middle class. Land is so valuable in the District now, so we must figure out how to increase density on these properties that are publicly owned.”
Bonds denied that changes to the Board are intended to deprive any group of a voice. She pointed to unspecified housing authorities across the country that “do not have representatives of the labor and/or advocacy community.”
“We want a more agile board that is more like the other boards around the country that HUD is familiar with,” Bonds said, “which means the Mayor has the power to appoint the board members.”
She pointed to a seat reserved for the Chair of the Citywide Resident Council and added, “We want representation that is truly representative of the residents.”
In conversations with The Dig, White has agreed that Bowser holds all the cards where the Board is concerned, citing a hazy provision in the Home Rule Act.
Council sources said its Office of General Counsel would not certify the legal sufficiency of legislation that did not guarantee the mayor’s majority control of the Board. Other city officials are puzzled by such a reading, and Racine has not formally challenged it.
“I don’t think the [Home Rule] Charter has any specific mandate [regarding DCHA],” one official said.
Asked to explain why the Council is steering clear of focusing on competence at the agency itself, White said the city does not have the luxury of picking one aspect of reform or another. He said he supports new leadership at the agency, but that “Board and executive leadership are intertwined.”
“The Council cannot remove executive leadership,” he said.
Instead, the Stabilization Board and a third-party consultant would do what a local receiver does. “Both are there to stabilize and improve the agency,” he said, acknowledging that a lack of procurement process in hiring a consultant accountable to the Mayor and not the Stabilization Board is a concern.
White’s amendments to the Bowser-Mendelson bill would shorten the Stabilization Board’s term from three years to two, and would require “periodic and ongoing” status reports to the Council to ensure an “element of accountability,” he added.
“It will stabilize the agency and put it on the right trajectory to avoid HUD receivership, which would result in less public housing,” White said. “We have to do all of these things. Emergency legislation can’t be the end of it. We have to improve the agency and do better oversight.
“Improving public housing has to be the bedrock we come back to. It has to be our North Star.”
Pressed on what appears to be a mayoral takeover of DCHA, White said any idea that the Council could force wholesale change in leadership at the executive level of DCHA “conveniently ignores the limitations of power.”
If and when the Council meets with Racine, they can expect an earful on the dangers of acceding to political solutions to operational problems:
Selecting political appointees from a group of prequalified individuals; increasing qualifications for Board Members; strengthening conflict-of-interest provisions; strengthening for-cause Board removal requirements; and raising qualifications for the executive director are well within the Council’s legislative purview, his report states.
That is, if they are to stand up to Bowser and her tightening grip on the future of public housing in the District.
